Tip from Val about speculation
Personally, I don't believe in speculating. Only if it is things like a valentines day ring, to sell in february, or a halloween paint brush, to be sold around halloween time. Still, it takes up cash just "holding" an item for a long period. I mean you could buy something for 200k, and in 4 months, it'll be worth 400k. But think, in all that time, could you have used that 200k to invest and buy and sell items, and made way more than 400k in the end? If you have tons of extra cash, great. You can speculate. If not, don't do it.
Anyway, I got this tip from val, it's about speculation of the items in neopets. I thought it was good advice for someone who has been around a while. I have only played neopets for 3 months total, and only know about short term profits, but this was good insight for those who plan to play for a long period of time.
It starts with a response about me posting this on this page here. This whole essay was all sent over neomail, after I asked about the price of baby paint brushes, like speculation about whether it would rise or fall. (Baby paint brushes were valued at 470k at the time, 500k in the hidden tower).
Sure you can add it if you like. But NO don't have everyone start buying baby Pb's! I don't want to burn at the stake if neo gets cocky and drops them to 200k or something again! LOLOLOL! But yeah, it's always been something I've wondered about. Paintbrushes and battledome items seem to be the best bet when it comes to price inflation. Always a high demand for those while plushies, neggs (unless they have a special ability),foods, petpets, dolls..well, those can come up and down...usually down because they don't DO anything any only have "collector value". ;) And if baby PB becomes retired, it will still be useable, keeping it's value high, unlike some other PB's that became retired but suddenly were "collector items" because they quit painting pets. I'll explain that one in a second...
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The reason I noticed was the ones that became unuseable was because they included pets that had makeovers. Since baby PB's pet images are very different from the original full-scale pets, I doubt makeovers will affect them in the future, unless the pull something very drastic like they did with Bruce (from human game show host to a penguin). ;) So if they wanted to keep a brush like that with such a crazy makeover change on a few pets, they'd have to have the painted images relating to those pets with the brush redrawn to fit...and because that's too much hassle, they retire them and make them unuseable. But yeah, when you think about it....if you were working for Neo, wouldn't you goal be to get as many people as possible to play, and be sure they KEEP playing? Inflating prices on desirable "goal" items makes that a reality. I think those guys are a lot smarter businessmen than most people give them credit for. ;)
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