Hello everyone 
I’ve done some reading up on the topic of shill bidding, and was wondering if that’s what happened here:
www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/392781255265?item=392781255265&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2565
There’s an account with 1 feedback that seems to have driven the price up, but some accounts with very high feedback placing the final bids. I don’t know enough to recognize whether or not the card seems to have sold for this price.
Appreciate some thoughts & input!
Gold stars are sharply increasing in price. Mew has been sold for $2.4k recently, Mewtwo for $4.5k and Metagross for $2.5k. Groudon also has a PSA 10 pop of 58, so this price can definitely be real.
Pop 58 card. Card has been out for 15 years and gold stars are high profile. I can’t imagine the flood of cards that have been submitted to PSA are going to change the pop much for cards like these. People didn’t wake up during quarantine and think “wow, time to finally grade my perfect gem mint gold stars”. there are certainly more than 58 collectors who would like to own this card in PSA 10. If a hyper rare burning shadows psa 10 charizard can sell for $1200 (which it just did on May 6th), why shouldn’t one of the original “hyper rares” sell for this price?
Even if it’s a high price now, this is one of those where the long term growth in the earnings power of the fan base is fated to drive the price up. Only question is when and by how much.
I much rather buy this for 1.9k than a PSA 9 T17 - let’s put it that way. I actually think this was a fairly reasonable price.
No idea if it was shill bidding or not but either way its still gone for the market price…look at the pops @ psa 10:
Groudon - 58
Kyogre - 54
Metagross - 41
Always use multiple price comparisons and never trust the “new record high price”. Shill bidding is just one of many tactics that can be used to give the illusion of something having higher value than reality.
Given I won the auction, I can assure you that the buyer paid. It terms of it being a record high price, I bid what I was willing to pay. My logic is laid out in my prior post in this thread.