Saw some spots that I wanted to clean up real quick:
July Lioness (2012) came out Rare and only turned VR in 2013 (but yeah, the August (E)PPS Lion was VR from the start, interesting case...)
Raven went VR in late 2011* and from what I understand, it was placed alongside the Patchwork because the Raven's demand 'balanced' its greater supply
(so I imagine it went something like this:
Patchwork -> this much supply [VR], neutral demand, let's place it on x tier
Raven, compared to the Patchwork, has greater supply [R] that would lower its tier but it has higher demand that would raise it back up.... let's put it on the same tier as the Patchwork)
The post that Crestalia linked earlier (I'm bouncing in my seat eagerly, btw) has a filtered timeline of when certain pets went VR
* can also use this link to find that the Tier 7 Advent 2008 dogs went VR in early 2011, and yes that includes the Black Advent--so... remind me how many Tier 7 advents a high September is worth? the BA is not significantly rarer than its buddies from the same litter at Tier 7, but demand and lower circulation numbers (more likely to be kept or hoarded, therefore less likely to be trade fodder compared to its littermates) kicked its placement up to a spot that's worth 7??? of its buddies...
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Does anyone remember that one suggestion a while back that was like combining rarity and demand, but only shifting pets based on demand within certain rarity groups? (e.g. so that the OMGSR pet with the worst demand would still be placed higher than the VR pet with the most absurdly sky-high demand)
The current list is like that, except the rarity groups aren't marked and there's basically one rarity group per litter or even per pet (and the rarity group is usually eyeballed by active traders based on how many they find for trade and how many they see people posting about in certain threads) and the rarity groups also overlap. ahaha...
so that's why we keep saying "no we're not moving the BA/Raven up any further"--because they already hit their limits in their rarity groups, which... weren't explicitly marked