I find it hard to blame Discogs if record stores are using them as a pricing authority, it's really on the seller to determine how "right" that price is and the buyer to do their own research and soul searching to how worth it is is. I could be wrong but I don't think Discogs has really ever claimed to be a pricing authority, they just happen to be the easiest place to get historic pricing by pressing in one place.
Just as an example, there was a copy of Joni Mitchell's Song to a Seagull at my local who pretty much uses Discogs median as their pricing guide for anything used that needs a quick price in good condition (untagged but someone wants to buy). Turns out on the version they looked at, that number is now $20. The version they had was very clean with a bit of a cover rip, I'd probably say VG+/VG. It took me a few minutes to peruse other places (Ebay mostly) to see it in the $10 range, so when I decided to get it I went that route and got probably a VG/VG+ copy for that. Ultimately, Discogs volume of sales on most records isn't really high enough to set an accurate price range but if a buyer or seller wants to trust it, that's on them taking the risk and one most popular items, there's a bajillion pressings leading to variability and noise.
I do agree it's definitely having an impact, I just don't think it's something they can do much about without removing their pricing data entirely (which to be honest kills the site probably). Unless they're knowingly reporting fake sales of course. I do think they could also exclude true outliers in price averaging but the use of median as opposed to true average in their front page metrics kind of does that too and sometimes that weird price does reflect the market everywhere else. Like the Christmas Party above, the first four sales were 25, 25, 35, and 200....that $200 is closer to reality than $25 is now.
Here's a reverse example even
View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 2015 Vinyl release of "Froot" on Discogs.
www.discogs.com
The record jumped from retailish pricing to values 4-8x that starting with a June 2021 sale. However, in this case, DIscogs was a severely lagging indicator. It has been acting like this in other markets (Ebay, Reddit, etc.) for 6+ months before hand - a record store using Discogs pricing would've taken a bath on this until the last few months. There's a big history of past sales on this particular item as well in other places.
In terms of the super high prices, I think it's a combo of malicious actors trying to find a sucker and, to Kris point, people who don't want to necessarily sell a record but at a certain price would. Like, let's take Marina and the Diamonds Froot
It's in the "Ms" on my playthrough so it's probably not going to be gotten to until after it's repressed (which she hinted would happen), but if someone wanted to give me like...$200 for that one, I'd let it go pretty quickly even if I don't want to sell it. But yeah, being the only seller listing above max on an imperfect copy (it'd probably be a VG+/VG+ copy) would look like a BS sale when that's just what I'd be willing to let it go for.
