Occasionally things like this happen on
ebay, especially when the buyers are not in the know. Someone will hype an item, and then all they need are a couple of people who (1) have money to burn or have money burning a hole in their pocket, and (2) aren't totally informed about something but are willing to believe the seller's ad copy that that something is extremely scarce or rare, and (3) said people are willing to place bids on the item in question. Along with that, there also has to be something publicly perceived about the item in question, i.e., in this case, the rumour that next year is the 100th anniversary of the
Lincoln Cent and after that the mint is thinking of ceasing production and killing the coin.
I've seen the same thing happen in the past in regard to Hardy Boys books. A certain buyer (always the same one) was going around and bidding outrageously on the first edition ones, which, at the time seldom sold for anything over $200, even for the first edition of the first volume. It created quite a stir in collecting circles of this series, and the net result was that the price was driven up sharply on first editions of the earlier volumes, and first edition "Number Ones" started selling in the $1000 or more range. Over time, the price has levelled out somewhat to half of that, but is still two and a half times what it was formerly on the average.
Supply and demand determining a new price? I wonder.
I am somewhat skeptical about such trends, though, because all one would need to do to create such a trend is either have two confederates and "stage" a bunch of "record-breaking auctions" over the space of a year and at irregular intervals but at times calculated to make the followers of that collecting interest sit up and take notice. Heck, even one guy could do it all himself with one computer and a bunch of bounced-off "origin sites" for the "bids" to come from and a few aliases.
Thus, the marketplace could be manipulated by a single person or a small conspiracy all with something to gain, once they have made it a "hot" area.
So, I guess the question is, "Is that particular auction really what you think it is, or is it a set-up?"
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Posted 12/23/2008 9:33 pm
