Really it's irrelevant. People so interested in mining would have simply saved more towards a 6870 or 6950 which offers similar or better performance, and has a higher resale rate. People won't stop upgrading just because one model isn't in stock; they'd move on to the next best performer in terms of hashrate/$.
True, but there is definitely an advantage to having a higher hashrate/$ than the average miner. Can keep adding cards while they have to drop out.