Let's talk about UC prices

[Drizzy]

Well I'm glad you guys brought up some points
In my experience setting a range does not work
Selling is a competition on here so all the sellers will always pick the lowest end of the range
It eliminates the purpose of having a range if everyone advertises the same quote
If I have to make a sale, and there's 4 other people advertising on the lower end, I'm not gonna be the chump asking for higher
It goes without saying but ranges do not work ever, people always go lowest
It would be possible is the market was flush and you were fat stackin benjies and movin mad volume but it's not, and it has not been that way for many years

Also, I'm not sure if having fixed prices is a good idea afterall. Other blackmarket/cheating forums that sell and buy stuff don't have a set price and you can sell for whatever price you want. So if someone decides to sell a VWN UC Faerie Draik for $100 let them do it, I think. I'm not sure. That should be their choice. Someone will get a bargain, but someone loses out on money they could have potentially gotten because they were desperate to sell it quickly probably to pay the bills or something. That being said - Am I missing something as to why the fixed prices were put in in the first place? XD

Well.... if you recall the price guide was just a guide back in the day
It was designed to help help newbies not get ripped off but people started wyldin out selling Faerie Draiks for $100 "quicksales"
Those "quicksales" boards lasted 4/5 months and all the while the value of pets started depreciating.
So people start "quickselling" everything and before you know it, everything turned to shit and the UC market would have been dead.
Because why is anybody going to pay $80 for a Faerie Wocky when they can get the Draik? Wockys would become $30
How does that affect Baby Kougras? $5? So we're selling Mutants and some Darigans for $2 then?
We eventually had to use it to enforce the prices because nobody can be trusted to do the right thing lol

I do agree with the sentiment that raising the highest tier pets in price won't do much good for sellers or buyers. They'll be too expensive to buy for the high risk of owning one

Is that not part of the allure though?
I mean I understand the sentiment but the most expensive pets, if they are no longer the most expensive, will become first choice for the average buyer
They will take over and eventually be worth less than what they are now and you'll end up with a whole new tier system.
If anything I feel the pricing criteria has been reflective of the tiers, especially the high ends, so that's always been the part about pricing that's made the most sense to me not the least

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The point most of you are making is as experienced buyers or have plenty of knowledge on how the PC works
Not everybody is like that, many of the people I sell UCs to are told specifically to stay away from the boards or have no contact for months to naturalise the pet
But in the end, the people that will probably benefit the most are the people with experience because the value of their pets will rise the most significantly

[aboogala]

Though I agree that UCs have become increasingly rare in the past few years, the number of neopets users + buyers have decreased as well. It has been a buyer's market for awhile now (and for good reason) because there are just way more UCs for sale than people interested in buying. Increasing the prices of UCs will make them even more difficult to sell imo. I think many sellers would prefer a quicker sale, rather than raising prices and waiting longer for a sale.

[nymbly]

But why is selling an UC Faerie Draik for $100 wrong, and selling for $200 is right? Who decides? If a "quick selling" UC Faerie Draik is sitting for months priced at $100, then maybe even that price is too high for the market demand. Realistically the pets don't have inherent value-- most of the sellers selling spent time going through old accessible accounts, but they don't lose money if they sell for $100 instead of $200.

If someone is leaving Neopets and only has one or two pets to sell, and it takes many months to sell them at the auto-buy price, who has that kind of time to devote to a game you're trying to get out of? This would make sense if the market was brisk and could support it, but in my experience it wasn't and I eventually just gave up. I came back to it and have sold it now, but it was a months long process. If I was trying to liquidate and go I would have likely just given up. I see plenty of boards in the Trades section that end up endlessly bumped for many months. The process was frustrating for me.

I did end up buying a pet here and I LOVE the name and I know it came from a very secure seller, so I am fine with paying more for that and I'm very happy with my purchase! But I won't buy more pets here, I simply think they are all across the board priced too high. And as a seller I would have much rather sold for less and sold more quickly, because after awhile it does become about time invested, and the more of your own time you take up with advertising, communicating back and forth with reluctant buyers, responding to offers, etc. eats away at your final price too.

The market must fluctuate-- at any given time there's only so many players, only so many pets, etc. And the buyer is taking on a financial risk that the pet just might end up frozen anyway. Either way I am out of the buying and selling game and plan to enjoy my one bought pet as just that, a one-off that I was happy to splurge on (and really hope that I get to enjoy for a long time). But I wonder how healthy the market will be if the prices keep going up. And it's really telling that the bottom would just fall out of the whole market without price fixing.

[Cherry Soul]

I think a few adjusts would be better, of course!
But in general, the price guide is very trustworthy and I always use it for my sales!
I am always up to help!

[Goddammit]

It was designed to help help newbies not get ripped off but people started wyldin out selling Faerie Draiks for $100 "quicksales"
Those "quicksales" boards lasted 4/5 months and all the while the value of pets started depreciating.
---
An idea for "quicksales" could be to limit the time frame a quick sale could go on for. Like, say it becomes a rule that someone can do a quick sale for a maximum of a week and if it doesn't sell by then, well it goes back up to it's regular price. I don't know how realistic that is or even if it would be a good idea, but it might be a good idea to work on some sort of system that allows sellers to have flash sales or something? Or maybe do a site-wide flash sale once a year or something that sellers can choose if they want to participate in.

[Shiny Espurr]

I'm of the opinion that the correct and fair price for something is one that both the buyer and seller agree to. I think if the prices set here are too high, it may just lead people to simply buy/sell from other sites. I would like to suggest a tier pricing guide? Maybe have the UCs prices evenly across their tier. As it stands, certain pets from the same tier have wildly differing, inconsistent prices.

[Hawaiian]

The biggest problem that I've noticed personally is when trying to sell at the listed prices as a rather newer member. Most buyers I'd assume are similar to me in the sense that if all the prices are set then why would I risk buying from anyone but the top reputable sellers who have been selling for years on the forum? I know that some buyers do purchase from newer members such as myself because of time-constraints but when it comes to larger ticket items I noticed that many potential buyers opted out of our trades to go the "safer" route with more reputable members. Due to this in the past I've had to find other means of advertising/selling off-site. Not really a problem for myself anymore as I've stop trading/selling. Not really sure what the best solution is or if there is any that exists but figured I'd post in-case there are other users who are currently facing these issues and would have their issues exacerbated by increasing/decreasing current prices.

[Goddammit]

I'm of the opinion that the correct and fair price for something is one that both the buyer and seller agree to. I think if the prices set here are too high, it may just lead people to simply buy/sell from other sites. I would like to suggest a tier pricing guide? Maybe have the UCs prices evenly across their tier. As it stands, certain pets from the same tier have wildly differing, inconsistent prices.

That's because there's like, this unspoken tier within the tier systems. Some pets in tier X are just going to be more popular/more sought after/more rare/more common etc, even in the lower tiers. In general, a uc mutant lupe is more popular than a uc mutant meerca, a uc fae kougra will be easier to find than a uc darigan bruce, speaking in the trading sense.

[Cherry Soul]

Yeah, true! PC is more addicted to VWN pets than ever.
For example, vwn uc darigan grarrls are now being traded for very higher tiers.

[babzy]

Yeah, true! PC is more addicted to VWN pets than ever.
For example, vwn uc darigan grarrls are now being traded for very higher tiers.

Yeah, names are key to prices because if you have a BN UC, it seems that people aren't interested in trading with you unless it's 2-3 tiers lower. Things are going nuts.

I saw that grarrl advertised. What did it go for?