Well, at least the shipping is "free"

JFC.

What gets my goat is that the big players don't even use consumer grade hardware. It's not fungible.

Pricing like this feels entirely reactive and ridiculous, like when people hoarded toilet paper during covid.

I can only imagine that some smaller labs / universities / businesses are buying up pallet loads of these things and driving the prices up for the average Joe. That plus the eBay tax.