Summary
- Nvidia’s RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards were predictably snapped out within minutes of being released.
- In an attempt to thwart scalpers trying to buy even more stock, people have been listing photos of the 5090 for inflated prices.
- It seems at least some of the fake listings have worked, hopefully fooling bots and not real, non-scalping people.
Scalping is often a term associated with new consoles and Pokemon cards in this line of work, but unfortunately, it extends to PC gaming too. That has been on full display these past few days as shortly after the newly released RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards sold out almost immediately, they began to appear on resale sites. Tread carefully if you are taking that inadvisable route in an attempt to get one though as you might be paying thousands of dollars for a photo of what you’re after.
This isn’t a scam being run by people trying to fool you. Well, not entirely. As reported by PC Gamer, most of the listings selling photos of the RTX 5090 rather than the card itself are from frustrated PC users hoping to fool scalpers, or more specifically the bots that scalpers use to find and hoover up any available stock before genuine customers get to them.
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Well that didn’t take very long.
The first tell that an RTX 5090 listing on a resale site might not be the real deal is the price. The fake photo listings are claiming to be reselling the cards for their MSRP which, naturally, scalpers won’t want to do – unless they’re trying to shift a PS5 Pro. The whole point of scalping is to buy an in-demand item in bulk and then sell it for a profit.
Some Of The RTX 5090 Listings You’ve Seen Might Not Be The Real Deal
Don’t Fall Into A Trap Intended For Scalpers
The biggest tell, however, will be in the item’s description, title, or both. One listing, for example, makes it clear that it’s a photo of the graphics card for sale rather than the real thing, even going as far as to include “Do not buy if you’re a human” in capital letters at the end of the description. The hope is that a bot won’t clock this, or if it’s a human scalper getting their virtual hands dirty, in their rush to buy the card, they won’t notice the warning buried in the description.
The listings for photos are disappearing, but it’s unclear if that’s because they’re selling or eBay is taking them down. It seems likely more will appear though as there is now an organized effort to get more people involved that began on the r/PcBuild subreddit.
This has already been going on for a few days with it seemingly working on a few occasions. Someone has managed to sell at least one of their drawings of an RTX 5090 for $1,200, a hefty discount on the actual price of the real thing, and a listing for a $1,900 image also appears to have fooled at least one person. Here’s hoping those fooled really are scalpers and not over-excited PC gamers on the hunt for stock of the new graphics cards.
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