People are apparently paying over $ 10,000 for scalped next-gen consoles

After a busy week of launches, the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S have so far been hard to find, with new inventory being purchased almost as soon as they drop. Some have blamed the stock shortages on robots buying consoles for scalpers, and while we can’t know how many purchases were made by robots, there are certainly plenty of next-gen consoles listed at high prices. on Ebay.

While it was inevitable that consoles would end up on Ebay with inflated prices, it looks like the resellers are doing a decent trade as well. A review of the PS5 listings sold throughout the day shows the consoles cost between $ 850 and $ 1,200 in most cases. The recommended retail price of the console is $ 500 for the disc edition or $ 400 for the digital-only console.

One of the most profitable recent announcements we found was a digital-only PS5 with its price pushed all the way up to $ 1,645, thanks to 34 bids made through Ebay’s auction system. Another luckier customer found the digital PS5 version for “only” $ 850.

The ads appear to have reached a staggering $ 14,493, which an Ebay user paid for a pre-order of the PlayStation 5 digital edition in September – ahead of the console release. Some listings still offer to pledge their pre-orders, without actually having a console in hand to sell.

The Xbox Series X and S saw slightly more reasonable resale prices. The sold listings show people buying new Xboxes for around $ 800 for the X Series, or nearly $ 450 for the S Series, with the official price hitting $ 500 for the X and $ 300 for the S, the lowest. expensive new generation consoles.

While Ebay’s unsold ads show people are still asking up to $ 10,000 for new consoles, the ads sold show that most people are not prepared to pay too much of $ 1000 for resold consoles. The fact that people are paying inflated prices for scalpers shows just how much demand there is for next-gen consoles.

It looks like Amazon doesn’t currently allow third-party sellers to put PS5s up for sale, which will likely reduce the kind of overpricing that takes place on Ebay. If you want to try and get a next-gen console without paying an inflated price, check out our PS5 buying guide or the Xbox Series X and S guide.