[paul]

It's another dump day on ebay. Over 130 pages of cards in the pre-war category, most of them with a starting bid that is more than double full retail. These same cards are listed time and again by the same dealers with the same results -- no bids. We've all wondered what's going on. I may have an answer. It's a bit of a conspiracy theory, but let me know what you think.

Suppose you're a dealer that has paid $50,000 this year for his inventory, and had $150,000 in sales. You have $100,000 in profits that you must pay taxes on. You also have a personal collection, and you've spent $20,000 on cards for your personal collection this year. It sure would be tempting to tell the IRS that those $20,000 worth of cards are part of your commercial "inventory". Then, you could tell the IRS you spent a total of $70,000 on your inventory, and your taxable income is only $80,000 instead of $100,000.

How do you convince the IRS that your personal collection is actually part of your inventory? Easy, offer it for sale every few weeks on ebay. You don't really want to sell the stuff, so you price it ridiculously high. But you've accomplished your goal of turning your personal collection into part of your inventory and reducing your taxes.

What do you think? Could this really be going on?