I have to agree with Sandy, sounds like the dealer is attempting to so a little "secondary" market sort of thing. However, the dealer did not have to pay extra for the 2-digit pieces as long as the pieces were purchased from HL.

I have seen a dealer do something like this though, once a piece was retired, this dealer was charging more for that retired piece. He did that until Bill did a signing event at his store and found out about it, and the practice immediately stopped!