Why do some Amazon items show weird prices on search?

To be clear: I am not asking why some sellers intentionally or unintentionally have an item listed for horribly overinflated prices, although they might be related.

For example, I search for “mess kit” and the top choice goes for $3.29 - $108.99. But when I click the item itself is only $8.99. The other sellers are not selling them for that much nor that little. There are plenty of other items like this out there.

One common factor appears to be that all the items have options for size, color, etc. often with arbitrary price differences, but in many of these cases I cannot reproduce these prices while trying combinations of the options. It doesn’t appear to be a quantity issue either as I cannot recreate the price by changing the quantity.

Is it just a situation where Amazon search results aren’t updated as frequently as the actual items? Will they ever update (one above hasn’t in a few days). The item above only has one option, but nevertheless has the pulldown.

Most prices are set by software programs that check other prices at pre-set intervals and adjust the prices on their own products.

The software at Amazon is separate from the seller’s software. So if the Amazon software does a price check on a product at noon, it might set the price range from $5.99 to $10.99. Then the software of seller of the $5.99 product does a price check at four and bumps the price up to $6.49.

This is why you’ll also sometimes see insanely high prices. Some software is designed to automatically raise prices if other sellers are raising their prices. If two programs like this are running against each other, they’ll start up a price raising cycle.