An engineer in the U.S. recounts being “stressed out for the two weeks” after someone bought their used Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card on eBay, then had the audacity to return it with the GPU and memory chips removed from the board. Piscian19 told fellow Redditors that a “pristine” used RTX 4090, sold on eBay, was almost immediately returned for the reason of “no video.” Thankfully, the story has a happy ending, as eBay eventually refunded the emotionally frazzled seller.
Piscian19’s spider senses were aroused by the eBay buyer’s profile – a “huge” entity with a storefront and California business address. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, so the RTX 4090 seller decided to make sure they were covered. “I took a ton of pictures, got mega insurance, tracking, etc,” noted Piscian19.
The Redditor and eBayer’s hunch was correct, as the buyer almost immediately started an eBay return process, asking for a refund due to the received graphics card being stone dead.
Upon receiving the return, Piscian19 noted that damage was clearly evident on the card’s mounting bracket (these are usually steel) and messy wiring issues. Remember, the seller had pictured everything ahead of postage, and the “pristine… barely used” RTX 4090 certainly was now only a shadow of its former self.
The stressed-out engineer then decided it was time to contact eBay and politely mention legal action. However, while they were waiting for the wheels of the complaint process to turn, Piscian19 decided to tear down the card to get an understanding of the new issues before RMAing the hardware. This is when it was discovered that the cheeky buyer had desoldered the GPU and VRAM chips before returning the RTX 4090…
The best graphics cards are still difficult to obtain at reasonable prices, so the level of second-hand skulduggery seems to be amplified. However, there seems to be new hope in the market with more mid- to high-end cards trickling through to retail and both AMD and Nvidia beginning to address the mainstream mass-market ‘060 graphics card segment now, with their RTX 5060/Ti and RX 5060 XT models.
If you are dabbling in the used GPU market, take a leaf from Piscian19’s book on the seller side. Photodocument as much of the sale and postage process as seems adequate to cover all eventualities. Used GPU buyers should also be diligent, as both sides of the equation have their swindlers.
