10K for a Young portrait in a 5

[barrysloate]

From my own experience as an auctioneer, I occasionally saw new collectors with deep pockets enter the hobby with a "kid in a candy store approach". They tried to buy everything at once, and often burned themselves out very quickly. So if a few of them have recently entered the T206 market, that could easily skew prices.

And of course there is nothing nefarious at all about it, just a bunch of wealthy people trying to amass an instant collection. Of course, I have no idea if this is the case, but it could be one explanation for rapidly escalating prices. A few of them could be competing against each other.