> it seems more likely that the heavy presence of scalpers making it difficult for average people to acquire product at MSRP has been causing the demand to skyrocket, in addition to celebrities like Jake Paul hype streaming.

Those are definitely factors, but even the most influential celebrity can't sell a turd (see: the insane advertising push for NFT's). There has to be some value in the cards themselves for an influencer to multiply it, then that lack of supply from time makes it easy for scalpers to scalp.

>they have no problem printing cards that look identical to the originals other than a small logo, which many people get and feel no need to acquire the original Charizard.

Yup. I personally am fine satisfying my nostalgia with some later print edition that is $10 instead of $1000 for some "early print" version. I don't fully understand this value of "I must have the original print!", but that admittedly existed long long before we had social media campaigns to influence such desire.