I never thought I'd camp out for anything in my life, but I drove past Best Buy in the afternoon after they announced a 3000-series drop that day, and I saw that there was still a relatively short line at around 6-7pm. I knew they had a decent amount of 3080s in a previous drop, but because they're the most sought out card this generation, they're the first to go. Camping out was actually more bearable than I thought, but that's mostly because I got along really well with 3 guys in line next to me, so I had some company to help kill the time.

Before they actually started out handing out tickets in the morning, there was some slight worry because the 3080 was the only card I wanted, and they did not let people know how many of each card was available, so I was basing everything from the previous drops. I was 18th in line, and 15 of the guys ahead of me all got the 3080 (store ended up having 52 3080s). I think the most common cards to go after were the 3060 ti and 3070, and the 3090 is last to go just because it's so expensive with significant diminishing returns (about only 15-20% better performance for most things but for over 200% the price of a 3080).

It seemed like most of the people that I talked to were just trying to get the cards at MSRP and not trying to flip them (college town so it was mostly students with a few older guys like me). Crazy that we still have to resort to this about a year after launch, but it felt worth it in my case, because now I can sell my trusty 1080 ti that has held me down for the last 4 years, and they are still selling for ridiculous prices (around $650 on eBay, and I got the card for $750 in 2017). It truly remains one of the best GPUs ever released (performance and value), and now I just have to decide on a method to sell it when the market is still hot while avoiding scammers.