Artificially support or boost a small segment of the market?

BicentenBen

As I read some responses to an earlier topic I posted about wanting to pickup up some 1943 Lincoln rolls for potential slabbing effort it go me to thinking. In an isolated market such as this I can see groups (such as PRISSY) or even individuals with a bank roll being able to stimulate the market and force an upward trend. It's gotten me to thinking that given the resources....

Group A: Consisting of purists or those with a worthy cause. Make effort to buy any coin of a type on the eBay market even if it's says 50% above expected price.
Group B: Consisting of individual buyers is on the lookout for a particular coin and gets into the bidding game, perhaps loosing on a regular basis to Group A. Eventually a person in Group B gets impatient and wins an auction at say 70% of the original/normal high prices.

I know that eBay can be a seasonal thing and also cyclical when people are buying more of something because it's hot, etc and that will cause price fluctuation, but my question as I think about it now is....


Have any of you seen a sustained increase in the expected price finish for eBay auctions due to a concerted grabbing effort? I'm thinking of something such as a group saying we are going to snatch up everything in sight for the next several months or more and realizing the price begins to creep up due to the Group B people never getting satisfaction in winning an auction.

Seems like many areas this couldn't be done due to the volumne, but perhaps a wealthy person could drop a load of coin on getting all the Wisconsin errors that pop up and thus control the market so to speak.

AgMe

There's a couple of plp on the boards that have "become the market" for a particular MM & YR... I think you'll find while the price may go up, at the end there will be no one to sell all those coins to (at the price you want).

A cautionary tale...