While I respect those who are commenting about getting MSRP or not buying and that up until yesterday I was one of those, it dawned on me that it is highly likely we will never see MSRP prices for these cards and that the current mark-ups are here to stay. I'll explain my reasoning below, but the main point i'd like to make is that if you were like me and playing the waiting game because cards were £50-£100 more than your personal limit ( either morally or financially ) then I'm afraid you'll not going to be getting a card for at least 3-6 months maybe longer, maybe not even this generation, with the one exception of being lucky and bagging a FE or finding a store that isn't marking up and beating the bots. Though honestly if you were going to get lucky, wouldn't that have happened already?
Please note i'm not telling anyone to buy at inflated prices, just a word of caution that I realized waiting another month or two or more for the sake of saving £50-£100 was just no longer worth it as i'd easily get back that value in use of the card for that period. For other people that point will be at different prices and this really only applies to 3060ti as other cards are even more inflated!
For example, yesterday I begrudgingly purchased the Zotac 3060ti for £500, way over what my limit was when these cards were first released, but that limit was from two months back. While you can find some stores selling at £50-£100 cheaper than ocuk, I actually tried ordering two at 5am this morning when they popped up and was still beaten to them by other people or bots. Sure if i'd got them i would have been unhappy paying the price for the Zotac, but as I didn't and have never even got close to buying any card in the last 3 months it just seems like i'm wasting more of my time, which can easily add up to be worth more than the premium I paid here ( not that i'm happy about the premium ).
This morning I also had a look at a famous auction site and to my surprise i'm finding average price for a 3060ti is about £650!. There are some items for less but they have days left of bidding on them and of course there were a whole bunch of photo's being sold too! I didn't watch anything specific so no idea if they are actually 'sold' at those prices, but point is for 3060's at least second hand market is still way more than the prices here and shows just how high the price can go.
The problem is we are in a perfect storm we have so many new consumer electronics coming out at the same time, in a year where global manufacturing and shipments have taken a hammering due to pandemic. I keep reading about companies complaining that a container of goods used to cost £1700 and now costs £10,000. In the UK we've of course had Brexit and that has led to all sorts of problems, increased costs, delays etc and since they never bothered to sort it out before the problems I don't see them sorting it out too quickly now. Not to mention the mining boom and other demands on supply. Then there is actual demand, driven in gpu market i'd say be lacklusture 2000 series and people holding onto old cards for longer, mixed in with some people having more disposable income as they haven't gone on holiday and all the money saved not going out over the last year.
This in my mind means extremely high demand, coupled with greater amount of disposable income, yet with less stock being manufactured and shipped. Sadly this will only be addressed once supply increases or demand drops and its here that I've come to realized we are in for many more months of this as there is no signs of it changing. At this point i'd even argue that its likely not going to happen before the end of the year at least in the UK as there are too many factors to resolve quickly. Sure we might all be vaccinated come late summer, but that will only be the start of the process back to normality it will take months to actually happen.
I mean prices seem to go up quickly in high demand/low supply situations, but i get the feeling they wont drop back anywhere near as quick, not unless supply grows massively and manufactures/distributors/shops need to clear there warehouses.
So sure if you want or need to hold on to a MSRP or lower limit go ahead, you might get lucky, but to do so you'll have to invest a large amount of your time. I just realized my time is worth more than the premium we are currently seeing and that I suspect we will not see any changes back to normality for many months if at all.
I will add whilst i'm impressed with how well ocuk apparently managed to distribute these cards to genuine customers due to holding onto stock, it has left a sour taste in my mouth that they seem to have added a premium on top of the price they would have paid to get them as they have had many 100's or 1000's of cards for weeks even a month. They are of course free to do what they want but its definitely lowered my opinion.