NVIDIA RTX 3000 Graphics Card Shipment Gets Stolen During A Truck Delivery Run

NVIDIA RTX 3000 series graphics cards are already rare enough as they are, and yet, they're getting stolen right off of delivery trucks.

Graphics card maker EVGA announced on their official forum that a shipment of RTX 3000 graphics cards was stolen from a truck bound to Southern California from San Francisco, according to Hypebeast.

The company didn't provide a specific number for how many graphics cards were stolen, but they did point out that they're taking steps to ensure that these cards can't be sold or used by anyone because of legal repercussions.

As per the original post on the EVGA forum, it's been clarified that buying or receiving stolen goods is illegal under both state and federal law.

Anybody who tries to register the stolen NVIDIA graphics cards (or claim any warranties or upgrades on them) will be stopped. That's because as reported by Kotaku, every single card comes with a serial number which EVGA has already flagged.

If you try to register these cards, you're going to fail.

The robbery occurred on October 29, and EVGA said that the estimated value of each card ranged from $329 to as much as $1959.

While this doesn't explicitly identify which models of NVIDIA cards were taken, it could be safe to say that the ones that got stolen comprised the entire RTX 3000 product stack--from the RTX 3060 to the RTX 3090, reports VICE News.

In light of the robbery, the company hopes that anybody with information on the stolen cards will contact them by sending an email to stopRTX30theft@evga.com.

Why Are NVIDIA Graphics Cards Getting Stolen?

One good reason: they have become extremely valuable due to the current market situation.

The thieves probably thought that they could sell the NVIDIA cards at a premium, and they're not wrong. Due to the global semiconductor shortage and cryptocurrency mining boom, GPU prices skyrocketed because there's simply not enough to go around.

Team Green's graphics cards are among the most in-demand with street prices way beyond MSRP. For example, the RTX 3060 (which is technically the lowest-end card of the RTX 3000 series) currently sells between $500 to as much as $700, judging by current eBay pricing. As of this writing.

That card's original MSRP is only $329.

As for the RTX 3090, pricing has gotten even more ridiculous. The card's MSRP is already sky-high at $1499, but resellers are asking as much as $3,000 for a card on eBay and other online marketplaces.

EVGA Troubles

EVGA hasn't had a good run for the past few months, with this robbery being the latest of their recent troubles.

Back in September, two dozen RTX 3090s from the company died after they were used to play Amazon's new MMO "New World." It took a while before they identified the cause of the problem: the 3090s were poorly soldered.

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Written by RJ Pierce