I don't have a citation for how massive the used market is, but I can tell you without a doubt that people in my circles buy used cards, and that I commonly heard it as advice to save a buck.

My most recent card purchase was used. I bought a used GTX 1070 for $230 in 2019, when the 2000-series was new. I've been happy with the price and performance; it hasn't died or anything.

> Aside from the recent drought of GPUs and pricing madness, you could buy low-end current-gen cards that could outperform higher-end previous-gen parts.

This wasn't true at the time. The high-end parts just have many multiples of the compute units of the low end cards. Nvidia 3xxx isn't 100% faster than 2xxx or 1xxx on a per-unit basis, and the x080 cards have several times the compute of the x030 or 50 parts.

Another relevant concern is GPU RAM; the lower end parts just have less RAM. Game performance completely falls over if more RAM is needed than the card has. Very large displays need a ton of GPU RAM.

Used graphics card were/are a big market (even though new cards depeciate massively when used). Usually crypto cards still last a decent amount of time (and might even have been thrashed while water cooled to keep them healthy). The price of them make up for the fact they have been ran constantly. And the price makes up for the fact of being outdated in-terms of performance. They are great for budget PC's. Many people still buy GTX 970's etc.

The used market is huge. Even before the shortage, newer used GPUs were selling for 75% or more of their new price, from my memory.

big, computer parts in general have a good second hand market