[majordanby]

"to each his own"

the only problem with this statement is whether this purchase has any aggregate effects on the market. if this guy is willing to spend that much money for the card - great for him. but if his extravagant spending has an effect on the rest of the market such that lower grade collectors get priced out (e.g. PSA 7's increase in price by X%), then i wouldnt simply just cast this off as a case of "to each his own." if i was searching for a PSA 7 Aaron and find that this purchase all of sudden bumps up the price of the card, on average, by X amount of dollars, i would be a bit miffed.

however, this is such an extreme outlier that im not sure if it does have an effect (on the demand side at least..supply side, we may see more PSA 8's and 9's flood the market (as someone indirectly alluded to earlier)- which may or may not dampen the cost effect, at least in the long term) - and if it does, it would be relegated to the higher graded cards. of course, if i was a high grade collector, i would be miffed - but, maybe not so much given that the marginal increase in the price of a, say, PSA 8 Aaron, may not have such an impact on a high grade collector's marginal willingness to pay. Maybe it has an effect on PSA 9 and 10 collectors - at that point, were talking about a small proportion of the collecting community.