The buyer purchased the items under his own volition.
The price of Esoterica tobaccos has been spiraling upward for the past several years. There's a website that leverages that trend, and has become the de facto standard in pricing for the secondary market. It's often mentioned in the selling thread as a comparison.
As far as the market being cornered, anybody can buy these items at a more reasonable price by doing a little due diligence, and establishing a relationship with any number of B&M establishments who will take phone orders and ship to them.
Online vendors offer alerts, which are dicey, as there is usually some lag time, and by the time you get to the site what you want may have sold out already.
There are other avenues to acquire ESO... I does demand putting in some work. In lieu of that, there is the option of finding someone who has it for sale and offers it at a price, cash and carry, so to speak. If the price doesn't sit well with somebody, there's always the option not to buy it.
If purchasing things and setting them aside to capitalize on a higher price at later time makes them an opportunistic asshole, well then count me in. I've bought land, guitars, guns, stamps, coins, pipes, tobacco and most of the time have realized a net gain upon selling them. I can't wrap my head around this whole spending money on stuff to eventually lose money thing. But I do donate and volunteer to certain causes, and gift things... Maybe so I can rationalize to myself that I'm not really such an opportunistic asshole after all.