I really like what Asher does with his deck sales. I was there last year, and I had so much adrenaline to see the live prices fluctuate before your very eyes. What's tricky is that you can see the prices drop, but you don't know it that price will be the lowest. By the time you decide to click the button, it's already to late, and the price already rose. I'm telling you, it messes with your mind a lot.
However, if you act extremely fast, you can score an amazing deal on the "holy grail" of decks.
With that being said, it begs me to ask: How many decks does he have. This is at least his third year into this game, and he has sold a gross on average, each time. How many is he stockpiling? He must have at least three grosses and maybe more if he decide to continue it.
On the bright side, his stockpile of cards have proved beneficial for some people regardless if they buy some. I have a coveted signed card from him on a J-Nugg.
He has a fair amount for personal use, to be sure, but I believe he has a secret supplier for these sales, someone who stocked up years ago when they were cheap - probably when they were still selling in the gift shop at the casino. I'm sure he's paying the "wholesale" version of the market value, then reselling for a profit. If he wasn't making money off of it, he'd have little incentive to continue.
According to everything I've heard about these decks, there were a handful of tractor trailers loaded with these cards, shipped straight from Cincinnati. Casinos buy in BULK, big-time, 'cause they go through cards like crazy, hundreds or even thousands of decks in a day, depending on the size of the place. While it's not clear whether these were ever intended for use on the floor, they were certainly made in that kind of bulk volume. Picture a squared-off stack of twelve brick boxes - one gross. I'll call it a "case", since that was probably how many were in a single shipping box. Imagine how many of those cases would fit in a semi-truck's trailer. Multiply that by a few trucks. That's a LOT of decks, a HUGE number. Even today it's not unusual for casinos to buy in similar volumes, though you would have to account for all those poker tables that no longer use paper cards, just plastic - though I'd bet even those get swapped out regularly as well, no different than paper.
But I'm rambling. The point is, there was a lot of these decks made. They weren't hot sellers in the gift shop, like people thought of them as rare and precious objects - they were cards, disposable and cheap, and you only need so many decks when you play. (Normal people don't generally buy decks by the brick, like us weirdos!) A few people, mostly magicians, had the foresight to see these were well-made using extinct processes and wouldn't last forever, and they bought them up in bulk back in the late '80s and early '90s until they were finally sold out. If anything, the casino probably gave them a bulk discount. It would make sense, especially if it was a deck meant for the floor that was set aside after the order was placed, leaving them with a huge amount of "souvenir decks" in their inventory that sat around for over 20 years, maybe close to 30 (I can't recall when they sold out).