I've been selling into this wave for months and it is real. There are certainly some bogus transactions out there but I've been cleaning house on stuff I never thought I could sell except at massive discounts. My last AH consignment closed in January and the result exceeded my expectations by nearly 100%.
As for the $1200, $2000, or whatever, for someone making a good enough living to responsibly and regularly buy four-figure cards it is a financial blip. I am not wealthy and definitely not in a unique financial position, and I am telling you that the cards I bought in this horrible year had nothing to do with a stimulus check. I didn't even qualify to get one. For me it was not paying for all of the other leisure activities. I saved far more than $1200 just not going out to dinner over the last year and a multiple of that not going on any of the vacations or trips we planned. Hell, dinner and show for my wife and me is $300 or more, and a week in HI will cost us $5K. I go to a couple of concerts every summer. In 2019 summer I went to see Heart and Joan Jett (great show, BTW) with decent, not great, seats at the Hollywood Bowl and between that and dinner I dropped over $400. My floor seats for Green Day in 2017 plus dinner were over $400 for the pair:
And worth every dime!
My wife's salary got cut 20% at the start of this and we didn't even feel it because our spending dropped 35%. No dinners out, no maid, no trips, terminated gym memberships, no wardrobe since we are not going to formal offices, no commute expenses, no food at work costs, etc. That's where the money is. Plus, WTF else am I going to do with it, put it into the bank at 0.1%?