Last night, I was looking through convention pics of the dealer room floor and looking at insane stacks of "rare" figures...boxed, carded, bagged you name it. When I see quantities like that piled up from big sellers, even when a lot of it had been "sold out" some time ago it made me think.

Second hand prices are sometimes NUTS, but that is assuming there are none left other than 2nd hand. Well, if the online retailers hold back from selling all of their supplies of figures (especially after declaring them "sold out) to lug around to conventions, then how rare are they really?

Are we paying insane prices for some MISB figure on the assumption the figure is very rare when in reality there are still plenty nobody ever bought and are sitting in mass in some retailers warehouses?

Now I'm not saying we don't still enjoy a nice fandom here. I'm just wondering if anyone else thinks that certain aspects have been a bit overinflated or not. I suppose an online retailer who is doing very well can afford the luxury of stashing quantities of certain items to let time work a little magic on the prices from the 2nd hand market. But if certain EXPENSIVE figures are so rare simply because some online retailers are holding back too many, then who is really setting the market prices? Are the online retailers purposely indirectly influencing the market? And to what degree?

I think it's a good question for debate.