Seriously though, this is happening everywhere. A new record for a coin at auction was hit at about 19 million dollars less than a year ago, almost doubling the prior record. I follow guitar auctions as well, same craziness.

What's not new is that there are people who can throw that kind of money around pretty freely. What is new is how strongly they have gravitated to pretty much all of the collectibles fields and increasing aggressiveness to "go big" on spending to get what they want when they want it.

Also, just the mechanics of it all. When you used to have to go to a physical auction, it paced your overall spending considerably versus online, both volume of opportunities as well as the psychology of it all. "Seeing it online" is all too easy at times, even for the ultra wealthy.