I've been putting together the M101-2 set over the past couple of years. The ones in Memory Lane certainly had great eye appeal, but I believe this is just a function of people paying crazy money for PSA plastic. A couple years ago, there were a bunch of M101-2s that sold at auction (I think PWCC, but can't remember). It was the first round of PSA-graded M101-2s that I'd seen. They were all graded PSA A. It was clear that whoever had them graded just opted for authentication and not a grade. They still sold for 3x the price of a comparable raw copy. It made no sense to me. I imagine some of it must have been driven by registry lemmings given that M101-2s in PSA holders were very scarce. But there were also some non-registry purchasers who I thought at the time just flatly overpaid for no apparent reason. Since then, PSA A and PSA 1 copies have continued to rise, and based on the Memory Lane results are now more like 5-8x the price of a nice raw copy. Meanwhile, other nice M101-2s that are raw or in BGS holders are selling for maybe 1-2x their pre-pandemic prices.
I will admit that there's not much data here, so it's hard to know exactly what's up, but it just seems to me that it's another example of people paying up for plastic. I'll pass and wait for raw copies...I hope! I have no idea why someone would want a M101-2 graded in the first place.
I also acknowledge my bias as a M101-2 set builder who would like to continue to have access to reasonably-priced examples
