Personally.. I don't know how set I am in making a trading guide with exact valuations anymore. I think Horror might have that one down (if you guys wanna do that, I'm all for it, but I have an adult life with adult things to do and I realized that actively maintaining a guide is probably.. going to be a lot of work, that I don't have the time/energy for.)
I think I'm most interested in making a guide that will give people the rarity history and confirmed or researched data by the community for each pet, and letting each person decide what values they want to put on them while only using objective information.
I recently spoke with somebody who was online and involved in old pet data research back in 09, and got some information from them. They contacted me directly and answered a ton of my questions, but asked to not be named in their private message, so I'm not going to name-drop them here. So if you're wondering where I got the below information from, it's from them. I am also hoping that Solloby can back up some of this information.
Pre-guide preface:
General Advice here- like how it used to be plausible to count pets on Dec 18th and chart their growth to see what pets turned into what, making the ratio easy to determine.
I.E. For every 5 Nonjewels there was 1 Sunjewel, or how for every 3 Nonjewels there was 1 Sunback.
How Tess would actually drop some information here and there. And to take all information put here with a grain of salt as, despite the research done, a lot of these pets have likely changed ratios since 2008-2009 due to both rereleases and the inactivity of accounts. And the obligatory "We encourage everyone to come up with their own valuation of these pets, based on their own personal preferences, this guide is only here to give people a deep-dive into the rarity
history of high value pets, not their present."
Then separate into sections with general information about each litter, how they were placed on the original list, etc.
Section Example:
The Sorbets - July 2008Back in (2008 and/or 2009, Idk the exact year) the valuation of the Sorbets was directly calculated by users and some information was released by Tess. Keep in mind that valuations change over the years, but these are the original data points that were used.
- Tess said that all Sorbets had an equal chance of being adopted. Any One Sorbet is not significantly rarer than the other.
-Tess said that there were about 4 Sorbets out there for every Non pet. This is where the initial 4 Sorbs for a Non valuation came from. (This is because, due to Nons being more common than all of their other littermates, they were often deleted in favor for their other littermates.)
-Sorbets released mid-month July 2008 and stayed until August 2008.
-Original Sorbet value was separated at one point because some people decided that flop-ear dogs were better than straight-ear dogs, and so the green and blue sorbets spiked in demand.
-The next time a Sorbet's value was spiked unnecessarily, was when the Pink Sorbet hit OMGSR first. People started valuing it higher than its other littermates.
+Information that I don't have right now about rarity updates. Mentioning the Pink Sorb's brief jump to OMGSR first, etc.
Helpful Resources for how to trade these pets:
[Link to successful trades "Sorbet" search term]
[Link to successful C$ trades "Sorbet" search term]
Information Gained From:
-Word of mouth from 08-09 Players
-[Link to any other thread/guide of evidence]
Personally I'd be looking for any information i could put on the above kind of thread, especially the exact tess quotes from old discussion.
I'm paraphrasing here, but here are a few things I learned from my questioning!
I learned that the old Rares List didn't really poll for demand or anything upon its first inception, polls didn't exist on CS when it was made. Quote "50 or so" users were active in participation on the forum thread, and those 50 or so users are who decided original placement.
If there were 30 people discussing pet worth, and a few people didn't agree, they went with majority rules. But basically, in order for your opinion to count, there was no polling. You had to be active in the conversation on the forum post.
Rarities were introduced while the rares list was already developed. Because of the way rarities were back then, and comments directly from Tess, they were able to place pets on the rares list accordingly. It was actually very accurate back then.
They knew about the toxics back then as well, the division of Green/Yellow, Red/Blue, and Purple was not just out of thin air. Tess herself gave hints as to which pets were rarer, and they literally counted each litter's growth on Dec 18th and deduced what ones had a more likely growth rate. It's also how they knew that the Non is always the least valuable out of the litter, and how they came out with worth from that.
Ex: Noncoon and coontail, there were typically twice as many noncoons as coontails, hence the coontail is worth 2 nons.
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That's just some of it, I don't wanna dump everything into one post because it was rather lengthy, but I do think that when we value pets in a new guide, shouldn't they also be based on the ratios of each pet in each litter? I think it'd be silly to value a Sunback over a Sunjewel again. If we include demand at all it should be like Horror's List does it.
I think in the new guide, all sorbs should swap evenly. I think we should do Dec 18th research again and see if anything has changed. How many Sun Dogs grow into Nons vs Sunbacks vs Sunjewels? Etc.
I think we should value them accordingly, and then if any one pet has extraordinary demand, make a note.
I think the place we "start" is the same place the old Rares List started, then we take into account the OMGSR Popularity poll and make notes on pets accordingly.
--
I agree that there's no "Most Valuable Pet" on CS. If I had to take a shot in the dark I'd make it the Sunjewel outside of Store pets and URs, I'd say it's one of the URs if we're including those but we have no real way of knowing what one outside of the idea that the more years a UR is out, unlike other URs, the less rare it is. But can that even be calculated?
If "X" copies of the UR Cat was released in 2008, and the same numerical "X" value of the UR Cat was released in 2009, along with the same "X" number of the UR Dog, then technically there would be twice as many UR Cats out there as UR Dogs.
But I don't think that's true. And it would also scale exponentially.
So are all URs worth the same? What if it's that "X" UR Cats were released, then less of them were released the next year while the UR Dog still had the same amount as the first year? It'd still be exponential but not as much.
I'd love to do a UR Count this Dec 18th to see how many people get new URs versus people who got old URs. Is the Tiger Dog actually any more rare than other URs? Or is it just more popular?
Idk where Zebras go to be honest. I'm biased against them because I don't like them, but from an as objective as I'm going to get POV..
I think if we have tiers, that Zebras should.. maybe go under the URs a little bit? Or if URs have their own "List" then to put Zebras towards the bottom. Maybe not at the very bottom, but in that direction.
Just from my personal take on how Zebras work. There aren't many adopted throughout the year, but they are adopted on dates outside of Dec 18th, so that's where I would theorize they go. But I could totally be wrong, and I'm more than willing to be wrong. Before we decide anything I actually wanna do more research into it outside of "They can be adopted at any time so they're probably less rare".
It also just doesn't sit right with me that 3 Pets
that have boring designs and look the exact same were intended to be the Rarest Pets on the site. I know that
is the case, but they couldn't have chosen something.. cooler? lol
Was it the intent to make the zebras boring so that the only demand boost they'd get is being known as the 'rarest pets on the site'? Or does Tess just
really like Zebras? I don't like the Zebras, but I'd totally accept the "Tess is a Zebra Lover" headcanon.
Maybe we could run an off-site adoption calc where we have a few of us adopt Ponies while logged out until we get a few Zebras, then we run those numbers. Kind of like shiny hunting. Feels very silly, but potentially more reliable than trying to find out how many Ponies are adopted every month and then trying to poll people on the forums of "Did anyone get a Zebra???"
