I mean, the act of people scalping stuff has existed before the digital age. Even a century ago: scalpers would pay a third party to hold a spot in line on purchasing concert or theater tickets to resell at a higher price since the internet didn’t exist back then. Like, in the 90s: scalpers showed up in person (paying someone to hold the spot for you whilst in line) for acquisition of the product, that’s how they’ve done it.
At the time, pre-orders for an upcoming console or game were done in store (you physically went there placing an order after seeing an ad on TV or a magazine). But, how common were scalpers during that era? It would be like a group of scalpers pretending not to know each other or split into smaller groups heading to different retailers on buying the same product whilst playing as another customer.
It seems like some people are maybe thinking of the 80s here. Console games were big business, popular, and widespread from the NES onward, at least among younger audiences.
You didnt see many scalpers mostly because there was less random zero day hype. You got your video game ads in a magazine, so if a game had big hype it was because the publisher had spent big on marketing, which meant they had printed a shit ton of launch day copies, and there would be pallets of them sitting at your local Best Buy, Walmart, Circuit City, etc.