If I'm reading this correctly, then you may be looking at this wrong. It's not what the signer is charging per autograph, but how much the promoter is charging the collector. The price per autograph is based, I believe, on how much the signer is charging for his appearance and then they factor in the cost to bring the signer to the show, how many hours they will sign and the average number of sigs they can reasonably signed in that time. The main problem is that there's no way to know what the signers fee is. For all we know, it hasn't gone up all that much and the promoter is taking a bigger cut. Now, that's probably only one possible senario but this would account for being able to save money on those private signings where those promoters might also be collectors that are then able to get their own stuff signed. There's no doubt that prices have skyrocketed over the years, it's just not clear how the blame should be distributed.
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