Don't confuse price tags with what people are actually paying for these things, or assume that they're selling them at all.

Yeah, there are automated systems involved sometimes. Check this out.

This is no more a sign of a failure of the law of supply and demand or capitalist theory than a kid with a lemonade stand who prices it at fifty dollars a glass. It just means the seller is an idiot who is standing completely outside the market system.

E-Bay and other such outlets are full of items where the seller has put a ridiculously high price on something. Not robots, just people who think somebody will buy at that price. And then it sits there.

You talk to real collectors in this field. Do you know any of them that actually bought any of these books at those overinflated prices?