A hot tater: Scalpers are one of several reasons why the price and availability of graphics cards are comparable to gold correct now, but several retailers are introducing measures to endeavour and adjourn the practice of reselling.

A Micro Eye in Dallas made headlines before this calendar month later on someone captured chaotic scenes of customers rushing to catch restocked Nvidia cards. The incident illustrated the unprecedented demand and desperation for products we're experiencing correct now, which has resulted in scalpers selling GPUs on eBay for 2 to iv times their MSRP.

Many retailers are attempting to stop resellers past implementing restrictions. Reddit user cubiclewarrior50 (via Kotaku) took a photo of a discover at their local Micro Center showing the graphics menu-buying rules.

"In gild to assure that more than customers have the opportunity to purchase video cards, Micro Center is restricting video card sales to 1 per customer every thirty days," the sign reads.

Image credit: cubiclewarrior50

In order to enforce this policy, purchases must exist completed using a driver'due south license or government-issued ID. Several commentators say their local stores take the aforementioned or similar rules in place.

There are ways to circumvent such restrictions, of course, including getting friends/family members to buy extra cards for resale, but it does make the whole process of majority buying and reselling more than hard.

In the UK, members of parliament proposed a beak that would "prohibit the automated purchase and resale of games consoles and computer components; and for continued purposes," though it may not lead to any solid action.

In that location has been some recent skilful news for gamers looking to upgrade their PCs. ASRock says card prices are falling as a upshot of Cathay'due south crackdown on cryptomining, which has seen less demand for GPUs in the country. That's encouraging, seeing every bit 700,000 graphics cards that shipped in Q1 ended up in the hands of miners.

Our monthly await at GPU availability and pricing shows the average eBay selling price of Ampere/RDNA 2 cards fell -8% from May to June, while the Nvidia RTX 2000-serial was down -fourteen% during the same period.