What happened to Neopia's economy?

[Secretly A Pony]

I returned to Neopets after six years, and maybe it's simple economics (which I have never been good at), but I am surprised at how many once-expensive items are now dirt cheap.

For example, the Snorkle Snout, a food item that grants you an avatar when fed to your pet, used to be close to 100,000 NP (maybe 75K?), if my memory is correct. Now, it's about 3,300 NP. One of my pets on my side account has an Angelpuss, which cost me something over 4,000 NP at the time. Now, it's about 450 NP on average.

I'm not complaining, but I'm curious. What gives? Even some morphing potions that were once in the hundreds of thousands are barely 5,000 NP now. System overhaul?

(On a different note, I am so glad we can price things for over 99,999 in our shops now!)

[Rayd1978]

Mostly more releases/ways to get things/people already have them.   Say the Snorkle Snout, I've no idea on the drops, but when the avatar came out, everyone wanted one, demand was high.   Now, if you care about avatars, you likely already have that one.  Demand is low, so price is low.
I don't know a specific example, but I'd bet a fairly cheap item 6 years ago, which was retired in the meantime, has shot up in price.
For Battledome items, a once top end item, and thus expensive, has been replaced with other more powerful items, so demand and price drop again.
All sorts of factors in play.

[discobiscuit]

I remember the Angelpuss being given away as part of an event recently, which explains that particular price drop.

I remember being shocked at the change in prices when I returned after many years away.   I don't think there's a single change causing it.  For example, the Coincidence (was an event, now a daily) disrupted the price of a lot of cheap garbage items, but that doesn't explain why map piece prices are lower today than ten years ago. 

It could be that it's easier to earn np now.  The Forgotten Shore and Trudy's Surprise dailies easily push tens of thousands of np into your pockets each week, where ten years ago, having a bank balance above 100k was an actual stretch goal to have.

I like being able to buy nearly anything I put my mind to, so I don't view this as a negative, but I suspect this came about because the owners of Neopets (TNT, Jumpstart, ?) aren't concerned about balancing the economic aspect of the site.  Neopoints are less important than Neocash from a profit standpoint, so the effects of an event or giveaway aren't really thought through.  

[Kute]

Things are a bit different, many junk items of the past now sell for 10K easy. I do believe they work hard to help the economy. But a lot to do with it would be the increase to 999K in the shops. It's made true values come out since more items are readily available than there were thought to be with trading post only.  

[Nielo]

As others mentioned, some items were given out as prizes for events, others have simply been available for so long that they're incredibly common now. On the flip side, other items have shot up in price due to events/dailies like the Coincidence, as @discobiscuit mentioned, or for reasons beyond my understanding (most of the NeoDeck cards I still need have gone up an insane amount and I have no idea why).

JellyNeo has a price history on all the items in their item database, so you can check for each item when prices (drastically) changed. (For example, the Angelpuss dropped from 1,200 to 100 NP in early 2012 and has stayed below 1,000 NP ever since.)

[jellysundae]

Some of the steep price drops are from a previously hard to come by item becoming an easy to come by prize, like the poor Mazzew.

[Scoobert_Doo]

The Anchor Management daily:

http://www.neopets.com/pirates/anchormanagement.phtml

has caused the price of Pirate Morphing Potions to go down. Since the daily, more people are able to get them, so the price goes down.

As for the Snorkle Snout, not completely sure about that one, but I suspect not too many people are interested in the avatar, and, for now, most Neopians are seasoned players, or returning ones, who may already have the avatar. If there were a lot of "newbies", I'm sure the price would go up. I also believe this item does still stock in the Spooky Foods shop. It seems there are more "RSers" (ReStockers), so with more restocking, more of the Snorkle Snouts are in shops. The more there are, the more the price (usually) goes down.

[ikids]

11 hours ago, discobiscuit said:

It could be that it's easier to earn np now.  The Forgotten Shore and Trudy's Surprise dailies easily push tens of thousands of np into your pockets each week, where ten years ago, having a bank balance above 100k was an actual stretch goal to have.

Just wanted to mention that this actually causes the price of things to increase, rather than decrease.  Usually this is a very big issue in games, but I think the massive over-supply in items is causing the prices over all to shrink faster than the increased np supply can increase them

[discobiscuit]

12 hours ago, ikids said:

Just wanted to mention that this actually causes the price of things to increase, rather than decrease.  Usually this is a very big issue in games, but I think the massive over-supply in items is causing the prices over all to shrink faster than the increased np supply can increase them

That is a very good point.   Prices should have gone up.

The over-supply of items is interesting because I'm pretty sure less people are playing Neopets now than when it (and we) were young.  In order to have an over supply, there has to be more players getting the items, or at least a higher percentage of players getting the items and then selling them.

Am I overthinking this?  Could it just be that there are less players so demand is lower?  Or would that make prices go up because there's less competition?

[Secretly A Pony]

31 minutes ago, discobiscuit said:

That is a very good point.   Prices should have gone up.

The over-supply of items is interesting because I'm pretty sure less people are playing Neopets now than when it (and we) were young.  In order to have an over supply, there has to be more players getting the items, or at least a higher percentage of players getting the items and then selling them.

Am I overthinking this?  Could it just be that there are less players so demand is lower?  Or would that make prices go up because there's less competition?

Maybe those less people are buying certain items more? I think what ikids said makes sense. If there's a lot of supply, it's more easily accessible, and if one price is too high, you could go to the next user and get it for a lower price.

[splitting]

On 1/15/2019 at 7:58 AM, Rayd1978 said:

Mostly more releases/ways to get things/people already have them.   Say the Snorkle Snout, I've no idea on the drops, but when the avatar came out, everyone wanted one, demand was high.   Now, if you care about avatars, you likely already have that one.  Demand is low, so price is low.
I don't know a specific example, but I'd bet a fairly cheap item 6 years ago, which was retired in the meantime, has shot up in price.
For Battledome items, a once top end item, and thus expensive, has been replaced with other more powerful items, so demand and price drop again.
All sorts of factors in play.

I think a good example of prices that have gone up would be any stamp you could only get from a site event like GMC. Those are worth holding on to for a while when you get them because over time, there aren't more coming out so the price goes up.

On another note, although I hear a lot in the community about the number of users going down, honestly, I think we're doing good for a 20+ year old site!

[jellysundae]

23 minutes ago, splitting said:

On another note, although I hear a lot in the community about the number of users going down, honestly, I think we're doing good for a 20+ year old site!

The people who say that just aren't thinking straight, Neo was MASSIVE say 15 years ago, but, what competition did they have online then, what else did people have to do... My Space? Neo was the biggest thing out there so it was intensely busy. Of course the numbers have gone down since, but the fact is that it's still going strong now, despite enormous online competition for people's attention these days, that's what people need to be realising.