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I can't say I pay attention to much of that. I don't do much buying or selling.

It's all about supply and demand. If supply exceeds demand, prices drop. If demand exceeds the supply, prices skyrocket. Factors that affect the market: glitches, new items, time of year, NPC storyline, long-term investors. All of these factors cause dramatic spikes and valleys in item prices. A few examples:

Halloween 2k5 #2 gift - since Jack glitched and would only give out #2's, the #2 gift became almost worthless while all other gifts were quite valuable. But now that halloween is over, the demand is gone and the halloween market has crashed.

Jolly hats - Again, massive in December as people created their holiday outfits. Now that the holidays are over, prices are crashing and they'll surely return to the 5-7k they were in November.

Donation items - Right after release, a majority of the gaian economy is centered around those items. This causes a drop in all other items until the populace gets bored of the new items.


There are also many oldbie market whore's with 1 million+ pure gold who can EASILY manipulate the market. In the past month, the vending guilds have been abuzz about what to invest in over the long term - and the guitars were the most talked about. One vendor said he had collected 100 of each guitar AND he was hording the letters. This, along with the easy gold from the x-mas event has caused guitars to jump from 12k to 20k.


As you can see, the market isn't REALLY crashing. If it appears to be crashing on items you are watching, it indicates that other items are booming.