£10MILLION PROFIT FOR PS5 SCALPERS – EXPERT
While a PS5 normally costs between £360 and £450, depending on the model, its median resale price on sites like eBay is £650-750, according to US researcher Michael Driscoll.
Faced with an in-store shortage, many gamers pay full price, which only feeds the scalpers’ market further.
Driscoll estimates that around 52,000 copies of both the Sony PlayStation 5 and the Microsoft Xbox consoles have been resold in Britain on eBay and StockX for a total of £42million, generating £10million in profit.
That figure is likely to hugely underestimate the problem as it only takes into account the “grey market” and not the black market, “which is definitely larger”, said Driscoll, who is from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
The sudden surge in console scalping is being driven by much stronger demand than usual, with gamers having “extra money due to be not be able to travel” because of coronavirus restrictions, he added.
