With the start of the new RTX 50 series, a well-known problem reappears. The graphics cards are hardly available and are bought up by scalpers and bots in large quantities. However, some users have now found a creative solution. They offer pictures of the RTX 5090 on Ebay.
What are these offers? There are many offers for the Geforce RTX 5090 on eBay, which are between € 2,500 and € 6,000. The high prices are well above the recommended RRP of € 2,329 for the Founders Edition (via nvidia.com).
The increased prices arise from the low availability and high demand of the cards. This condition is exploited by so -called scalpers and bots on ebay.
What is the problem with the bots? Bots are programs that automatically buy products in large quantities, even before human buyers can be fast enough. These bots ensure that the cards are quickly sold out, while Scalper (reseller) resell the products – mostly overpriced.
As a result, the graphics cards for normal users are even more difficult to get.
Check out the ingenious Collector’s Edition of the Nvidia Titan XP in a star Wars look in the video
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Users want to trick bots
That is the idea of the eBay users: However, some users on Ebay came up with something to act against the bots. You do not set the graphics cards yourself, but pictures of the RTX 5090 for sale.
At the request of Gizmodo, the users explained that their goal was to lure bots into a trap. They should only buy useless pictures instead of real cards. Often in the title or in the information of the advertisement, it is noted that it is only a picture that you buy. Some advertisements are even advertised with the words: “3Calper bot3 we1come”, which translates as much as “scalper bots welcome”.
Is there a catch? Through the ads that only sell pictures, it is more difficult to find really serious offers. It is not necessarily made clearly recognizable whether it is a real offer or a fake listing.
This confusion could also be used by scams. So far -looking people could fall into the trap and pay for useless pictures instead of real graphics cards if they do not read the description to the end.
Our sample showed that we can find such pictures, especially on the US side of eBay.com. So far, these fake offers have been less common on the German Ebay page (eBay.de) and have not have the same meaning or reach. The method seems to be particularly popular on the US market, where Scalper and Bots are an even bigger problem than with us.
Is the sale of the pictures permitted? Ebay already seems to be against some advertisements, which suggests that they are not permitted. Ebay’s guidelines do not allow misleading or deceptive offers that aim to cheat buyers. An offer that only sells an image and no real goods could be considered to be violations of the guidelines for fair business relationships and product presentation. Repeated violations can lead to Ebay removing such offers or blocking the corresponding accounts.
If you look at the offers on the German Ebay page, it is striking that the phenomenon of scalping is not as pronounced with us as in the USA. This problem became particularly clear during the high phase of PlayStation 5, when the console was extremely popular, but was difficult to available.
Many scalper took out the scarcity and sold the PS5 at very excessive prices. But through Sony’s big sales campaign in 2022, the sheet turned and many scalper remained on their PS5 consoles.