I bet all neopet users have noticed things getting a little pricey. When I first found the Hidden Tower the Baby Paint Brush was worth 200,000 neopoints. Go look at the price now! You may ask “Why is everything going up?” Well, I have one word for you: inflation.
Websters defines inflation as “a general and progressive increase in prices”. This is due mostly to the growing number of users. The more people there are, the less people can get a certain object. I can see most of your faces right now, and you’re pretty confused, right? So let’s use an example:
Let’s say a String of Lights costs 3000 NPs* in May of 2004. Another year rolls around, and 500,000 people join the site. Now if you were to buy a String of Lights, it would cost 6000 NPs*. You are confused to why this is. Well, it’s because there’s so many people buying String of Lights. This makes the object more rare, causing a boost in the objects value.
Now you’re thinking “Well that’s just not true! When I look at the value of the object in my inventory, it hasn’t changed at all!” That’s true, but not entirely right. But look up the item using the shop wizard. The item is most likely posted quite a bit more expensive than you would have thought. This is why it’s a bad idea to use the estimated value for the price you want to sell an object for. The object will sell quickly, but you could have made more NPs if you would have used the prices on the shop wizard!
NOW you’re thinking “Well, yes that’s mostly true, but what about objects that have gotten cheaper over the years?” I’m not sure what’s exactly going on here. But I can give you a very educated guess. This is deflation, which is the exact opposite of inflation. Since more people are joining the site, there are more items being put out there. Also, it could just be the from the battle of who has the cheapest items in their shop. Put a Tiki Christmas Decoration in your shop. If you were to price it at 900 NPs (the estimated value) you wouldn’t sell it. Why? Well just take a look at other people selling Tiki Christmas Decorations! Go to the shop wizard, type in the name, and the lowest prices are around 25 NPs. You’re wondering why this is, I bet. So we’ll use another example.
User A has a Tiki Christmas Decoration. She puts it in her shop, pricing it at 800 NPs*. User B also has a Tiki Christmas Decoration. She puts it in her shop, but doesn’t price it yet. She looks at other shops prices using the shop wizard, and sees User A’s price is the lowest. So User B prices the Tiki Christmas Decoration for 700 NPs*. User C does the same thing as User B, and prices her Tiki Christmas Decoration at 600 NPs*. This is a chain, and soon enough the price gets so low it’s not even valuable anymore.
I would love to put a stop to this, but sadly, that would be impossible. I once priced everything in my shop slightly lower than the estimated value, and received several neomails saying that all of my items were overpriced! I didn’t understand, but then I looked at all of the other shops prices. I realized I would never sell anything that way and quickly lowered my prices.
This isn’t fun at all. You have to work twice as hard playing games and selling items. But it will never end, so you might as well get used to it. Everything will either be affected by inflation or deflation, in the real world or a virtual one.
* Simply an example used. – rawken_chika