EBay is telling scammers to stop selling photos of the PlayStation 5 for hundreds of dollars

• The new PlayStation 5 sold out quickly, and crashed retailers websites.
• The consoles are going for more than double the original price on reseller marketplaces.
• Some scammers on eBay are selling photos of the consoles for hundreds of dollars, and eBay says it is removing them.

The just-launched PlayStation 5 video game console is sold out everywhere, and only available through resellers at inflated prices, but scams abound too.

The PlayStation 5 continues to sell out in seconds in the US and the UK as retailers drop new stock, some bought by bots that purchased them faster than any human could. Pent up demand may have been responsible for repeatedly crashing Walmart's website in November, Ben Gilbert reported. One reseller group told Business Insider that it bought 3,500 consoles, and resellers said that they were selling $500 PlayStations for as much as $1,100. The consoles are such a hot commodity that they were the hot item on Black Friday, despite not being discounted at all.

Read more: The power players of Microsoft's revitalized $11.6 billion gaming division, which is taking on Sony's PlayStation 5 with new Xbox consoles and cloud services

Now, some scammers are taking advantage of the scramble to get a PlayStation 5, with deceptive listings for photos of the consoles, some of which have prices already bid up hundreds of dollars. The website has now issued a warning to the sellers trying to profit off of the system's scarcity, EuroGamer reported.

"We condemn these opportunistic sellers who are attempting to mislead other users," eBay said in a statement to EuroGamer."We are in the process of removing all listings for photos of PS5s from our marketplace and will be taking appropriate action against the sellers."

The company also cautioned buyers to closely read descriptions on high-priced items and victims should refer to eBay's money-back guarantee for listings not as described.

In the November 28 post, EuroGamer said that a search for "Playstation 5 photo" turned up 324 results. On November 30, a search by Business Insider had 114 results, indicating that eBay may have taken action against some scammers.