re: what in gad's name has happened to gpu prices over the last two months???

The entire point is that it's not profitable to the casual miners. The people who bought up all these cards aren't the ones who have been dedicated to it for years. These same people will dump them just as quick as they bought them. Electricity cost plays the biggest role and it isn't cheap or free. When I ran just 6 cards, my electric bill was $150-$200 more a month than normal. People aren't going to mine when they're taking a loss at the end of the month. They're especially not going to take that loss with just the hope of Btc going back up. Gpu dumping has happened before and it's about to happen now.