Raspberry Pi 5 Hit With Scalper Pricing, Leading German On Spontaneous UK Trip

Over the past few years, many industries have struggled with production lines, shortages and scalping most notably in our case, graphics cards, which saw some obscene price increases during the 30 series and in the used market. Another area in the tech market that was quite heavily affected was Raspberry Pi, the mini PC which is very popular for both consumers and businesses for its low power, small footprint and high versatility for a large variety of tasks. The last generation Raspberry Pi 4 was very heavily affected by chip shortages and scalping which has unfortunately begun to affect the recently released Raspberry Pi 5.

Raspberry Pi 5 Scalper Pricing

The Pi 5 was officially released for sale at the start of this week on October 23rd following its original announcement in September. Many fans are of course eager to get their hands on this new version of the Pi but unfortunately scalping has once again taken hold of this mini PC as noted by TomsHardware. The Pi 5 has an MSRP of $60 for its 4GB version and $80 for its 8GB variant which is priced around the same in the UK based on listings at thepihut.com.

TomsHardware shared some pricing they discovered from unofficial resellers which saw the prices of the 4GB variant as high as $105 and the 8GB variant as high as $188. Having a look myself at eBay listings in the UK, I found one listing for the 4GB model priced at £67.48 Buy it Now and two listings for the 8GB model where bidding sat at £85.00 and £119.60. All three of these were above the MSRP, however, the more expensive 8GB model came with the 27W Power Supply and the Fan Case, though all of that adds up to £100.80 at ThePiHut.

Judging by the bidding, it seems people are willing to pay more to get hold of one of these without the Pre-Order wait. The PiHut stated that any orders that were made after 9/28/2023 20:00 BST won’t be shipped until early 2024 and some people are happy to pay the scalper premium to get it a lot earlier than that and some are even willing to cross the English Channel to grab a Raspberry Pi 5.

German Gets Up at 4AM To Grab a Pi 5 From UK Store

Again shared by TomsHardware, German enthusiast @sad_electronics shared that they woke up at 4AM to take a train from Germany to the UK just to grab themselves a Raspberry Pi 5. They shared a photo on Twitter of the Raspberry Pi store in Cambridge alongside the brand-new Pi 5 8GB. I don’t know whether the Pi was the only reason for their visit to Cambridge, but I respect the dedication.