On Sat, 2/14/2026 12:38 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
On Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:30:41 -0500, Paul wrote:
Monitor stocks are depleted where I am. At one computer store,
virtually all the monitors are "Special Order", which means, upon
receipt, you cannot return them.
That doesn?t make any sense to me. Surely if stocks are low, they
would be happy to take returns, to sell to a customer who would
appreciate them more.
Based on a check today, for an item I was tracking, there
seems to be some amount of hoarding going on. Virtually all
the stores in the chain, had that particular hard drive bought
up, and at the price charged for the drive, there was no reason
at all for anyone to buy them.
I would then expect to find "Model xxx hard drive" on ebay.ca
for some ridiculous price, with a little extra profit for
the scalper. The size of the drive, is not attractive for AI datacenters,
it's a smaller drive for a home user. It's just weird that all
the stores were cleaned out. Only two of the drives remain.
Which is also weird :-/
DRAM at the store is marked as "zero inventory" as well. But I
suspect, if I drove to the store and bought a motherboard
and a CPU and I said to the clerk "now, what DDR5 can I install
in this new build?", like magic he would reach under the counter
and pull out 2x8GB DDR5. I think there is still DRAM, except
they're not exposing it on the web site so scalpers cannot
mechanically clean it out.
If the store resorts to "drop shipping everything", then...
it isn't really a store any more.
I'm just waiting for that store to go bankrupt. This is
what the AI era should lead to, is no more retailing possible
and a sector just wiped out. Even Newegg.ca is looking
pretty sad right now, in terms of choices for materials. One
search I did there, resulted in six items on the web page,
which is roughly the same result as my local computer
store web site gives for the same search.
I know that some items are plentiful. I have always been able
to get motherboards and CPUs. I used to be able to say the word
"RAM" too in such an example, but not any more. In the store, the
counter area with motherboards and CPUs was always jam packed full.
But other areas (want a USB stick?), the wall of hooks is empty,
and in the case of USB sticks, that was not hoarding, it's basically
no stick was available starting about mid year last year.
The monitor section is just demonstrator models, no boxed stock
waiting to go. And the web site, instead of listing all those
as "open box", instead lists all monitors as "Special Order", and
usually with "Special Order" items, there are fewer options
like the return options. Because they're just drop-shipped
from somewhere else.
Even the Staples I checked, was thin. I was trying to see if
they had any 4K 32" monitors. Well, it's just an aisle of HD
monitors 1920x1080. Usually in January, I check for bargains
there, as they usually have some B-grade monitors they bring
in on purpose for people like me. But there was nothing
of note this year. If I needed some sort of monitor, I could
have one, but there wasn't an excess of boxed units under
the shelf.
Summary: There are just two possibilities at retail
1) Scalping hoarders buy up all the stock (have to hide the DDR5).
2) Supply side is not working, nothing coming in.
You can still get a motherboard and a CPU, but nothing
else to finish the built :-) There's no reason for an NVMe
or a HDD or a monitor (boxed/new) to be just sitting there.
Hoarded or unavailable.
And the pricing of unrelated items has gone up. Presumably
as the store approaches bankruptcy. They've already reduced
the staff as much as they can. A minimum staff is needed
just to prevent shoplifting.
Paul
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