When evolutionary biologist Michael Eisen went on Amazon to search for Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly, he found two sellers pricing new copies of the title at seven figures. Baffled by the valuation, Eisen kept track of the two sellers’ activities.
Here’s more observations from Eisen’s blog post: “…clearly at least one of the sellers was setting their price algorithmically in response to changes in the other’s price. I continued to watch carefully and the full pattern emerged. Once a day profnath set their price to be 0.9983 times bordeebook’s price. The prices would remain close for several hours, until bordeebook “noticed” profnath’s change and elevated their price to 1.270589 times profnath’s higher price. The pattern continued perfectly for the next week.”
The price escalation eventually reached $23,698,655.93; it has since dropped below $1,000. As of this writing, profnath no longer has Lawrence’s title in stock. But, bordeebook has one copy available and it will only cost you $976.98 plus $3.99 for shipping.