Yesterday, the RTX 5090 and 5080 finally came to market. The high-powered and high-priced GPUs are hot commodity, with both cards selling out at most retail channels quickly and leaving many prospective buyers cold.
As a result, both GPUs (especially the RTX 5090) are being heavily scalped on resale websites such as eBay. Almost immediately after launch, RTX 5090s were being purchased for over $6,000, and now the price has skyrocketed even further, hitting a peak of $9,000, a 350% increase over the GPU’s MSRP of $1,999.
Why are people willing to buy the GPU at this exorbitant price? Well, the RTX 5090 isn’t just good for gaming, but also AI workloads, which means that many who run startups or businesses in AI are looking to get their hands on a chip to run models locally. Given Nvidia’s Datacenter GPUs are out of reach for many, the RTX 5090 becomes the next best option, regardless of its aftermarket pricing.
But the gaming community isn’t taking the supply shortage and scalpers sitting down. Auction site eBay is now full of fake listings intended to trick the would-be buyers of these expensive cards into purchasing an image of the RTX 5090, not the card itself.
One listing describes the GPU with the following conclusion: “Bots and scalpers welcome, do not buy if you are a human, you will be getting a framed photo of the 5090, you will not receive the 5090. The photo detentions [sic] is 8 inches by 8 inches, I got the frame from Target. DO NOT BUY IF YOU’RE A HUMAN.”
Another sold listing for $2,457 reads: “Geforce RTX 5090 (read description) Picture Only – Not the Actual Item,” with a similar description that mentions that there will be no refunds given for the image, which isn’t the RTX 5090 itself.
The root of the issue lies in the lack of competition in the high-end consumer GPU market. With AMD’s RX 9070 series almost certainly failing to compete for the power crown with Nvidia, and Intel lagging behind, Nividia dominates. And given the shortage of cards and the staggering price point, it paints a grim picture for high-end PC builders and enthusiasts.
Sayem is a freelancer based in the UK, covering tech & hardware. You can get in touch with him at @sayem.zone on Bluesky.
