None of the people in the biz are buying these books at these inflated prices, but prices continue going up. Hmmm. It as if some software has detected a price, and then decides, "There's demand for this, let's see if I can exploit it."

The reason I brought this up is because I, and others in this field, perfectly understand what you just said, and these backwards bidding wars still continue, as if they were out of any human control, which is exactly what we suspect is happening.

As for the much-loved kid's lemonade stand model, we both know that's not how capitalism works. It's how capitalists would like us to think it works. If you hire an adorable little kid with soulful eyes and shabby clothes to peddle your watered down lemon juice you might not get $50 a hit, but you can probably average $5.

I know that works, I buy Girl Scout cookies every year. It's for a Worthy Cause, right?

PS. The relativistic anomaly in Mercury's orbit was less than a minute of arc per century. Newtonian Theory isn't wrong, but it isn't the last word, either.