I agree, and the world of collectibles has changed, because of eBay and the Internet.

What's interesting is that many items, thought to be be in short supply, have been found, so prices have dropped. But in a few instances, items that were thought common have been discovered to be Hard To Get, so those prices have gone up. (however most changes have been downward)

What I like is, things I would look for and shops wouldn't bother with, casino chips for example, are available, in numbers.

I went to Amazon last weekend, looking for a book on Wisconsin archaeology, that I haven't been able to find for years. Four copies up for sale. So I started looking for other "unusual" books, and found almost every subject for sale.

Looking at the eBay numbers, lets not forget that like a flea market, many of the sales/auctions are total trash. Parallel port photo scanners for $19.95 (200 DPI) and there were 50 listed by the same seller. How about Betty Boop items? There are dealers that specialize and have a dozen of each item, up every week. So repeat sales and mini-stores will increase the number of listings.

In all, I still find almost everything I can think of, for sale on eBay.