Prices of laptops on eBay - sky high!

Hi all, I am totally blown away by the prices that some of the laptops go for on ebay and was wondering if any of you knew why. Here's the story: I am totally new to selling on ebay and am trying to find some products to sell and have been doing my research. I learned a trick to see what products are selling for the most by loading a catagory and then clicking the 'show completed items' tab, then using the dropdown list highlighting 'price, highest first'. So anyway, I did this with laptops and about fell off my computer chair......
Here is an example of what one is going for:
Toshiba Tecra 9000, Pentium 3, 1.3 megahertz, 20 gigabyte hard drive, the user went on to say in the auction listing that it was used and there were minor scratches on the pc from normal use. The winning bid price? $18,899
Even if you don't have alot of computer knowledge you can see that this is a very slow and older laptop. This is just an example of what these things are going for, but not all of them, a comparable laptop was going for around 300.00.
I asked a friend of mine and he said that it was probably companies out there that are trying to bid high so they can use it as a tax write off. I was thinking that there was something else going on behind the scenes that I wasn't aware of like a secret offer for drugs or something LOL
Do any of you have any hints about this? It would be greatly appreciated:)
P.S. There was no CAD software or any special bells and whistles on the PC I used in the example.
Thanks much,
Ben

You should probably check how many went for prices that high and then check the feedback of the buyer. Most probably they won't be registered members anymore or will have 0 or negative feedback. I had done the same for Xbox 360s and found many auctions ending at $1700-2000+ but they all of them turned out to be buyers with 0 feedback and were registered like 2-3 days before the auction ended. The others were no longer ebay members. Just a tip. Let us know what you find. Have a great day.

pfft, as imstallion said it was proberly just people with no feedback bidding high, or as you said drug trade etc.

try not to sell laptops on eBay, you dont get much for them even if it is new. similary if you were to mention it was used its value has pretty much been cut in half.