If I put my house up for auction for $1 and it sold $100,000, is this mark up 'insanity'? Or do people use things other than the initial price to determine value?

You have shown repeatedly that you don't understand value, only price. And you use it in your guide arbitrarily (this is your methodology everyone is talking about that you have admitted excludes important factors in determining long term value) to decide whether something is a 'good investment'. Your methodology is bad which creates bad conclusions.