There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
It will be interesting to see how it plays out over time. It also seems like a terrible idea to try to corner a market when you have no control of the supply (i.e. WOTC can reprint similar versions, just as you mentioned, and effectively destroy the strategy).
I also think WOTC is more organized than you give it credit for, and if cards markets are regularly getting 'cornered' to artificially increase prices, I think they'll react. Keep in mind, that's completely separate from price spikes due to genuinely high demand.
I'm excited to see the results as well, I just believe that the reception of messing with the reserved list would be really negative among the LGS network who makes the majority of their money through selling singles. It's why people continue to believe that the supply is fixed and WOTC has no desire to make any drastic changes.
Hopefully they respond or even acknowledge this issue. As of writing this, there has been no official response from WOTC about the buyouts.