Neocolours

Note that neither I, nor anyone I know, have done this. Hence the "hypothetical". The PFC is entirely fictional.

Supposing there was a user, A, who was obsessed with, say... Pink Fuzzles. She got together with other Fuzzle fans and they formed the Pink Fuzzle Fan Club. To join, you had to have at least ten pink Fuzzles in your gallery, and the number kept rising as more people joined.

Supposing that the fanclub got really, really out of hand. To the point where they were taking over the HC and finding ways of making other Neopians' lives less fun.

And supposing another user-- let's call him B-- decided he didn't want so many people being able to join the club and annoy other Neopians. So, he went to the Super Shop Wizard, bought as many Pink Fuzzles as he could afford, and put them in his SDB.

The average price of a pink Fuzzle would now be considerably higher.

Could TNT do anything to B? After all, he could claim he was just an avid Fuzzle collector. Wouldn't any action against him then be unfair?

I believe that TNT stated in a recent editorial that storing large numbers of a particular item in your SDB, as you predict them to rise in price, is fine. Therefore, they could claim that they just think the item will rise in price in future months, because of the latest obsession with the item, and would be fine.

I think when TNT said it was okay to have lots of the same item in your SDB they didn't mean it was okay to take lots of an item out of circulation so prices of it rose. With things like volcano rocks or jellies or bottles of sand it doesn't matter because there are lots of them already and lots more coming into circulation. But if you bought up so many of an item that you caused the price to rise then that's much less legal. Whether it was because you wanted to sell on the item or because you wanted to stop other people from buying the item cheaply.

If the item was a cheap item and not of a high rarity then you'd expect it to be very difficult to lower the price because there would just be too many of the item to make it possible. I think it would also be rather mean to do that to an item which other people could want- even if the only reason people wanted it was just for a faerie quest, say.

That's funny, in a way, because there's something similar on subeta right now; a single user raised the price of red tanktops and old wizard panties, and probably more things, too. It's obvious it's her because she has >100 of each item in her shop, heh. If I were running a site and a user did that, I would absolutely freeze them. It's an asshole-ish thing to do.

The main problem would come if someone were to buy up every item available and then sell them for an inflated price, saturating the market artificially.

I used to buy vegan cheeses. I'd check every day or so for any under 300np and I'd buy them. I ended up with about 140 in the end and so I was keeping the price up at 300np artificially. Wasw that wrong? Not really, it's not a unique or useful item particularly, there's plenty of other food items. If it were, say, a healing potion or a powerful weaping I would say that is wrong. Keeping the price up, possibly out of the reach of a poorer player for no gain.

Pink fuzzles? Sounds fruity.

Slightly related, but I remember when the stockmarket used to be based on actual shares, and an entire guild bought a bunch, drove the price of the stock up, then sold them. The whole guild got frozen, whether they were in on it or not.

So I'm going to say buying an item to hugely inflate it is a no go, though TNT doesn't seem to care about people who have 150 two dubloon coins in their shop, or whatever, for slightly higher than the going price. In a way, that actually helps curb inflation.

I'm guessing your part of that Uni group, am I correct?

Not me. In fact, quite the reverse.

If a group of users form a conspiracy together to artificially raise the price of an item, that is freezable. If they all plan together and buy up cheap books and put them in shops at larger prices, that's a conspiracy. This requires at least 100 users, I would assume.

However, if a bunch of people independantly decide to buy a certain item, say codestones, because they predict it will naturally rise in price, that is called hoarding, which is totally legal. Many people build their entire bank account from hoarding. I suppose the difference between hoarding, and artificial price raising, is that hoarding is simply taking advantage of a natural price increase, not causing the price increase. Although, hoarding does actually increase the price, sometimes, but if the price rises only because of hoarding then the hoarders end up loosing money.

If you wanted to raise the price of Green Uni Morphing Potions, I think it would be an iffy situation. You definitely could not put the MPs in your shop, or you'd be frozen for artificially raising the price. If you bought a bunch and discarded them, it might be allowed. I don't think you'd have any long term success, though, because new GUMPs are constantly introduced to the economy through the Wheel of Excitement. The only way to really increase the price of GUMPs would be to join the group and encourage more people to take part of it, thereby increasing the demand for the item.