[samosa4u]

The boom of 2016 is a subject that has always fascinated me. I have read many posts on here and there are many competing theories as to what caused this. One of the popular ones is that a bunch of wealthy individuals bid like crazy on EX-MT to NM graded cards, and this resulted in the "explosion" of the higher graded examples.

Now here is my question: if it was that simple, in other words, if all it took was a bunch of rich guys to bid like crazy on certain cards, then why wasn't something like this done in the past? The insane prices that cards were bringing in last summer is something that I have never seen before. Also, why have they not done it again since then? Is it possible that these individuals who participated in manipulating the prices of cards will never do it again?