> Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

Ah, so you could have bought one, but you judged the available suppliers to be too risky.

Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take.

Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you wanted, but they were pretty continuously available during COVID on Aliexpress. You did have to pay 3-5x normal price, but you could do it. I really needed one after one at home died, and paid the 3x markup, and it was annoying but fine. Not sure if Aliexpress is equally as available in the UK as it is here in the US, though.

> Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take.

You are being pedantic. I find this type of discussion very tiresome. I've explained why in other forks of this thread. Quite honestly it pisses me off.

> Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you wanted, but they were pretty continuously available during COVID on Aliexpress. You did have to pay 3-5x normal price, but you could do it. I really needed one after one at home died, and paid the 3x markup, and it was annoying but fine. Not sure if Aliexpress is equally as available in the UK as it is here in the US, though.

Not in the UK. Someone was running a site with all the places that you could buy from. I was checking most days. Stock was extremely limited other than a few models.