It was obvious to the gamers who tried to buy a GPU for a reasonable price. If you put some time into this endeavor, you were bound to see all those cards coming in to retailers immediately being bought, with a few appearing on secondary markets at higher price tags but being bought away very quickly there as well. This occurring in parallel with a huge bunch of "looking for GPUs A, B, C, D, offering $ridiculous_price in cash, will take any number of cards" offerings on Craigslist and similar platforms speaks a clear language: nobody is trying to secure various different GPUs despite high prices in basically unlimited numbers for GAMING! Nor do gamers buy up all those overpriced secondary market offerings within minutes of them being posted.
But: the stock market investors that are moving the really big bags of cash rarely have hours and days to spend trying to hunt down GPUs for their gaming rigs. So they wouldn't see these obvious hints.
I managed to get some GPUs at MSRP over that period and as I got something a bit faster over that period, I would sell to defray my upgrade cost.
I tried to restrict to US buyers to try to get it in the hands of someone who just wanted to play games.
They went to US addresses as my shipping restrictions and other exclusions required, but I unexpectedly got dinged for “International Fees” by eBay.
So I dug in as to why. When I checked the shipping address in Google Maps, they were warehouses. Googling again, known freight forwarders.
From what I can ascertain, one likely went to Qatar, and the other ended up in Uzbekistan. The accounts that bought them were quite old, not new, and had extremely high quantities of feedback. Based on the absolutely extreme auction end prices ($1540 for a 3070!), I wasn’t surprised in the end. The buyers were clearly extremely well organized and had exceptionally professional communication.
But: the stock market investors that are moving the really big bags of cash rarely have hours and days to spend trying to hunt down GPUs for their gaming rigs. So they wouldn't see these obvious hints.