Want a Steam Deck right now? You won’t with these ridiculous eBay prices…

techradar.com:

Steam Decks are now selling on eBay from scalpers who got in quick with a pre-order and already have their device, promising a shortcut to the front of the very long queue for Valve’s handheld gaming PC – but at a predictably eye-watering cost.

PC Mag has been trawling eBay and found Steam Deck listings promising that the device is ‘in hand’ (as opposed to sellers who are flogging their spot in the pre-order queue), but some of those scalpers are charging $1,600 or $1,700 over in the US (for the top-end model, or even the 256GB version in some cases).

The tech site observes that ‘buy it now’ pricing can be as high as $2,500 or even more, though bidding is pitched more around the $1,300 to $1,600 mark. Whatever the case, these are sky-high demands compared to the actual retail price of the Steam Deck which starts from $399 / £349 for the base model (the high-end version of the handheld is $649 / £569).

Looking at eBay now, we can see a couple of Steam Decks pitched at $1,800 in the US, and in the UK, there’s a flagship model with a ‘buy it now’ price of £2,000, and one listed at £3,700 (eek – and don’t forget the £15.99 for shipping, as no, you don’t even get free postage for stumping up that kind of cash). For a base model, there’s a listing that asks for £850 (which is a little more reasonable, dare we use the word – at least relative to that high-end listing).

There are still scalpers who are selling their place in the queue, such as a ‘confirmed pre-order for Q2’, which is basically a promise to ship the handheld as soon as it’s sent to the seller (complete with a scheduled date). Obviously, anyone who’s tempted to go this route needs to be even more cautious, and sometimes the prices aren’t all that different to ‘in