The 2020 holiday shopping season has been defined by how difficult it is to purchase consoles like the PS5 and GPUs like the GeForce RTX 3090, leading some people to use other, less legal methods of acquiring both products. Robots are some of the consoles being resold, but theft appears to be another source.

I stole about $ 340,000 from MSI’s GeForce RTX 3090 GPUs. to me Tom’s devices. This adds up to 40 containers of popular cards, based on translation of an in-house MSI document included in the tweet below.

The GeForce RTX 3090 sits at the higher end of the Nvidia streak at $ 1,499, and it often sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay, which seems motivated enough to steal it. What is less clear is how these cards were stolen. Tom’s devices He says MSI Communications cites video surveillance and inspections of each truck as the primary security for GPUs that ship out of warehouse. This led MSI to believe the company’s “insiders” were the thieves, but no information other than that document was presented in the tweet dated Friday 4 December.

On the PS5 side of things, the thefts in the UK included a way to look More dramatic and dangerous. In a maneuver times Indicates “extension”The thieves use cars, one in front of a delivery van and the other in the back, to slow the truck in the front and open its back while standing on the next hood. This method is said to require some kind of inside information about what is actually in a particular truck, however times He says it’s been used 27 times this year, as its frequency has picked up as holiday shipments start moving more and more expensive products. You can see an example of “rollover” in a video from Romania above.

In another potential theft, Amazon PS5 buyers received air fryers, cat litter, and other household items in place of the console. IGN A group of customers found a “PS5” box with a repackaged tape that differs from Amazon’s traditional black version of the Prime brand. Conversations with current Amazon employees indicated that it would be extremely difficult to smuggle PS5s out of an Amazon warehouse, but the consoles are likely outside of the delivery trucks. IGNA complete saga worth readingBut so far, customers have been affected They receive actual PS5sThe perpetrators are still unknown.

Having a PS5 or GeForce RTX card at this point requires dealing with higher prices than the selling prices of both products. Since you cannot easily buy one from the store, Real prices Not $ 499 for the PS5 and $ 1,499 for the GeForce RTX 3090, but its resale cost. We saw PS5 prices average $ 1,024 and GeForce RTX 3090 averaged $ 2,076 when we ran our most recent eBay survey. You can begin to see why both products have become targets of thieves.

If there is any lesson to be learned besides Do Not Steal, it is that sellers and manufacturers need to present ways to do so Pre-orders and sales are more fair. The pandemic has affected the amount of consoles and graphics cards that can be manufactured safely, but creating scarcity with limited restocking further exacerbates the problem. Until there is an easier way to secure a purchase, the resale and occasional theft that helps this still happen.