Newegg launches trade-in program for oldish graphics cards

Newegg will now take your old GPU off your hands in exchange for a trade-in credit on a new one. The Newegg Trade-In Program, which soft-launched earlier this month but was officially announced today, gives you a modest bit of cash back on your new GPU and Newegg a steady stream of cards to refurbish and resell.

Estimated trade-in values range from $30 for a 4GB AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT all the way up to $561 for an Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti 24GB. You check your trade-in value by clicking the big ol’ “Check Your Trade-In Value” button on the product page for a GPU and selecting your card from a drop-down menu. Despite the “GeForce GTX” card in the photo above, Newegg won’t take cards older than the AMD RX 5000 series (launched in July 2019) or the Nvidia RTX 20 series, from fall 2018. Bad news for me and my apparently worthless GTX 1070!

You don’t get the trade-in credit right away. Instead, after you buy your new GPU, Newegg sends you a prepaid label, and then you have 14 days to return the old one for the quoted value. Once they inspect the card, they’ll apply the credit as a refund to your original form of payment, although the terms and conditions page says that the company reserves the right to pay via Newegg gift card instead. We’ve reached out for clarification.

Newegg’s press release touts the program as a way to reduce electronic waste and avoid the hassle of selling your old GPU. As with basically all trade-in programs, you could get more money elsewhere but at the cost of convenience. Eric Wein, Newegg’s global head of public relations, told The Verge via email that Newegg refurbishes the GPUs it receives and resells them with a 30-day warranty. You can see Newegg’s first-party refurbished cards here.