Vendors do that so they can track pricing over time. Unless you have an actual listing, Amazon provides no mechanism to see when your competitors re-price their

Vendors do that so they can track pricing over time. Unless you have an actual listing, Amazon provides no mechanism to see when your competitors re-price their listings (without regular scraping, of course, which Amazon frowns on). So if it's a product you would list (but currently don't have in stock), you can just list it with an absurdly high price, gather pricing history, and once you do have it available, list competitively.