Or people trying to capitalize on the GPU shortages. Ebay users are digging GPUs out of trash cans and selling them.

I bet if you put "ultra rare" in you description, you could justify another $50 on your asking price.

 

You're missing an important point - the 3850's that command high prices are AGP cards, as 3850 was one of the latest and highest performing AGP cards ever released as AGP was on it's last leg. PCI-E versions are worthless.
So if someone has an old rig and wants to spruce it up some, or maybe retro builders, those are the folks paying stupid money for a AGP cards.
EDIT: You may also have folks that need old cards for industrial applications, where a piece of valuable software is tied to a PC, and replacing the PC is not an option as that would probably cost thousands of bucks in order to configure the software anew. For example, lots of factories still run Windows XP because that's what runs their machinery. If one of their AGP cards dies, they will pay what seems to be crazy money to bring i back online, as the alternative is much more expensive.

 

Agreed, 3850 and 4670 AGP were the last 2 high performance AGP cards, hence they still command top dollar and will only get more scarce for retro builds.

The 3850 pcie is much more common and probably what you have, they're worth $15-30 depending on condition. If you want to make a few bucks you should probably still sell now though, since people are willing to buy these at the moment just to have a functional card for video out. Even a month ago you would've had trouble getting $15 for one of these.

 

Cards usually cost that amount because of people trying to capitalize on other people liking to collect old hardware. On a performance to price standard, Intel's HD530 iGPU is about twice as fast.

Old GPUs rarely go for less than $50 because of shipping costs; People barely break even, so they want their time worth for something.

I wouldn't pay for anything except shipping for that card. Now, if it were something truly special like a 3870x2 or a 9800GX2, then we'd be talkin.

 

I have 4 3870x2's sitting in a bin in my garage. Were you being funny or are they actually rare?

 

Like the others have said. AGP > PCI. Evergreen (5xxx) is probably the best range you could find deals from since it was the real kickstart to GPU mining.

 

I've got an AGPx8 Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro 512MB I'm sitting on, 4x1GB RAM in a S478 Pentium 4 rig. Not using it, but don't really want to sell in case the nostalgia bug hits.
I fire it up every now and then when I need a 32-bit OS or native COM-port. That old school, loud HDD starts clicking away and I watch the HDD activity indicator light on the front of the PC, the tiny (but today's standards) fans on the old Radeon screeming - brings back memories of the days when your could have either performance or silence, but never both.
Like the baby boomers driving prices of 60's muscle cars because those are the cars they always wanted or had in high school, millenials are now starting to drive up prices of old PC hardware. Just look at how much Linus paid to re-create his first rig:

 

I think my last AGP card was an x1650 Pro. Thing carried me till I got a 9800 GT.

 

Surprisingly these older gpus do sell fairly quick on ebay still. I recently had a 3870x2 in my watch list for around $100 it sold within a week. Post your old unneeded gpu's on ebay there still is people collecting them.

 

Hmm.. maybe I should sell my OEM Foxconn 9800GX2 then.. it's still in perfect working order from an old CAD workstation and got me through Crisis and CoD4 just fine back in the day paired with a heavily overclocked Q6600.

I do also own a AGP HIS HD4670 that I will never sell. It's far too nostalgic for that. It's currently in a Athlon XP-M 2800+ rig with a healthy overclock for those retro Win98/DOS games.

 

Man, I remember I had a 1600+ that I pencil modded into the xp-m to unlock the multiplier . Wish I kept it.
I do have a limited edition 8800gt reference that has a holographic "The way it's meant to be played" on the shroud. It's the only card I really consider "rare". 9800gx2 was a beast . I'd love to own one too.