Have you checked HERE yet ID? 

Ram is like that.

I didn't wait too long to get my second 6gig....just to be sure not only that all 12 matched but that the price hadn't gone up....

[12G OCZ Triple [6x2G] PC12800 DDR3 Gold Ram]

Prices are up across the board on memory. It doesn't have anything to do with DDR2's age (DDR3 is priced similarly, as is DDR); the excuse I've heard is that production is just starting to ramp up again after they've run down all the excess stock they've been sitting on while the economy has been down.

Bollocks!!!  This is a discussion my techie/PC store owner have had over the last couple of months or so... we have watched prices rising on a weekly, sometimes daily basis on the exact same (old) stock. The suppliers (in Oz) are NOT getting daily shipments, yet prices are rising on old stock as though were newly arrived. It seems to me/us, that they are watching prices on newly manufactured/released RAM and adjusting their 'old stock' prices accordingly.

In fact, on one day, the price went up twice.  In the morning the price on 2x2gb Corsair DDR2 800 was $79.95.... that afternoon (Pat checked again to fill a new order) it was $97.00 AUD, a clear $52.00 up on what I'd paid just 2 weeks earlier, and on RAM probably from the same batch/shipment. 

Here's the killer, though!  That very same RAM from Pat via his suppliers (while it can be found cheaper through some internet sellers) is now $149.95... almost 300% up on what I paid 4 - 5 months ago.  Somebody is profiteering on old stock... and, after watching him do the wholesale/retail math, I know it's not Pat!

It's not 'profiteering' if the stock replacement cost goes up.

I once bought a 256meg stick of EDO for around 200 and a day later the shop asked if they could have it back for 400 as that was now it's replacement price...to put into another person's machine....I 'could' have profited on that...in theory...except I'd still have to buy the replacement at 400 so it was patently pointless....AND I wouldn't have any ram for my own machine till then anyway.

Bollocks!!!!   That's like me saying that I'm charging an extra 200% on this year's carrot crop because it could cost me 20% more to plant it next year, then have it cost me an extra 30% to get it to market to still get last year's wholesale price..  In other words, I'd be stinging customers to recoup expenditures and losses before they actually are incurred.

If he old stock was purchased at a lower factory price, then it should be sold at a proportionate wholesale/retail value... NOT at a 300% markup. The new stock is at the higher factory price... and it is the wholesale/retail price on that which should rise to offset ACTUAL increases in expenditure.  Any other way... we are getting royally screwed.

Thing is, Aussie PC buffs/enthusiasts are waking up to these profiteering middlemen (suppliers to the retail sector) and turning to internet sellers who can drastically undercut 'supplier fed' retail stores. Given my last major purchase was sought out/done on line, and I saved about $70 on what Pat (my local PC store owner) could have got it wholesale, I know in future I will be accessing online sellers for major purchases.

That's not how retail works, if the price goes down for the RAM the customer sees the saving straight away too, the shops can't afford to wait till they've sold their more expensive bought stock at expensive prices because the competition would be getting all the sales.  Think about games, when the price goes down do shops wait until they've sold all their current copies before changing their store price?

it's aggravating that the price of ram has gone up so much in recent months. before i built my i-7 rig i was running ocz blade pc-8500 ddr2 ram. i paid 65 bucks for each 4 gig kit in april or may of last year. when i sold them last november, i was offered 135 for each kit  and that was 15 bucks less than they were being sold for on newegg at the time. good luck finding that ram now! i now have an 8 gig kit of corsair dominator ddr3 ram and the price of it has gone up 28 bucks in the last 2 weeks and over 40 bucks since i bought mine.

on a side note, what speed is your ram, island dog? a friend of mine who currently has g skill ddr2 is upgrading to an am3 socket rig. i'm pretty sure his ram is pc-8500. it may be pc-6400. if you can't find what you're looking for and phil's is what you need, he would selll it cheaply, i'm sure. he plans on upgrading in late february or early march.

Not in my POTW... back in Nov/Dec 09 the Oz dollar was trading at 90c US (usually around 75 - 78) while PC/parts prices were falling in the US... the recession n' all.... but prices weren't falling here... the opposite, in fact.    Some prices started to reduce towards Xmas and into the new year (not RAM), but now they're on the rise again for some things - Nvidia 8, 9 and 200 series cards, for example... rising, so-say because Nvidia is holding back production to push/kickstart the 300 series.