It seems that the coin miners have moved away from the Graphics cards based on AMD's GCN architectures to something else. There are so many second hand cards available in the wild, that are looking for a new home. If you go on eBay and searched for the terms "R9 290", you'll be presented with search results for a massive number of cheap R9 290/290X graphics cards going for dirt cheap. You could easily have a 290 for $290.
Unfortunately, if I'm ordering from Japan, I'll have to pay for shipping as well as for duty. For a $300 card, it would be about $60, bringing the total up to $360. And that's without warranty too. That's reaching almost the price of a reference model here in Japan.
There has also been a non-reference model from a local brand (the same brand of my old HD5770 from 4 years ago) for around $360, but it is no better than the reference model. You might think that's OK for the price. But that's not. The reference model at least exhausts all the hot air out of the case through its exhaust vents. This card doesn't. It dumps all the heat back into the case and the case fans will have to do overtime to keep the video cards as well as all the components inside the case reasonably cool. So I should not think about buying this card to begin with.
