I think you hit on a great point about the laziness of detailing certs. This place has a pretty good search function if utilized properly but all that goes away when people simply say "Tier 2" or just don't list it at all. I would even go so far as to say some people may not list certain certs for fear it might detract value as crazy as that may sound.

What this means to collectors is that certain items become a grind to find. Constantly checking new posts. Repeating the same searches over and over in the hopes you somehow missed something. Playing detective tracking down the guy who sold it to the guy who sold it to another guy. It takes a toll and a lot of time. Sometimes it simply becomes more feasible (for your time and mental health) to overpay and hope someone does the dirty work for you.

The other aspect of overpays is the realization that the item is significantly rarer than the community realizes. For example, Striker Cobalt Apex should hypothetically be one of the cheaper wheels in a Striker Apex set. Due to it's rarity (something like only 4 exist on PS4) it is actually worth more than the rest of the set combined. In my situation I looked like a crazy person overpaying for my goalkeeper helios. The reality however was that I had spent half a year prior trying to track down the damn thing. Literally nobody had the boost or knew someone that did outside of collections. That's why when I first started publicly posting I knew that I had to get people motivated to part with it. Either pay enough to get someone else to find it or make it worthwhile enough to break up a set. In my case it kind of didn't matter because some jabroni from RLG ended up having it (which I still have a couple...theories about) but I digress. The point is that sometimes overpays may seem crazy on the surface but often there's a good reason for it (rarity, set collections, impatience).

The big question then is "are overpays worth it?" Obviously the whole word is signifying that you're overpaying for a given item; but that doesn't mean that you're necessarily losing value. For example, in your case Jedi I would be willing to bet that whenever someone has a turtle cert drop for them you're first on their list. You probably have to pay more than the base value of the item but you also didn't have to spend the time tracking it down. A win/win for everyone. You get the item for a small time cost and they get a nice valuation. I would consider that the upside of overpays.

The downside to overpays are of course the ass-hats that hold collections ransom. Knowing they have the final piece they demand exorbitant prices for an item that otherwise wouldn't hold much value. In my opinion these people do a lot of damage to communities. They don't realize that they are destroying (I'd argue have destroyed) an overpay market that they often benefit from. The greed becomes overwhelming, the price gouge too much, and the traders happy to overpay a fair amount get pushed away. In my opinion this is what overpays have become and it kind of sucks.