More “official” stores never changed their prices. They just never had any.
PiShop in Canada, for example, still lists the Pi 4 4GB for $76.95, but rpi locator says last time it was in stock was June 2022. Some item’s have an empty field for last seen and I've been assuming that means the tool has never seen them in stock.
So I would have needed to find another way to get it, and scalpers/Amazon never waste a good crisis.
Just because something goes out of stock doesn’t mean the price will shoot up. There has to be enough demand for it. If there are alternatives (which there are), then the demand won’t increase with shortened supply, it’ll actually decrease at the same rate (or more, if the reputation of ‘hard to acquire’ sticks).
There's a great interview with Eben Upton that explains a lot of this, including what "Business customers" actually are (i.e. mostly mom and pop style enterprises)
