Food for thought on the current boom market

[JustinD]

I was just pondering something and I was wondering others opinion on it, no judgement zone on your thoughts.

The reason for the exponential boom in some issues has been a subject of debate lately with many theories from secret conglomerates, buying consortium's with goals of market manipulation and just dumb luck. I just had a much more simple thought.

In the 80's and 90's those looking to clean a large stash of illegal money would turn to the real estate market. They would buy homes for 400-500k, put a down payment of 425K down and get a small mortgage to legitimize the transaction. The DEA and IRS got wise to this and slid precautions in the anti-terrorism acts to make consumers prove the record of large cash transactions in their bank accounts and make "mattress" cash illegal to use for down payments in real estate deals. If you have completed a mortgage in the past several years, you may have wondered why the mortgage company wanted to trace the path of your down payment or cash to close. Simple answer...they have to.

In the recent past there are numerous records of laundering in collectibles like art, comic books and recently sports collectibles. Much like the autograph laundering scheme in 2014 that Drew Max was involved in.

Would it not make sense that this would work like a charm right now in a lightly regulated business whereas someone pays 150k in dirty cash for a 52 mantle and then flips it in less than 60 days often uncaring at a loss and now having a clean deposit record with a bill of sale? Can this be part of the explanation for cards turning up in auctions or on ebay weeks or even days after a sale? If there was a group of folks laundering cash they would absolutely care less what they were paying for it, actually the more the better. In fact if they had ghost buyers snapping it up at the inflated price thus just turning money they have two-fold it would be even better.

If I was the IRS, I would be questioning these things.

Sorry to throw another x-files conspiracy out there, it was just my deep-thought moment of the day.