The reason I brought this up is because I, and others in this field, perfectly understand what you just said, and these backwards bidding wars still continue, as if they were out of any human control, which is exactly what we suspect is happening.

As for the much-loved kid’s lemonade stand model, we both know that’s not how capitalism works. It’s how capitalists would like us to think it works. If you hire an adorable little kid with soulful eyes and shabby clothes to peddle your watered down lemon juice you might not get $50 a hit, but you can probably average $5.

I know that works, I buy Girl Scout cookies every year. It’s for a Worthy Cause, right?

PS. The relativistic anomaly in Mercury’s orbit was less than a minute of arc per century. Newtonian Theory isn’t wrong, but it isn’t the last word, either.

Yeah, there are automated systems involved sometimes. Check this out.

This is no more a sign of a failure of the law of supply and demand or capitalist theory than a kid with a lemonade stand who prices it at fifty dollars a glass. It just means the seller is an idiot who is standing completely outside the market system.

E-Bay and other such outlets are full of items where the seller has put a ridiculously high price on something. Not robots, just people who think somebody will buy at that price. And then it sits there.

You talk to real collectors in this field. Do you know any of them that actually bought any of these books at those overinflated prices?