David Harris wrote:
David Harris wrote: That said at Gencon and GHC the last couple years, probably less new players tried out the game as the existing player base was especially energized to run runs as they had been denied playing in person and might also have had a greater appetite since they have actually been playing more through VTD. Which has also greatly effected the economy as VTD as brought many more tokens into circulation than during the only in-person days of yore.
So to put this in supply and demand terms. Supply do to more treasure pulls and 10 packs from VTD + likely higher overall token sales (due to increase in auctions completed) has gone up. Demand which is harder to gauge has likely also grown, but at a smaller rate than supply. This has resulted in lower prices on the secondary market. Most trade goods (other than DS and MH) are lower than a few years ago, gold is lower, relic, legendary and even PYP values are overall lower.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just the effect of the economic factors. Much like the stock market or gold prices, prices go up and down. So will token prices. However, most will want the overall value to go up in the long-term, not sure that is were we are headed or not. For prices to go back up we either need less supply OR higher demand.
You're missing a key ingredient on why prices of trade goods and things like PYPs keeps dropping in 8k auctions.
In short, the "value" of the 8k auction keeps going up. Here is a potentially incomplete lists:
1) Starting in 2015, Dragon Orbs were added as a reward item. Auctions weren't really a thing back in 2015, so the effect wasn't as visible as other things on this list. If auctions were a thing back then, adding the dragon orb would have deceased the price of all the other things in the auction by a net of $500-1000. Dragon orbs have been replaced by Marks and are currently "using" about $600 in value from the auction.
2) Patron codes got dramatically more valuable. A Patron run used to only happen at Origins, and the patron token wasn't necessarily all that good. Now Patrons can book VTD earlier than anyone else, Patron runs happen twice virtually (no need to travel), and the reward UR is a top tier, better than PYP UR. Increasing value of the patron code means all the other things in the auction decrease by a net of around $400-500.
3) Grunnel Minor favors have been added, on and off, to auctions in the last year. They have been going for around, 150(ish), thus decreasing the new total for the auction to fund by that amount.
4) Auctioneers have been running supplemented auctions on and off. A supplemented auction generally adds around 300-500 in value of non auction items, thus further decreasing the price of the other items
All together, there are up to $1400 in "extras" in 8k auctions, and these auctions have had a pretty consistent closing price of 7500. If you spread that 1500 out evenly over the PYPs and trade goods, it's no real surprise both have dropped over the years.