That's not how this works; by that logic, the cotton should not be priced at all as that involves the same trader. There are scenarios where this bears weight for the outcome of this suggestion when it shows that the trader is objectively making bad decisions (e.g. paying 300 pure to resell for 200 pure, which simply means he destroyed 100 pure), but nothing here says 3000 is the "true" value and that the pan trade is not the "true" value. The truth is, there is no such thing as a true value, since that's subjective for everyone. The only thing we do here is provide estimated values for items based on what they sell for, so the trade for the pan is just another data point, just like this sale.

In reality, the pan sale is probably a much better pure estimate, as pans are the closest to pure you can get at this tier (aside from actual keys of course, but at this tier, that almost never happens). On the other hand, bulky sales like the pan one could be less reliable for anything that isn't the pan itself because its difficult to appraise every individual item in the trade. However, since the duck constitutes around 70% of the trade there (or rather, the stuff that was added is roughly ~30%), it's definitely fine to use it for suggestion purposes.

Especially when it concerns huge raises like these, it's always best to put sales in perspective, as it is not uncommon in such a case that you're dealing with an outlier. In many cases, there are no other sales to compare to, and then the sale is accepted as is. In this case, there's the rare opportunity to support the raise with a second data point, albeit a more conservative raise than to 3000 flat. It would require some minis, but a range with the pan sale will work there.

As for the cotton itself, it resold with 800 in hats for roughly ~900 worth of hats in return (which would put the cotton at ~100 keys which is obviously not correct)

https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561199161410455#!/compare/1646179200/1646265600

both view and cone are slightly outdated, but the most recent sale on the viewfinder is even lower, and the cone won't deviate enough to explain the difference, so its probably best not to update the spellbound cotton here as the sales here are too discrepant.