I would also offer that it is probably easier than ever to get a “false positive” when looking at sold data for “market manipulation.”
There are huge entities like GameStop, power sellers on Live eCom websites, etc. that have pricing autonomy within their lane. Their incentives lead them to purchase huge quantities of cards at prices that are as much as 100% of the market value that we understand a card to have based on the competitive, decentralized marketplaces we are used to like eBay.
This can present 1:1 as an old-school buyout because it is, in essence, a buyout. But rather than being compelled by speculation or malicious shadow entities hellbent on pushing the CardLadder price up to dupe customers, it is a legitimate arbitrage between a market paying less and a market paying more.
eBay is losing market share rapidly*. 10 years ago, it would not have been hyperbole to speculate that 99% of online Pokemon trading card sales take place on eBay. The literal, trackable sales numbers of auction houses alone show that this can no longer be true, before you even consider more difficult to track, but massive in their own right, entities like WhatNot. The decentralization of the sales makes understanding pricing data a little more difficult. It also creates a lot of opportunities for arbitrage for people savvy in the differences between what different marketplaces are earning.
*noting: eBay is still the gold standard, where I price my own cards, where I sell many of my cards, and in a significant lead. But they have underperformed in capturing new growth over the last 5 years. This statement is not an indictment of eBay as a platform, but rather an observation of the last 5 years of growth and the rise of new, significant entities producing real sales to real consumers with real cards. This feels contextually important to understand if you’re using eBay to price and struggling to understand sold data for select cards.