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The worst part is basically all the major vendors have drastically reduced their return policies or eliminated them entirely.

Really? Do you have a source for this? This would be bad for actual gamers

My source is Frys having giant signs saying final sale on all of their GPUs.

I've read that GPUs are not designed to be run 24/7 e.g. bitcoin mining.

They’re not designed to run 24/7 but they don’t have an issue with it. The GPU and the card itself have no issues running continuously.

The biggest problems come from the fans running continuously and getting worn down, and the coolers are by far the easiest part to replace.

Is it really that hard to find them? I'm not that familiar with the current lineup of cards (still rocking a GTX 770 myself), but Amazon seems to have several 1050-1080 model cards in stock from various vendors. The prices do look a bit inflated, though.

They’re hard to find for a reasonable price. The GTX 1070 had a launch price of $380. The cheapest one currently listed on PCPartPicker is about $550.

On the plus side, I was able to sell an incredibly old ATI video card for $50 from a computer my friend was bringing to the dumpster.