Seasonal wrote:People only want the Skelebun now because they've realized its fate.
That being said, I don't think that the Skelebun/Cerberus and Corgis/Dragoncat PPS are comparable in this way. The old store pets are not just worth a lot because of demand; there just weren't a lot of people who bought them. They were a bit expensive for just one pet, and even many active players (such as myself) were either too young to spend money on a virtual game, or didn't want to spend their real life money on what is essentially pixels on a screen. I think that with the recent changes in the world and virtual things becoming way more prevalent, this mentality has shifted, but back in 2010 I don't think that many people were keen on spending real money on something they didn't perceive as real. Plus, I'm not sure that in 2010 people expected CS to stay around for a very long time like it has. Today's CS economy is much different; you don't have to spend real money to get C$. There's tons of C$ floating around that can be traded for relatively easily. Getting 70 C$ every two months is very doable for most people.
Compared to the corgi set and the dragon set, a lot more of them were bought. Yes, they will never be re-released, so they will always theoretically climb in value very slowly over time. But, I don't think they would become unattainable in the same way that the old store pets will; it would take many, many years for that to happen, and realistically I don't think CS will be around long enough to see that happen. I would guess that there are less than 1,000 of each of the old store pets whereas there are probably thousands upon thousands of those newer sets. I think their demand has risen because so many people are hopeful that they will become super rare, but it's just not going to happen.
This is a really good point. I think I'm also being swept up in a bit of the fear of newer store pets going the way of the skelebun, trying too hard to adjust my mental models according to new trends, but have not thought about it very rationally / in terms of actual numbers. Even if CS stayed around for the next 50+ years, it would still have to grow proportionally over a much larger existing user base to hit the same low rate of Dragon PPS per player as there currently are Skelebuns per player. Leads me to wonder what the growth rate of CS has been over time... is there data available on this, or only indirectly through rarity changes?
Also can very much relate to being young in 2009 and not in a position where I could access real money (esp. in the form of card or pay pal) to spend, but all of us who have been around since then by definition are adults by now and CS$ does feel a whole lot easier to come by.
The problem arises when I want to trade my omgsr rat for 50 rares but the other person values it at 25. I have two options we can compromise and find some mid ground or I can move on and find someone who values it about where I do.
Actually I used to dream about building a trade system (I'm now a programmer by profession, so I guess even by nature this is still exciting to me) where every player could submit an "offer" and other users could browse this marketplace and either put up their own or complete an offer they saw. The system would match and complete compatible offers (ie., I offer X for Y, another player offers Y + Z for X - this is compatible and X/Y would be exchanged; there could even be some system for splitting the difference of Z).
That said I don't think an official open marketplace like this would be good for the game, because it would clear the market *too* efficiently and take away the fun. Mostly imagined it as an unrealistic but very lucrative side-operation to be able to scale up the work of finding and making the right trades haha :)
Anyway, besides enjoying the art, trying to understand the economy and how to grow value in it is what has kept me checking back on CS all these years. The change is a bit shocking but at least not boring, and this discussion is great!
). I wasn't sure about the unickcorn or ur butterfly wolf (they aren't as popular a species as dogs, so people undervalue them a lot).