WCCFTech reports that Micro Center is pushing very low trade-in offers for Nvidia's RTX 4090 through its new GPU trade-in program. A WCCFTech reader reports that they checked the trade-in value of their MSI RTX 4090 Gaming Trio through Micro Center's trade-in program and received an offer of just $700 — that's not even half the card's value, and the RTX 4090 still reigns as the fastest of the best graphics cards currently available.
Incidentally, the average sold price on eBay for RTX 4090 cards is also $1,789 for the past month. For the MSI RTX 4090 Gaming Trio, the lowest sold price was still $1,350. To call this a low-ball offer from Micro Center would be kind, at best.
GPU trade-in programs are notorious for providing bad resale value compared to selling the GPU yourself. However, Micro Center's offer is criminally bad. In a best-case scenario, Micro Center's offer comes out to 44% of the value of an RTX 4090 at MSRP. With today's higher prices — the least expensive, in-stock RTX 4090 costs $1,799, the same MSI model we're talking about here — that $700 offer only amounts to 39% of the card's going rate.
We aren't sure how Micro Center is calculating its values, but it makes its competitor's trade-in programs look fantastic by comparison. For instance, Newegg's GPU Trade-In program today provides an estimated $1,500.00 trade-in offer for RTX 4090 GPUs. You might not actually get that price, but certainly you'd get far more than $700.
If Micro Center wants to compete in the world of GPU trade-in programs, it needs to at least offer prices as good as Newegg. We don't expect GPU trade-in programs to offer the same price that you paid for your GPU when it was brand-new, but we do expect a GPU trade-in program to at least be competitive with common used market prices.
To say that the RTX 4090 used market is hot right now would be an understatement. If you check eBay, you'll discover that virtually all RTX 4090s are selling above the original MSRP, new or used. In fact, virtually all of the RTX 4090 listings are selling at prices similar to Newegg or Amazon listings for new cards.
Hopefully, anyone who had the money to pick up an RTX 4090 in the first place would also have the sense to not get suckered into Micro Center's "deal." Not that there's anything faster than an RTX 4090 available right now, though we suspect there's a good chance that RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 'Blackwell' GPUs could land by the end of the year.
