Yep. I noticed that too.
Maybe the hobby is not as small as many here believe. I saw on abebooks one distributor has Annals v3 at double the cost of new and another distributor has annals v2 at $150!! This seems more like following the stock market!
I'm not so sure. I generally buy books used when I can, and I've noticed that many Willmann-Bell books, even when in stock from the publisher, were often listed at high prices on the used market. I bought many books new from WB because, well, that was honestly the cheapest option. I've even seen in print books sell here in the Classifieds for the new price (or more!) and wonder what the heck is going on. I suspect that there simply aren't that many copies in the used market, people do a quick search on Amazon and eBay, and see either no copies or a few expensive copies and assume that must be the real value. I've heard speculation that the absurd prices are dummy listings where the seller doesn't actually have a copy, and I don't know if that's true, but I *have* had a few orders for out-of-print astro books from various sellers cancelled for no reason that was communicated to me. All that to say, I think the market is small, and that does funny things to the online prices.
Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if some of these large sellers (if you look closely, you'll see many of the same names come up), are doing something algorithmic. I searched for months to find a copy of an out of print astro book that was actually real and a reasonable price. After I bought it, just for fun, I kept watching prices and noticed the listings seemed to react to the sale. Listings that had been there for months suddenly became cheaper. Anecdotal, I know, but algorithmic pricing is definitely a thing, why wouldn't large used book sellers use it, too?
