Bora1114
static.quai
I think sometimes people throw around the "supply and demand" argument a little much. To say scalpers do not cause supply and demand issues is not really how you should look at it. Do they disrupt overall supply and demand? No, they don't. They just serve as pass through price gougers.
However, if you think of Supply as total supply available to consumers. And Demand as total demand for a product from end consumers, you see that both of these consist of three main consumer categories.
- Gamers, traditional or enthusiastic
- Scientific computing, to include miners, who may not be scientist themselves, but it's still at its core very math driven
- Scalpers
Scalpers have both demand requirements, they need cards to sell. And supply requirements, they can only buy what is available. They have a third unique relationship, they cut out X total supply from groups 1 & 2, and then sell them that that chunk of supply at hugely marked up prices. Your retailers don't do that, manufacturers don't do that.
You think guy out there buying up multiple cards and reselling them is somehow one of the millions most smart people that manufacturers or retailers don't know about? No, he's a grey area price gouger who doesn't have to care about contracts, customer backlash, and / or government attention. I think the more this happens, the more you'll see at least the government eye these practices. It's too much money at this point not to.
You are somewhat incorrect to say they have no effect, because they are part of the demand side. Fine, but when they want to unload supply side, you don't want this
SupplyScalper <= DemandGamer + DemandSci, where SupplyScalper is relatively high
What we need to do is make sure that when SupplyScalper is relatively high
SupplyScalper >> DemandGamerFromScalper + DemandSciFromScalper, where DemandFromScalperTotal total is close to zero. Scalpers eat billions of dollars and stop scalping. This would stop scalping.
Buying from scalpers hurts the ecosystem (and by scalper, I don't mean someone reselling a card they no longer need, it's the big time profiteers of this mess)
Your entire argument in regard to scalpers having a effect on supply and demand can be dismantled with 2 examples. They do play into both the supply and demand side but only as an intermediary to adjust the price of the good to the current market price. MSI and Newegg are starting to play the same role to take more profits for themselves. The current market price is not the price set by the retailer but the price you can go out and purchase the product at any time without having to spam F5 or wait in queue for. This is the price for which demand=supply.
1. If Nvidia and AIBs raise prices to scalper levels, will the scalpers still purchase cards in the hopes to resell them? No, because the price of the card would be at the going market price therefor removing them from the equation. The scalpers as a whole move lower quantities than AIBs and NVIDIA do directly to large miners and do not have the capital to bulk purchase at the going market price for tiny gains if any. Small miners and gamers are significantly more price sensitive on average and will be more willing to settle for alternatives and many already have.
2. If scalping was completely banned and no longer existed overnight, would the going market price change lower? No, large miners would start bulk purchases from retailers to take up any remaining supply largely bypassing normal sale channels. Because these cards have close to a 100 day or less ROI at retail it makes no sense for retail pricing to be the going market price. This is what happened in 2017/18 when nvidia and amd failed to meet demand without many scalpers.
I don't like scalpers but like i said before, this is nvidias fault more than any1s. Gov't intervention will only hurt the market as it always does.
I don't know if that's dismantling what I said, it's just saying there are other outcomes.
If these were limited run collectibles, I'd get it. But this is not the case. Nvidia set their prices to crush AMD out at the 3070-3080 range, and aimed to realize higher profits on the 3090s. They just haven't delivered.
What's happening is some people are snatching up loads of cards, marking them up, and saying this is supply and demand. Not exactly, this is segmenting the people who can afford to pay those high prices from those who cannot. It's not a service, it's actually a disservice. Every seven cards bought that way with the only purpose of reselling them at what someone thinks the price should be (which corresponds to them making hundreds of dollars) takes away the opportunity to buy a card from those who cannot afford or will not pay scalper prices.
And no, you probably can't make all scalping illegal. But the IRS could probably go after them for unreported revenue. I doubt your friendly neighborhood scalpers are reporting their gains as income.