A data analyst calculated how much profit is generated from the resales of the PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles on eBay. The total amounts to nearly $30 million.
What was calculated? While the next-gen consoles are currently sold out at all retailers, there are plenty of offers on eBay. Unfortunately, prices for the PS5 and Xbox Series X are soaring there.
The data engineer Michael Driscoll wrote a program that collected all next-gen consoles listed as “sold” on the US eBay site and analyzed the results.
The result characterizes the resale on eBay as an extremely lucrative business. Since the start of pre-orders, the “bots” have, according to Driscoll, managed to sell approximately
- 33,000 PS5 consoles
- 30,000 Xbox Series X and S
The profit figures amount to double-digit millions collectively.
$30 million in profit on eBay
This is the status for the Xbox Series X/S: For Microsoft’s consoles, the Series X is the more popular version and sold more than three times the amount of consoles on eBay compared to the weaker Series S. Driscoll’s analysis revealed the following for the new Xbox:
- Xbox Series X generated approximately $8,609,715 in profit on eBay
- Xbox Series S amounted to $1,481,654
So over $10 million in total. The consoles were sold on average for about 30% to 50% higher prices than typical retailers.
This is the status for the PS5: The PS5 was significantly more lucrative than the Xbox consoles. And no wonder: even Amazon crashes under the rush of buyers when the PS5 becomes available there.
On eBay, the profit figures look like this:
- The regular PS5 version generated a total of $14,742,432 in profit on eBay
- The digital edition of the PS5 was at “only” $4,294,061
Combined, that’s almost $20 million. The digital version only differs from the regular one by the absence of the BluRay drive. Nevertheless, it was sold much less on eBay.
The selling prices of PS5 consoles were at times 300% higher than typical retailers for the disc version and 200% higher than for the digital version.
The “dark figure” is even higher
This is the estimate of the data analyst: Since Driscoll only ran his analysis tool through eBay’s website, he estimates that the actual number of sold consoles is much higher. Accordingly, the profits that scalpers could achieve through resale are also much higher.
Because eBay’s fees are relatively high, Driscoll assumes that even more consoles were sold on platforms like FB Marketplace, Craigslist, or other forums. These were not included in the analysis. Driscoll estimates generously that the actual profit figure should be around two to five times higher, if not even more.
This is also interesting: The analysis also shows that the demand for consoles is significantly higher than for other new tech items.
Driscoll also analyzed the sales of new graphics cards and GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA on eBay. This included:
- The Zen 3 CPUs from AMD (5600X, 5800X, etc.)
- Big Navi GPUs from AMD (RX 6800 and 6800XT)
- RTX 30 Series from NVIDIA (RTX 3060, 3070, etc.)
The graphics cards of the “RTX 3000” series, which are also offered on eBay, turned out to be the most profitable with about $9 million profit for the resellers. However, they still lagged behind the coveted next-gen consoles.
What is the current situation regarding the consoles? The consoles are still sold out in Germany. Occasionally, individual retailers receive smaller quantities, but they are quickly sold out again.
However, there is still hope. For the PS5, you should keep an eye on certain retailers if you want to order a console in 2020.
