Hi everyone. I'm gonna start slowly releasing small threads about showcase trading and my observations of the market. I recently got into box trading, which I thought would be dull because most people advertise them for chibis, but I quickly discovered that there are tiers of boxes that go deeper than I initually thought, and there are massive profit margins to be exploited. I often saw people selling boxes for 1 chibi each, half a chibi, or even sometimes 5 or 10 per chibi... So I tried to snag some of these deals and see just how much I could sell boxes for. A very popular box was the cursed box which I could often sell for 3 chibis each, then 5 each, then 7 each. Prior to that, the only box I knew about that sold for those sorts of rates was the Booster box which I occasionally sold for 10c each. But that lead me down a path of discovery as I set out on a quest to collect 20 of every box and also sell all of my extra boxes. My first discovery was (1) Old boxes are bloody hard to find Especially the ones from before hunts. But when selling these I had an issue. Many of those who were buying boxes from me were only buying them to open (a terrible waste of ecs btw, which I let them know after they traded with me), and before a certain date, boxes couldn't be accessed with PIMkeys and are thus unable to be opened. I'm gonna lay out my buy/sell rate here because it worked. My buy rates: 1 or 1/2c per box, doesn't really matter what box. Someone out there who isn't into box trading will have sone lying around and probably sell for this rate. For more people 2c per box is irrefusable, no matter the reputation the box has. The rates on these boxes is often low, but the rarity of some of them means you'll be looking around for ages before finding one. I think this is what makes selling the rarer ones so easy. My sell rates Current hunt: 1-2c per box These are cool because there are so many. People will often give away their extras, and people are still working on opening then. Older hunt: 2-3c per box These older hunt boxes are pretty boring. The avis and furni they drop aren't so hot or well valued anyway. I'm not so much in touch with furni, but if you trade furni, you should have a good feel for which sets of furni suck, and why people wouldn't pay much for the hunt's boxes. Older hunt but popular: 3-5c/box This is a smaller set of boxes containing Countdown (5), Pinecone (4), Valentines Day (3), Bewitching (3), Soulmatr (4), and many other types of boxes. The rate is partially based off of age with older boxes being rarer and harder to get and sometimes kissing 6c each. The rate is also based off of the value of the furni of the hunt which exemplifies itself in the next category: Furni boxes: Double the cost of related hunt box. Most people open boxes for furniture, and having an almost guaranteed furni drop from furni boxes means that furniture boxes are much more highly valued than regular hunt boxes and usually become rarer at a much higher rate due to them being opened tonnes. There aren't many furni boxes that I've managed to sell and my rate on this is shaky but 8-10c each seems to be more or less normal for most furni boxes. Black Friday: BF boxes, new and old, all seem extremely popular. Pretty easy to get 6-8c for each of them. The exceptional boxes: These boxes vary quite a bit and are just from super popular hunts where so many people have hoarded and opened the boxes that their values have changed significantly: Cursed boxes (7c) and Booster boxes (10c) seem to be the most relevant ones in here. There is a massive grey area between these and the more popular old hunt box category. Countdown boxes, Booster boxes, and a few others might be on the borderline between this category and that. Box collecting seems to be super popular atm with the relatively low cost of 2 boxes per chibi being readily available. You can collect 80 boxes or roughly 2 yeard worth of them for just 2 bentos if you're patient and play your cards right, and this makes your showcase swagalicious especially if you're new and don't have much else in it. They are also super satisfying to collect, and for all you completionists out there, you should also be interested in collecting keys because they were functionally the same as boxes, only older. Before we earnt boxes and opened them with keys purchased from store, things were flipped. You earnt keys (through different means) and used them to open boxes purchased in store. Some hunts even had common and rare keys that opened different boxes containing prizes of different quality. Some of the very old keys are impressive collectors items, being worth more than 20 bentos each. Approximate values of these keys: Skate key: 6c Guitar key: 6c Jocktober Spigot: 6c Winged key: 8c Jocktober Pack: 10c Skeleton Key: 12c Calavera box: 12c Awesome Pineapple: 15c Halfshell Prize Pack: 25c HootPS: 25-30c Key to Freedom: 1o Cutecake Key: 2o Brews Key: 5o Valeryous Steel Lighter: 6o Brews Key: 6o Glow Kicks: ~12-15o Key to Stardom: 20+o Much the same as with the harder-to-find boxes, many people will probably be unaware of just how hard these items are to find and will sell them cheaply, but it is precisely because of this rarity, and the infrequent rate of trade with these keys that their prices are little known, why people might also refuse to trade or have an asking price for them, and why I'm here to share.
Wow that's crazy high prices. The only boxes I've bought are black friday furni boxes because the furniture comes leveled which means I get better sale value for them, and I buy them like 3-5 per chibi.
Also interesting to note is that with current hunt boxes,prices start out at 1:4c and eventually decline to 10:1c. Within the first 3-5 hours of a hunt beginning they're at 1:4c. After about 10 hours of a hunt beginning they're at about 3:1c. About 16-20 hours after a hunt begins they're at about 1:1 and can stay like that up to 48 hours but ordinarily thereafter they begin to go for 2:1c / 3:1c or more, so your set price is somewhat off from a buyer's standpoint. A key factor in the market is buyer price. I could sell a cat for 5 bentos if I wanted to but that doesn't mean the market will accept it because most people who buy cats only buy for 3 bentos at this point. That doesn't mean I won't stumble upon someone ignorant to the value of items who will take it for 5 bentos, it just means I'm gonna wait a long time and dig deep to find that dear idiot.
You didn't even mention boxes dropping shards. They're quite popular, as there are many newer players interested in collecting older avatars, and shards have allowed them to do so. Some are obviously more popular than others. The older they get, the harder to find, the more people are willing to spend on some of the popular ones.
O yes, also, opening boxes isn't a total waste of ecs, especially the older ones. They have a decent chance of dropping a dns and a bento piece. I'd rather spends 10ecs on a key to open a chance box than 10ecs straight on a dns. I don't think I'll get into opening the newer ones that don't have the dns though myself.
Would like to add that I didn't put much detail into the lowest buying prices because of the very low amount of time that those price fluctuations occur in. I don't buy boxes at the start of the hunt because they're worth more, but for the majority of the item's life, it will be cheap, between 1/2 and 1c to purchase. I haven't really found any sellers with such nuanced prices. I didn't think of the shard/maeve drop difference in terms of price. Not something I've noticed yet on top of the general appreciation of older boxes. The selling price here is what you, the reader, can sell them for, the buying price is what you can buy them for. Many of you are familiar with the costs to buy boxes from people, but if you choose to sell for more, the prices mentioned in this thread, you will be able to. It's not an insta-sell price, as if you are selling items consistently and instantly, that pretty much always means that your price is too low and should be raised. Hope this clears up any confusion.
The box with the antique shards is probably particularly popular. I always see people asking for antique rings et cetera in wc.
Yeah lots of people been asking for encores boxes. Haven't played with its price before to see its cost.
People ask for them a lot, but still at about 1:1c. Interestingly, antique rings go about 2:1c, probably because often more than 1 drops from a box. They're nice to open though, because you can get antique rings, zodiac shards, and a dns off 1 🙆🏻♀️😁
... If one box is a ½ chibi, then you have to buy 2 boxes. It's just a way of making all of the ratios [box amount]:1 chibi.