Why is the Radeon 9800XT 256MB so expensive?

[hyPoxxx.dll]

Hello, I was recently looking at the radeon 9800 series, and they are more expensive than the radeon x1650 and 2600 series! Even more than some
x1800s!!

a friend of mine is under the impression that it is better than those other cards, and why are the 9800's so expensive?

 

[lovely?]

i think they are expensive because of the few that are left. a 6200 costs 100$ easy and you can buy a 1900PRO for that same price from newegg

 

[PC eye]

One big reason for the higher price tags seen on those is the type of card there. The 9800s are AGP type cards while the others mentioned here are PCI-Express. Vendors will now being charging more to keep AGP cards in stock since far fewer new boards are AGP. It compares to still being able to order PC100/133 memory for old systems.