I think you're just being fooled by the Ebay way of listing completed auctions. The guy who sold the Altuve card that you're talking about does the same thing every time. He will base his orders on the amount of pre-sales and then with the extra cards he has to buy to get the bulk order discount, he puts a high price on them with a make offer option.
If you look at the Alex Gordon card it will help you see what I am talking about. Ebay sold auctions say that an Alex Gordon card sold for $199, but if you go to his page under "73 sold" you will see that he never got anywhere close to that price.
That $199 dollars for the Altuve is the current price he has listed, but all of the sold ones were for $5.
If people are using sold auction prices to get an idea of sales then their problem is the way Ebay lists them, not a shill sale (which didn't happen)
As for the current rise in prices for the set, I think it's just because the set is becoming more popular and people missed out at the beginning.
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