> Nvidia might sell a consumer GPU which is immediately resold on the retail market at 100% markup.
The same might be said of event ticket resellers making a big markup.
But the reality is that, in the case of event tickets at least, it's very common for the original sellers and the resellers either to be secretly the same party, or at least have some kind of profit sharing agreement.
It's simply that the original seller doesn't want to be seen to be price gouging, so doesn't want to put the list price of an item up, but still wants to gain. That's frequently done by it being very expensive to become an 'approved seller' or similar.
Agreed. I actually don't have a problem with ticket resellers for the very reason that if there is an active resale market the tickets were too cheap to begin with (or more likely, as you note, were never really available at those prices anyway as the promoters are selling at 2x face through the back door).
If someone is willing to pay 2x MSRP for a GPU then the MSRP is wrong (or rather, it's just a "suggestion" as the S indicates). My only point is that up until recently, there was not a long-term secondary market for GPUs. That is a new phenomenon that has been driven by crypto (as opposed to a big reduction in supply or huge increase in PC gamers).
The same might be said of event ticket resellers making a big markup.
But the reality is that, in the case of event tickets at least, it's very common for the original sellers and the resellers either to be secretly the same party, or at least have some kind of profit sharing agreement.
It's simply that the original seller doesn't want to be seen to be price gouging, so doesn't want to put the list price of an item up, but still wants to gain. That's frequently done by it being very expensive to become an 'approved seller' or similar.