TCG duping ?

[Sights2020]

O.K.
This may not fit in the trade section. But since there are WoW economy implications, I decided to post here.

I have seen a troubling trend where some tcg pets are eclipsing 400 + available on US realms. The prices on high pop realms are dropping - I play on Stormrage where these types of numbers have been seen this week:
Soul trader -120k - 400 available us wide
Puffer-39k - 362 us wide (some carps earn more gold)
Grell-59k - 385 us wide
Dragon kite-120k - 415 available
Tuskarr kite- 79k - 432 available
Bananas 79k - 413 available us wide

Unless much of the player base is liquidating their pets... the high numbers available and cut-throat underpricing seem anomalous
You see 12 to 15 available of many of these pets which is new

Some people might say, all the better ..give me cheap pets .. but I open the topic for your input thx
An oddity of note: the Guardian cub- non tcg- also has inflated in number to 518 available US wide
I will offer one possible theory...perhaps gold goblins spent 5 mil on the long boi and are needing a quick easy gold re-infusion?
Tekulve

[Harpooha]

It is also possible that everyone who wants one already has one. And the price is sticky even if the demand isn't.

Duping has largely been disproved. No reason to beat this dead horse again.

[Sights2020]

I get 'sticky' whereby a price fluctuation settles at an artificially low rate... what I don't get is that tcg pets are not a renewable resource.The tcg game ended long ago, many, many accounts are inactive..just look at the last time many players on your realm last logged in. Therefore those pets are not in circulation.

The avg number of tcg pets normally available US wide is 240 to 300 .. now we see 400+all over the place.

The duping was never disproven, Blizzard admitted items and pets were compromised. ..some of you might remember the Tuskarr Kite and viscous horror in particular, inexplicably dropped like stones n value back in the day.

The prices are the lowest I've seen in a long while.. and of all the pets currently sold, these tcgs should always logically have lower numbers available on the AH imho

[Quintessence]

I don't know if we should jump right to duping as the cause of influx of TCG pets. There are other possible reasons:

• People could be liquidating their collections because they're not interested in the game/collecting anymore.
• People (active and inactive) could have had their accounts compromised and the result is their pets are being sold off.
• These pets are still available on the BMAH periodically, so that adds to the overall pool of pets.
• Unused TCG cards and codes are still in circulation (as seen on Ebay and other card websites).

All of these possibilities compounded with lower demand, and you've got what seems like an influx of TCG pets at cheaper prices than normal.

[Mehetabel]

New patch has brough a lot of people back plus a lot of people are trying out the brand new shiny AH (I know I am, and I haven't put pets on there in months!).

Those prices look about right to me, anyway, though.

[Sights2020]

Back when duping was a thing, I remember that many dupes were posted at level 6 for some odd reason, I don't see any of that now. Also, there may be many buyers (and those stock pile banking) still in the market because available pet numbers dropped by 50% in one day.

The WoW token doesn't offer much in game gold in the US so for returning players that need quick income, I can easily see them selling off battle pets. Oh well, it will be interesting to see where the market settles price-wise.

Tekulve
PS - pretty cool that there will be a void-scarred version of the Anubisath - I remember when pets first started selling on the AH and Anubisath was a sought after commodity .. it's always been such a great pet

[Crazypants]

Duping has largely been disproved.

Care to site your source on that?

[Gaulish]

The AH api was and maybe still is bugged. It was not deleting expired or canceled auctions, so each time the seller reposted, it added another number to the total. So unless you physically checked each realm; sites such as underminejournal was/is unreliable.

[Sights2020]

The numbers I reported in the OP were accurate for Stormrage at the time of the post. I used The Undermine Journal, but more importantly, I was posting pets in person and checked all the low prices and realm numbers available for Stormrage before making those claim here.

I cant say if numbers were inflated on others realms back then. It does seem, though, that available numbers are down now and prices have raised marginally.
Tekulve

[Harpooha]

Duping has largely been disproved.

Care to site your source on that?

During MOP, there were a lot of accusations about duping. As I recall, a dev came to the pet battle forums to debunk it. Unfortunately, those forums aren't available any longer, so you may believe what you wish.

The upshot of what he said was that most of what players attribute to "duping" were pets and mounts from stolen accounts. He explained it in a way that I cannot. But since they are account-wide, it makes sense that this is the easiest way to move money.

I have read reddit threads that speak of ways that you can deceive customer service reps. But it's hard to believe that it can be done en masse.

I have also read that there were cases of cards leftover after Blizzard severed their ties with the card makers. But it's hard to prove that one way or another.

I do know that some of the TCG pets show up on the BMAH.

What I see on the Undermine Journal currently is that TCG pets are on the US market in quantities around 200 += 30. With a couple million players, that does not seem excessive. Most seem to sell around the gold equivalent of a token. If you go to TCG Loot, I suspect you will find it cheaper to buy it there than from the AH.

Given that the universe of pet collectors is relatively small and the universe of players who have more gold than what a token pays out, it's hard to believe that many of these pets sell. So I believe it is reasonable to assume that most of the players that want these pets already have them. And the players that are selling them overestimate their value.

TLDR: never buy a pet from a player named Loveofgold.

[Annalu]

2 more possible reasons for extra TCG pets in the market:

* Classic players who want to fund their subscription with Retail gold and who might be selling any stuff they collected over the years that they don't care to keep since they don't have much attachment to Retail collections

* the AH mount going away making some people sell away everything they can to make up the 5M gold