I live in a third world country. What's funny is we have a lot of PlayStations and powerful video cards and top-level processors available. We just don't have any money to buy them. Maybe I should set up a mail-order business to serve Western hardware enthusiasts.

While I can't judge how good your plan is, FWIW I've often regretted saying 'maybe' when later I realized it would've worked, or at least been worth trying. But then it was no longer a good idea...

Third world countries usually have very heavy import and sales taxes as the corrupt elites prefer to tax consumption than income, wealth or inheritance. In Brazil, for example, all tech costs for the consumer in dollars at least twice what it costs for the American consumer due to 60% import tax plus some variable 18 to 30% sales tax (similar but not the same as a VAT). Factor in freight and the fact those items are in practice luxury goods with the importer expecting high margins and the scenario is complete for absurd price increases

How much does an RTX 3080 Ti 12GB cost in your country?

Not the OP, but in India, the lowest priced one I could find was from ASUS, which costs around $2600. I don't think the vanilla RTX 3080Ti is available here yet. The most expensive one was from MSI which costs around $3200. Whereas PS5 (official price i.e. without considering the shortages) costs $675.

What currency is that in?

I converted the Indian Rupee to USD while writing that comment. So the prices mentioned in my comment are in USD.

I suppose OP is specifying USD. Currency in India would be INR for India.

Apologies for the late response. I was joking actually, we really do have a major surplus of hardware, but the prices we pay are insane, and have always been so. I built my PC back in 2015 and paid about two times more what I would have paid if I lived in the US.

I ordered a lot of stuff from the US throughout the years. It takes at least a month to get here, and shipping costs from $50 (for the smallest items like Kindles), to $150-200.

So it's not really practical.

Looking at retail:

— the cheapest 3080 Ti 12GB I see is around $2500, the most expensive one is $3200 (there are 10 models in total).

— PS5: from $1000 to $1350

— 3080: from $2000 and up.

If you have the right connections you can get them individually with bulk prices, but it's not easy to do because of pervasive corruption.

You missed the boat on the PS5, unfortunately. They're selling for A$750 on the secondary market now - same as what they cost in regular stores.

(Unless Australia also has an oversupply...)

That’s a clever business idea. Governments will usually demand you register a company in order to be able to legally export them.

>Governments will usually demand you register a company in order to be able to legally export them.

Nah. As long as you don't sell many, you can get away with just marking as gift and putting a value of 20 USD on the package.

... and when it gets lost you are unable to claim the insurance amount

Honestly, I wouldn't be concerned about that. Insurance is nothing more than free revenue for the carrier.

I'd send close to 500 packages a month to destinations all over the world, and tracked items almost never go missing.

For those that do go missing, it's always to a few hotspots that I would simply avoid if selling an item this valuable (pretty much just Brazil and South Africa now; Russia and Italy are much better than they used to be).

Send to China (Beijing)? Many of my packages have gone lost or got opened and stuff taken out. And yes, the value on the CN23 form is conclusive for the insurance amount you can claim on the CN24 form.

Require signing for packages and its a solved issue.

I'm sure customs officers around the world have never seen this trick before...

Oh, I'm sure they see it every single day, but nobody cares. They're actually less likely to hassle you if you write a low value on the package - can literally shave a week+ off of delivery times.

Just fyi, doing so is actually tax fraud and very much illegal. Yes the chances of getting caught are incredibly small, but if you're doing this commercially then if caught not only you will have to pay ALL of the fees back + penalty, do it for long enough and there will be criminal charges involved.

So yes , "nobody cares" as long as you don't get caught.

Well... in my case low value on my package added a week to my delivery precisely because after seeing this trick once too many the customs are now checking everything. I had to mail the sender (big US based company) to send me the correct invoice after the customs sent me the one they received.

I think you generalize too much... do you know how every customs office work?

Aaaaand this is why now even "$20 gifts" have to pay import taxes at the EU entry customs.

What do you mean ? Here in Hong Kong (hardly the west), an RTX 3080 is around 1000 USD, how much is it where you are ?

New RTX 3080 sell on US eBay for US$1500-1600. RTX 3080 Ti for $2000. <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index>

How much does a PS5 or 3080 go for in your neck of the globe?

Oops, sorry. See here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29148838

Well, I'd be a customer.

If you look at sales chart, Sony is selling as many PS5 as they sold PS4 during the same launch period. It's just that demand is higher; the fact that they are able to make as much during a chip shortage says a lot of their supply chain expertise (same could be said of MS, Nintendo, Samsung, LG, Apple etc.).

Expertise being a euphemism for relationships to skip the queue.

It's true, it's heavily unfair that the tech giants have better access to manufacturing, etc. And while I 100% agree with @scott_w's sibling comment, this not even the only factor.

How many people do you think they have dedicated only to supply chain management ? This is such a wide domain, we don't see it all from here: they have engineers dedicated to sourcing, to manufacturing, testing, evaluating new sources; people in charge of a given supplier; people in charge of the various type of transport, of recycling, etc. All this is in-house expertise, and definitely gives them an edge.

If you look at most big auto manufacturers; they too are suffering from shortages. So it seems tech giants must be doing something better.

Relationships, knowledge and ability to long-term bulk-buy in order to skip the queue. Suppliers want to work with customers who they know will be large customers in 5 years time and not just some random bloke who rocks up and tries to buy 30 chips on a Tuesday.

It really varies with markets. In UK it's pretty hard(although over the last year I've managed to help several of my friends buy one, it's just a matter of setting up discord notifications), in Poland they are easily available, you can just walk into a store and buy one no problem. Or several places have stock available for delivery. No big deal.

For instance https://m.euro.com.pl/konsole-playstation-5/sony-playstation...

It says "up to 7 days delivery" but when I ordered one few weeks ago it arrived next day anyway.

Yes, its available at x2 MSRP

No? If you're talking about the link I posted - 3300pln is about £600, and it includes two games and a controller. So MSRP of the console itself at £449 + 2x games at £50 + 1x controller at £50 = £600.

Plenty of people in this thread, including your parent post, have found it at around MSRP.

Parent linked >$800 console

Why would you reply to this comment instead of the one where I broke down the price into core components showing that no, it's not over MSRP at all??????

How about I buy this console and you will take 2 games and the pad from me for $350 then?

Do they not have bundles where you live? I just don't understand why you're so offended by the concept. The deal I posted is at MSRP, if the things bundled with the console are worth 0 to you then that's on you I'm afraid.

Would you like a brand new RTX 3090 at MSRP? Ill sell you one right now $1,499 no questions asked. Oh by the way, it comes bundled with 3 PS3 Madden games and a banana, $4500 in total.

If those Madden games and a banana are worth $3000 then of course, yes, but your comparison makes zero sense because those items aren't worth that much, neither in retail nor in resale. For some crazy reason you are assigning value of zero to the controller and those two bundled games, which is just simply and logically not true - at MSRP, at retail prices, the value of all items adds up to the price being asked. Again, you are behaving as if you've never seen a bundle before.

In your example, it's like if you were selling an RTX3900 bundled with a PS5 for $2000 - is that over MSRP, or not? What a riddle!

My guess is that they're confusing the MSRP in their country (probably United States, apparently $499) with the MSRP in Poland (apparently about US $832).

Here in Australia we put our names on a waiting list at one of the big name retailers, just by walking into the store. About a week later we got a call that there was stock.

So while the stock doesn't hang around, it seems like it is now at least possible to get one without too much fuss.

EB Games Australia have just announced that people on the pre-order list for PS5 won't receive their consoles until some time in 2022. You massively underestimate the high demand/low supply for this console.

https://press-start.com.au/news/playstation/2021/11/08/eb-ga...

Then I can only recommend walking into JB Hi-Fi in the Carousel shopping centre in Cannington and asking to go on their list.

Worked for us, we really weren't expecting it. We were even given a choice of which version of the console we wanted, at the point they got the delivery in.

(Maybe things have got worse in the last month? Maybe WA is special...)