Barry, I don't disagree with you at all in regards to the flips, but for collectibles, people often defer to these so called experts in those fields even when buying extremely expensive things. When someone says that a wine receives a certain rating or the vintage that year was particularly excellent, do most of us have any idea what they are talking about? When some "expert" says this modern art painting is part of the new avant garde in the field right now and is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, do those people who buy those paintings really have any idea what they are buying? And many collectors may come from collecting coins, where these same issues have been rehashed over and over again. I'm not saying I agree with it but just trying to explain how we got here.
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