You may not believe it, but graphics cards prices are starting to improve and are actually at their lowest points for many months. This has started to bleed into the second hand market, with scalped and pre-owned cards going for several hundred dollars less than they would have a few months ago. If you're looking to buy a new GPU and have struggled recently, now is the best time since January 2021.
Graphics card prices have been ridiculous for a long time. The combination of the pandemic, silicon shortages, gamer excitement at new-gen cards, and cryptocurrency miners (scalpers played their part too, once the shortage hit) has meant that GPUs have sold for as much as 300% their MSRP over the past couple of years. Now though, the latest stats suggest they've come way down from their peak, with Nvidia cards now selling on average 157% of MSRP, and AMD cards 145% of MSRP.
That's still very expensive and probably still means it's worth waiting a bit longer to see if they start to approach retail pricing and if stock can improve where it's not a lottery whether you get a card at all, but it's a great sign that things might get better throughout the year.
The question now remains, whether these prices will be reflective of new-gen options released later this year, with AMD and Nvidia locking in price rises to future retail pricing, or whether they'll return to pre-pandemic levels.
There's always the chance that inflation will bite future pricing too, but the lack of cards can only be sustained for so long before substantial numbers of PC gamers just give up and go to consoles or streaming services.
