{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/the-15-dollar-flood",
  "slug": "the-15-dollar-flood",
  "title": "The $15 Flood: Anatomy of a Fake Market",
  "summary": "One seller's liquidation habit put 234 identical \"sales\" into the price record across ten days, and briefly made a $6,500 slab look like a $15 one. A forensic walkthrough of how sold-price data gets poisoned, and how we filter it.",
  "section": "Data forensics",
  "published": "2026-08-04",
  "readMinutes": 6,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "234",
      "measures": "identical $15 \"sales\"",
      "basis": "across 10 separate days, May 29 – Jul 21"
    },
    {
      "value": "102",
      "measures": "in a single day",
      "basis": "July 21, 2026, at least 5 different cards"
    },
    {
      "value": "198",
      "measures": "same-price/same-day clusters",
      "basis": "found in 78,078 recorded sales we scanned"
    },
    {
      "value": "$177 → $6,200",
      "measures": "the vending Mewtwo's PSA 10, before/after filtering",
      "basis": "a flood-contaminated median vs the card's one real sale"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "A median is only as honest as its worst cluster",
    "One transaction, one vote"
  ],
  "method": [
    "All figures from moonstone's recorded eBay sold-listing corpus as of August 4, 2026: 78,078 distinct sold listings across the cards our graded pipeline has processed. A cluster is defined as sales sharing an exact price and calendar day; the 198 figure counts clusters of six or more sales spanning at least three distinct cards. The $15 series was observed on ten days between May 29 and July 21, 2026 (largest single day: 102 sales, July 21). Before/after medians for the case-study cards come from our filtering logs, where each row's accepted and rejected sales are recorded. Recorded sold data is scraped from public listings by our upstream provider; individual listings are not independently verified beyond the filtering described. NOTE ADDED 2026-09-22 on an independent recompute: the sold-listing corpus this piece scanned is a working set we do not retain, so none of the cluster counts (234, 102, 198, 78,078) can be re-derived today, and our graded snapshot tape holds no current reading for either vending Pikachu or vending Mewtwo. Every number on this page should be read as a dated August 4, 2026 forensic record rather than a live measurement. Nothing here is financial advice."
  ],
  "terms": "Figures are moonstone's own recorded measurements, dated as published. Quote them with the population stated beside them. The article at `url` is the human form of this file."
}