A favorite route among smugglers is pushing cargo from Hong Kong en route to mainland China to avoid sales tax, which is 0% compared to up to 15% on the mainline. This generous markup has seen plenty of ingenious attempts to try and get tech from Hong Kong into the mainland. Case in point, a group of smugglers was recently caught attempting to deliver "high value computer display cards" by hiding them in a cargo full of live lobsters.
According to the official report, as many as 70 Nvidia Quadro K2200 cards were caught being shipped alongside a 617-pound cargo of approximately 200 live lobsters.
Hong Kong Customs apprehended the van, which carried no paperwork. The authorities estimate that the total value of the items are around HK$600,000 or $76,500, but it isn't clear if this is the price for just the live lobsters or the graphics cards or both.
You'd be hard-pressed to call the Nvidia Quadro K2200 top-of-the-line or "high value. These cards, which were released in 2014, and are considered entry-level on the market today and that's if we're being generous. But, they do have their use, in particular, their 68W-TDP and compact single-slot design means that they don't take much power and require only a single PCIe slot.
The said cards sell for roughly around $159 each on today's market, which would make the total cost of the haul $11,130 if we account exclusively for the GPUs alone, but the used market price is probably significantly lower.