Think 100 cards but only 1 buyer as a ratio. Profit for ebay sellers will be on "handling", or inflated shipping costs.
eg shipping and handling.
If NVIDIA is leasing, then you can't get use those cards as collateral. You can't also write off depreciation. Part of what we're discussing is that terms of credit are being extended too generously, with depreciation in the mix.
The could require some form of contractual arrangement, perhaps volume discounts for cards, if they agree to destroy them at a fixed time. That's very weird though, and I've never heard of such a thing for datacenter gear.
They may protect themselves on the driver side, but someone could still write OSS.
I don't think nVidia will have any problem there. If anything, hobbyists being able to use 2025 cards would increase their market by discovering new uses.