They are selling on EBay for over $20k, used.
Computers depreciate because they are obviously being supplanted by newer better models—until they become vintage and then move into collectibles.
Doing this particular one is definitely expecting the market squeeze to continue. "Worst case" is back to more "normal" depreciation. Where I'd expect to only be able to recoup more like 18k. But... if you look at GPU prices the last 3 years... it's not a crazy assumption that it won't drop that fast.
iPhone example since those are easiest to find in quantity: new iPhone 16 Pro Max for $1200, Gazelle would want $866 for "execllent" condition. Lost ~28% for one-model-back. iPhone 15 Pro Max, though: excellent priced at $667 here, only down another 23%, and gives you basically half-priced-upgrade if you can sell it for that and roll into the newest.
So to have never-more-than-one-model-old rough estimate at today's value-holding you'd be out $3600 for three new phones, with getting 1732 of that back, or 1868 for it (with a $334-per-year incremental cost of upgrade).
For never-more-than-two-models-back you'd be out $2400, getting back $866, for net $1534 spend, with a $167 incremental per-year upgrade cost once you buy the first one. Pretty good if you keep the phone in excellent condition and are happy to budget a bit over $10/month to be on a every-two-year upgrade train.
Well, you'd also eat the tax...
https://buy.gazelle.com/products/iphone-16-pro-max-256gb-unl...
https://buy.gazelle.com/products/iphone-15-pro-max-256gb-unl...
I would absolutely not count on that, if and when it drops it will drop hard.
We aren't exactly in "standard" times and haven't been for quite a while. Even five year old graphics cards are worth more today than they were just a year ago. Things will obviously depreciate at some point, but you gotta throw your existing notions of how quickly and how much hardware will depreciate out the window. There's just been too much money dumped into AI for a "well I guess this won't ever pan out, let's dump all this hardware to recoup our costs" moment to happen and tank the price of everything suddenly IMO.
And that's not even getting into the other geopolitical stuff going on right now. Strange times.
If you are able to tie up $25k for a few years just for shiggles, you clearly are able to make do fine without that money and if lost it would be at worst annoying, not catastrophic.
