Duke_Freedom

While the high alch values of items certainly make the prices of items and the game mechanics regarding economics intransparent, it is not true that the prices on materials are capped by them. People already high alch facing a loss, just like they have been smithing steel bars at a loss for 4 years already too. The high alch values do slow down the speed at which raw materials would grow in price though. It is explained the best if we introduce something like item price adjusted for high alch values. Let's take the easiest example which are steel bars. We know steel plates alch for 1200gp and that steel plates are sold for roughly ~1000gp on the market. What this means is that you are pretty much "guaranteed" to get a static 1000gp back for every 5 steel bars you smith into a steel plate, which translates to 200gp per bar. Now steel bars go for ~600gp each on the market. The price of steel bars adjusted for high alch values is thus ~400gp, which is what people pay for the exp they gain from smithing the steel bar, which is roughly equilivant to ~11gp / smithing exp. The point is that if the prices of steel bars would rise with 33%, thus 600gp -> 800gp, this would translate into a rise of 50% for the "real" cost of smithing a steel bar 400gp -> 600gp. As steel plates sell for ~1000gp on the market and strung yew long bows sell for ~570gp on the market it is also easy to see that the "real" price of natures (~320 on the market) adjusted for high alch values is equal to 320 - 200 = ~120gp. However this also means that a 50% in the market price of natures 320 -> 480gp results in more than a doubling in the cost of high alching 120 -> 280gp. Still, the high alch values only slow down the speed at which materials can grow and it does not prevent them from growing in price totally. Since material prices have been pretty much constant throughout the years I can only conclude that they didn't experience any inflation / didn't react on the massive money supply increase at all. The problem is that if people go train magic with other ways then high alching because high alching gets too expensive, those other materials would need to rise in price - that hasn't happened either. One of the other reasons I am against a large price drop unless it's really 'necessary' as well. The normal players (read: non merchants) are generally better off with a rares market that goes sideways with it's prices for a year then they are with a market that crashes 80% during the first half year and then rises back to it's old prices in the other half year. The only ones who really profit from the latter scenario are usually the (good) merchants. The ones paying the price for it are mostly the normal players. That is exactly what I observed during the 3 month long price drop at the start of rs2. I'm fairly sure you mean Veblen goods. No goods in runescape are complete Veblen goods though, but rares do thank a certain part of their popularity to being expensive. However, the investement potential of rares is more important than their popularity due to their expensive price, so the Veblen effect of rares is minimal.

Dutch! :thumbsup: Good luck with that. ^^

We don't seem to disagree much at all, judging from the example you gave. I never said, or at least didn't mean to say, that the inherent values (expressed as an amount, a number) are the same... My point was more that the type of which the values are derived is in fact the same and that in both cases the inherent value is far from being good enough to explain the price of the items alone and that the contextual reasons why the items are priced so high are very comparable as well. Thus, the idea is that the concept of famous paintings and rares is (roughly) the same and thus that the concept of both is comparable. Looking at your last post, I'm currently unsure at what point you really disagree with this? I'm not looking to argue the estimates here, especially as my last estimates are already 7 months old now again, but you could read how they were calculated here if you want to. The problem is that materials haven't changed in price (except for occasional reactions on important game updates and even those were minimal) over the 4 years that I have been around in this game. This would say that there is no inflation at all, which just can't be correct. By the way, you could argue that the given graph does not adjust the money supply increase for the population growth. Population growth alone could not totally 'absorb' inflation as the population growth is roughly 7% per month, where my estimates put the money supply growth somewhere at 18% per month though. I strongly believe that materials have indeed steadily been getting cheaper when adjusted for inflation, which is one of the main reasons that I believe that it is very likely that they'll rise sooner or later too. No, I wouldn't. You know, the problem is that when there is no bubble in them anymore, there is no reason to not buy them again. Faith will return sooner or later and therefore prices will start rising sooner or later again too. Yes, this sounds like a kind of circular reasoning, but there is some truth in it. One of the reasons that I consider a 80-90% drop far too much too. If that happened, clever people who sold before or at the beginning of the crash could buy back 5 to 10 times as much rares as they had initially. And you can count on them to buy back when they think that rock-bottom has been reached. The ironic part about the sideways fluctuation of rares over the past half year is that there are two ways to explain it and that it's extremely difficult to decide what is really the reason, while both reasons are totally the opposite of each other. One way to explain the sideways fluctuation is by saying that there is indeed some sort of bubble and that therefore the prices refuse to go any higher and that the six month stagnation period is a (strong) indication for this. However, another way of looking at it is that rares were indeed somewhat overpriced 6 months ago and that, as a result, rares didn't go up any further. One might say that, because inflation has certainly continued throughout those 6 months, rares actually dropped in price adjusted for inflation and that therefore there is no bubble in the prices of rares left anymore and thus no reason to not buy them now as they are likely to go up soon again. And one last way of looking at it all is by saying that there wasn't any price bubble in the prices of rares initially at all, but that the recent significant updates made by Jagex changed the game to such an extent that there is in fact a bubble in their prices right now. Funny part is that Jagex would in that case be responsible for creating the bubble in the rares prices in the first place.

Uh, no. In economics, people's valuation of things is modeled by a free variable called utility. Your definition is both circular and meaningless. To value also has the definition "to price", which I apparently should have used instead to avoid even more misunderstanding. For the rest I think it's a waste of time to continue discussing about philosophy and rares=paintings, because you are just interpretting things I say and restating them differently and we'll continue to disagree anyway. Just to summarize, the main points I disagree with are: I think what you define "great inherent value" with paintings is actually contextual value as well, just like it is with party hats. And: I believe the only (significant) inherent value of both a party hat and a painting is the way they look and is thus not different at all, which I tried to show with the hypothetical example I gave. Also, in both cases the inherent value of the items does not justify their price. I also believe that their contextual value is very similiar, although not exactly the same, as famous paintings are both unique and have a specific (famous) person who created them, something which is not completely true for rares. Well I base my opinion on my knowledge of similar crashes in value in the real world's past, I don't know what you base your opinion on because you refuse to specify it. Remember that I'm only saying the situation is possible, you are saying it is impossible, so the burden of proof is many times heavier on you, which makes your refusal to support your argument all the more confusing. Be careful with using extremes and don't put words in my mouth that I did not say. Also, I think your comparison of a possible rares bubble to real world bubbles is weak at most, but let's not start (another) a real world bubbles=rares bubble debate. Let's stop the analogies totally and tell me exactly why are rares a bubble in your opinion? We talked about the issue you have with "xxxx can only go up in the long term" which I mentioned can actually be proven under certain market conditions. We also talked about faith being responsible for a large portion of the price (which I agreed with and which is ofcourse a risk - on short or mid-long term though) and perhaps that is what you consider the bubble in rares? Another interesting question I have is whether you will continue to perceive rares as a bubble even after the prices hypothetically crashed by 80-90%? Edit: One thing I have to admit, which is what r2 talks about mostly here above, is that the market conditions in rs have severely changed over the past half year already due to strong interference of Jagex. All of the changes were indeed for the worse of the future of rares and the real (long term) effect of the changes on rares is yet to be seen. Not only that, the player population growth, expressed as rate, is lower than it used to be as well. Rares have also been pretty much stagnant for a half year by now, which is, to say the least, unusual for them. A price correction may happen, because the faith and investement effect in rares is wearing off. Still, that would probably end up in a panic, a quick [bleep]e downwards followed by a stabilization period and from then on slowly rising prices again. I do not see any good reason why they would stay down, assuming such a price drop happens in the first place. Bottom line remains, like r2 also states, that Jagex has an extremely large influence on the long-term future of rares and therefore nearly impossible to make any useful long term predictions for rares.

This is my last post talking about the paintings, because the debate about that seems to be going nowhere and because it is going too off-topic anyway. Common, 1/3rd of your intial post was about the comparison of paintings to party hats, that's not what I call a side note. Another 1/3rd was about how party hats would be worthless if everyone suddenly decided they aren't worth pursuating, which I pointed out that it can be said about anything. And another 1/3rd was about how you disagree that rares will always go up on the long-term, which we talked about in the rest of our posts. In economics, people value things because they have utility to them and people seek to maximize their utility. You initially denied party hats had inherent value for some people and now you're saying that wasn't your point and that they do have inherent value for some people. To put it in the simple logics, you initially said "No A are B" and now you say "Some A are B". If you would use your imagination to understand what something means that implies that it wouldn't matter if someone told you "Can you please get me a cup of coffee?" or "igfsfieijodaijs" since your imagination would apparently be able to interpret it well in both cases. This obviously is not the case. When the techniques are developped far enough then yes I believe they can. Currently the techniques are still far from being good enough for that though. What I pointed out with the hypothetical example is that the only inherent value the painting has is how it looks and that this also holds for famous paintings. The rest of the value in famous paintings is contextual value. Since rares only have inherent value equal to how they look and the rest is contextual value too, I keep my stance that the comparison of rares with famous paintings holds. I would love to talk further about economics, but as you already said yourself we don't really seem to disagree (much). I don't state that they are guaranteed to go up in the future just because they historically did so, I state that they are guaranteed to go up in the future under the requirement that the market conditions remain the same, which is what caused them to go up historically. Yes, the requirement is vague. I could strengthen it to say that rares are bound to go up on the long-term as long as the population number is not shrinking and the inflation is larger than 0. However in that case there may be quite long "temporary" price drops and long-term might be going to be equal to an unreasonable amount of years then, thus strengthening it also makes it less useful. Also, you might like to take a look at this graph, which shows the value of rares indexed at 11-3-2005 versus the exponential trend function of my own total gp estimates in the economy also indexed on the same date. 80-90% is too much. I don't believe that they could remain at that price for years even if there were such a crash, unless the game would change big time from how it works now.

I mentioned personal taste was irrelevant while keeping in mind that we were talking in the context of economics, please don't take my words way out of context like you did... Collectors like them for collecting purposes. Plenty of people like how they look. You are just arguing while knowing better here. Philosophy can't be studied. Luckily you agree with that by saying you wasted your time on those courses. Hehe. :P The only inherent value paintings really have is how they look and their 'contextual' value that they are unique. Whether you think a painting looks good or not is a matter of taste, which means that the utility (as economic concept) of the item differs from person to person. Some people may not like how the painting looks at all and for those people the painting does not have any inherent value nor utility. You don't use your imagination to create the coherent meaning, you use your memory for that. We are taught some words have a specific meaning and that some words combined in a sentence have another meaning. There is no need to make use of your imagination here and there's a huge difference between using your memory and using your imagination. Hypothesis: Both a famous artist and I make a painting. We call it 'black dot' and all we do is - duh - paint a black dot. Analysis shows that both paintings are 100% exactly identical. Now I go on and sell the painting, while mentioning that I made it myself. I manage to get a whole $0.01 cent for it. The famous artist does the same and also mentions that he made the painting himself. His painting suddenly sells for $1000. Now the only difference between my painting and his painting is the person who made it. I'm fairly sure this is exactly what falls in the category "contextual value" and thus there is no extra inherent value in the painting of the famous artist. Edit: Sorry ts stormrage for the slight off-topicness here. :P Well yeah, 3rd age armour falls into the category substitutes-for-rares so there's certainly a negative effect for rares, but I just still think it's too early for me to make any final statement on that yet.

I was saying that opinions on what is nice, good, beautiful and "a masterpiece of a genius" are not very releveant. They are a matter of taste and everyone's taste is different. And just pretend that I broke it apart, because I would disagree with it. ;) Kind of like how you miss the point of rares. Some people do see the value in it. And as I've just argued, whether an object has "inherent value" is a matter of taste. And yes there are people who value rares. People like how they look. Besides, since when do "simplistic graphics" not fall into the category art anymore? Famous paintings too.This is an egregious misquotation. My actual sentence was "Party hats are valued for being valuable, nothing more.", which wouldn't have worked for your seemingly witty reply. This isn't the kind of response I expected from you... Hm I did misquote, I accidentally truncated it as I see now, so sorry. Still, if phats are only valued for being valuable then I'm keeping the stance that art is only valued for being valuable as well. You know what the problem is with people who argue that paintings have inherent value / "deeper meanings"? They require that you use your imagination to "see" the inherent value / "deeper meaning". However, what this really means is that the inherent value / "deeper meaning" is not in the painting, but it is created by your imagination and then projected on the painting. The right conclusion would be that the painting did not have any inherent value in the first place and that your imagination can tell you everything you want. Besides, I think the painting I linked to earlier in this post shows very well that paintings too are only valued because they are so valuable. Any 6 year old kid can draw that painting. In the examples I gave, the services wouldn't be valuable anymore. And all I was really showing with it is that you can make a story of "if everyone tomorrow decides to ... then ... will be worthless" of everything, thus it doesn't point out anything. Historically there were usually no conditions attached to it though. I consciously made it bold that there is a requirement that the market conditions don't change. I can argue in simple economics with a simplistic example why rares can only go up on the long-term under consistent market conditions if wanted though. I also want to make very clear that I consciously use the word long-term. There may be price drops at times. However, eventually the expectation is that the price will always end up higher - providing that the market conditions don't change. :P You are right that faith is a very important reason for the price levels of rares as well. I sometimes mention it, but usually not, because faith is not a market condition. Even without any faith that rares would go up (aka no speculators) I can still argue that rares would be going up in price on the long-term. As I stated earlier already - temporary price drops may happen. I am not making any statements on that. However, on the long-term the prices will eventually reach new heights if there are no changes in the market conditions. Aha. You do realize that over the past 3 years rares have been growing in price at an average rate of 12% per month? The point is, rares have been a great investement throughout the years and as you even point out yourself, they may still remain a very good investement for a long time. Scepticy who consciously don't invest in them at all because of risks miss out big time on the investement potential. However, as I do recognize that there are risks with rares, of varying types too like a duplication bug for example, I usually do tell people to keep part of their money in cash or materials if they can't afford to lose it all if things go wrong. Well that's one of the scenario's I oftenly describe. Rising prices of raw materials. IMO the rares market doesn't necessarily needs to crash as a result of it though. Also, if we look at RSC, rares are still worth much more then they were worth before RuneScape was split into RSC and RS2. Nah, the word 'rare' was just wrongly reserved for the discontinued items back in the days and most people still refer to them as 'rares'. Other items can be "rare" too, when the word "rare" has the meaning of uncommon. It's quite ironic actually... Back in the days 'rares' weren't even "rare". :lol: While rares are currently the most important aspect of the game for merchants, it is wrong to say that rares are the only reason why merchants play rs. Merchants like rares because they are a hedge against inflation. And indeed, quite a few merchants therefore like to express their richness in terms of rares. However, the main goal of merchants is still to become as rich as possible. If they expect rares to crash, they will cash out before the crash. The game for merchants wouldn't end if there were no rares, the game would change.

Real estate is not limited and decreasing, but rather slowly increasing. Rares and famous paintings are comparable because both items have no real practical use. I could also say that famous paintings aren't really "unique" either - there are thousands of them around - but ok perhaps not a very good comparison as those aren't 100% identical. If you want a better analogy of rares, then the best I can find these days is a US golden coin from 1933. Furthermore you say paintings by famous artists are "masterpieces by a genius" and I would like to point out that's merely an opinion and thus not of any relevance at all. To me, a lot of so-called famous paintings could just as well be thrown in an open fire and thus they are of equal (or even less) "value" to me as RuneScape's rares are. Famous paintings too. The fact is that if everyone decided tomorrow that going to the mcdonalds is bad for your health and thus everyone stops going there, the mcdonalds company would go bankrupt. Same goes for coca-cola. And if everyone suddenly decided not to use google anymore from now on, the 150bil market cap of the company will be gone faster than you wrote your post. In other words, you're not proving anything here, except for stating a situation that won't happen. Yes, it's all based on trust and expectation, but like I just pointed out, a lot in the economic world is based on trust and expectation. I'm not "confident" that rares will go up in value forever. I only always state that rares can only go up on the long-term providing that the market conditions don't change. The major market conditions that influence the prices of rares on the long-term are population growth, inflation and the lack of expensive alternatives for people to spend their cash on. However, I have discussed and mentioned 'disaster' like scenario's for rares before, like here for example. Still, I do not believe we're at that point - yet. On the other hand, the population growth, expressed as a rate, has been dropping slightly. Jagex has also been implementing a few (small) anti-inflation measurements (construction) and offered good and expensive options for people to spend their cash on (construction, third age armour). All of this does prevent rares from going up further in price. If Jagex continues with that, they could keep the rares prices quite stable like they have been for quite some time now. Now I want to know from you, how long have you already been sceptic about the prices of rares?

Owned some 2 million feathers myself 3.5 year ago - from buying for merchanting purposes though. :P But nah, don't think anyone owns 1 million of something, except gp, from his own drops only.

And I am saying that you are denying the fundamentals of supply & demand theory by saying that. Supply is "the amount of an item that is for sale (on the market) at a certain price". Yes, supply is a function of the price. However, it nowhere requires any physical trade to take place for supply to 'exist'. Even though you say you "understand the supply and demand concept very well" I suggest you read some more about supply & demand on wiki. I don't think I'll reply to any further posts unless you actually read what I said and perhaps read a bit more about it on wiki as well.

Because you don't seem to understand it. The price is not decided by the people who buy / sell an item, but instead by the amount of people who are willing to buy / sell the item for a certain price. The price (equilibrium) of an item is that price where the amount of supply (sell) is equal to the amount of demand (buy). If one person who shows up on the supply side of the market suddenly alchs his hat, he no longer shows up on the supply side of the market anymore and thus effects the market equilbrium as I've shown clearly in the first example.

I only quoted that part because that was all I disagreed with from your whole post. ;) I'm just wondering why even more intelligent people are using that sentence in debates these days. As I said I've seen more people use it and people seem to think it's a valid arguement which I found rather strange and disagree with... No need to get all defensive. So now tell me - why is the game's economy more unstable because younger people play it? What would work differently in RuneScape's economy if there were no 13 year olds? No offense ment, but it sounds like a typical bashing-13-year-olds statement to me, with little to no actual reasoning behind it as to why it would even matter. And while we are at it, what do you perceive as unstable in RuneScape's economy?

Hm the idea of supply & demand is something like this however: Price --- Supply - Demand 450mil - 3 ------ 8 460mil - 6 ------ 6 470mil - 7 ------ 4 480mil - 9 ------ 2 The supply & demand numbers here are totals, stating how many people are willing to sell / buy at those prices. Logically supply is higher at higher prices and demand is lower at higher prices. The theory now says that the price equilibrium is there where supply equals demand and this is true for 460mil. I'm sure you'll agree so far. Now what if two people who initially wanted to sell their phats for 450mil and one person who initially wanted to sell it for 460mil suddenly alched their hats. We would now have: Price --- Supply - Demand 450mil - 1 ------ 8 460mil - 3 ------ 6 470mil - 4 ------ 4 480mil - 9 ------ 2 The price equilibrium, defined as supply = demand, is now 470mil! Aha, the prices have risen. Ok the example is stupid :), but I hope this clearifies the underlying idea somewhat. In text I could explain it differently by using the example of a merchant who trades blue party hats but who doesn't keep them himself. Sure he owns some party hats every now and then, but only for the purpose of reselling it (almost) immediately. In theory, and as far as the market is really concerned, he doesn't own any phats at any time, even when he does have a few. At some point he owns 5 phats which he also plans to resell today again, but something goes very wrong. He was alching yew longs and accidentally alched all his phats (yes my examples can get even more stupid :D). Anyway, the point is that now 5 phats, which were actually 'in circulation' are now gone from the market. Thus there is an (indirect) effect on the price of the phat as there is an supply of 5 phats less on the market.

Sorry, but when did "the economy is run by a bunch of 13 year olds" become a valid arguement in economic debates? It was funny when I first saw someone use it (even though the person meant it seriously), but it seems it has now become a widely accepted valid reason why RuneScape's economy is like it is, as I've seen several people use it in debates now. The arguement is completely ridiculous mind you - the economy would have worked exactly the same way if you had putten a bunch of 30 year olds together.

Why? There are no basic needs in RuneScape. You don't need food, water, or a home to keep on living. Why? What do you define as a "real" economy? Lot's of cash is stored away in people bank accounts with the plan to buy a rare with it at some point... If you remove rares this money HAS to be used for something else. Arguing the removal of rares would have NO influence on the economy is just plain ridiculous. What exactly is this mysterious 'basis of economics' that seems to be the answer to everything? Sounds like you don't actually "learn" anything there. They seem to teach you to state that some things are the "uber truth" without giving you the knowledge and ability to explain why. Economics does not mean that you can just state that some things are true and others are not true without arguing why.

Some miscommunication I see... It's supply as in the production of discontinued items that is always 0 in case of discontinued items indeed. Supply is usually referred to as "the amount of the product people are willing to sell at a certain price" though. Using that meaning, the supply of blue party hats (at 450mil) is anything but 0. People eating easter eggs or alching phats influence the market price in the sense that those people may have been wanting to sell their blue party hats at 500mil and won't be able to do so anymore. So the 'supply' of blue party hats at 500mil drops by one if they alched their hat.

People are saying your initial prices were inaccurate and thus no price rise every happened. Considering the trade in these items is so low, I have to question if your initial prices were indeed anything near accurate... And even if they did grow, it just counts towards the initial stabilization period, which takes longer the rarer the items are. The initial stabilization period has little to nothing to do with the eventual price development on the long-term, which is what we were discussing here as far as I know? So let's leave the flaming at the door and let the time do it's work before 'claiming' anyone was right / wrong.

I believe some people are saying that the prices were already at these price levels. Checking it up myself for a bit it seems you got your info from some price discussion thread on the official forums. Prices on such threads are always miles off, so I have to agree with them here. Furthermore I see no trade in the melee type items on the forums whatsoever. Anyway, let's just give it a few months before stating it is going one way or another... Only then we'll really be able to see if the items have the potention to rise on the long-term. It would be interesting (yet, in my opinion, strange) if they did though. Don't you guys got anything better to do than give me more prices to keep track off? :P Not gonna keep close track of these prices, I'm sure stormrage will, but I'll be curious to see their prices in a few months anyway.

Yes, but estimating and basing numbers on just a couple of people and then practically calling it a fact are two different things.

That is no evidence, sorry.

Don't post things as "it's a fact" when there's no REAL evidence for it. Loads of people got those items on the first day because loads of people are training against such new monsters when they are just added to the game. Having said that, I want to add that I wouldn't be surprised if they actually did have higher drop rates for those items the first few days / weeks and then lowered it later on. I've seen too many people - who don't say such things quickly because they know it could just be bad luck - say to me that they suspect that drop rates were changed for various items at certain points in history and I've observed price changes in those items sometimes too.

It is a much more interesting question why Google's market cap is 150bil+ if they don't make any profit. Would be quite amazing really. :lol: Still, I disagree with you on this blackrazor. I think you overexaggerate the "adds could pay for the whole game" a bit too far. Do realize that if it would be true, Jagex - using the 10% income figure from adds that was given by someone already earlier in the thread - would have to increase their add income ten times in order to maintain the same amount of profit. While I agree that there's probably some room for expansion on the add income - especially ingame if they would want to? - I still have to put strong questions marks about the statement that adds could pay for all the costs. How are you realistically suggesting they would do this?

Just for reference, the 5% is based on this site mostly, somewhat extrapolated to now. I won't dispute whether people tried to get clues more actively the past month than they do now, like you say, as I've barely followed anything about the introduction of the Third Age armour. My point does remain that the number will certainly remain higher than the population growth for quite some time. Yes that's right - all I really wanted to say with it is that I think it is still a bit too early to say that prices have already stabilized. You and I both know Jagex has changed the situation regarding Dragon Chains multiple times throughout the history, which resulted in both price drops and (mostly) price rises. Jagex prevented Dragon Chains from having a normal price development in the first place. This even led to some merchants investing in dragon chains at some point. And indeed, the ultimate downfall for pseudo-rares usually happens when Jagex intervenes by implementing new and better substitutes for the pseudo-rare.

On the long-term pseudo-rare items like the Third Age items can only go down really. Because the armour is quite rare, it will probably take longer than usual though and it's completely possible that it's price rises instead for shorter periods. To be honest the wording 'rare' that was initially given to discontinued items was wrong from the start. The reason why 'real' rares are able to go up in price on the long-term is solely because they are Limited Edition items. The word 'discontinued' to describe the items with was first used by Jagex as title for the 'rares board' on the official forums to differentiate between rares like dragon armour and now Third Age items and rares like party hats. Personally I've always referred to dragon armour and such using the word pseudo-rare item though, to differentiate between them and the 'real' rares and point out the fact that on the long-term items like dragon armour do not remain rare and thus are unable to go up in price consistently on the long-term. It's indeed mainly the relative ratio of Third Age vs number of subscribers that decides whether they will go up or down in price. However, Third Age is only a little over a month old and they certainly have not reached a stability price yet. Let's say that, on average, an amount of "x" new Third Age items enter the game economy each day now. And let's assume up until now people were getting roughly "2*x" up until now, because it was a new addition to the game and everyone was trying to get the new armour. That means that there is now an amount of roughly "70*x" of the Third Age armour in the game, which is still growing by "x" a day, or, in other words, by ~1.4% a day. This still translates to a monthly increase of 42%... For comparison, the player population growth of the game is only around 5% a month - those things certainly don't even out.

I guess I'll copy paste my reply to swampjedi in pm here: It has indeed. The current prices of all rares are all within a ~15% range of the prices exactly a half year ago, some are slightly higher and some are slightly lower. Yes - Jagex has certainly been implementing features in the game that help fight the inflation and even the popularity of rares. Not only was construction a major money drain (although according to my own calculations far from countering the inflation), it also allowed rich people to spend their stashes of money on something 'useful'. One other important reason rares have always been so popular and cost so much is because rich people have nothing useful to spend their cash on - Jagex has been giving rich tons of substitutes for rares throughout the years, starting with dragon armour. Still, I don't believe these pseudo-rare are really suitable in stopping rares from continuing to go up in price - at least not as long-term solution - as pseudo-rare items always drop in price on the long-term. However, I have to say that the other side of this story could be that Jagex may implement new pseudo-rare items more regularly, which might prevent rares extremely (perhaps even totally) from growing anywhere near as fast in price as they used to. It's hard to say though - Jagex has always been the most unreliable factor when it comes to the game's economics and predicting the future of rare prices. Flat lines in the prices of rares are rare (:P), but it has happened before in the past. It usually happens after extreme rises in the prices of rares as kind of "stabilization period". In this case, that was probably the initial reason why the market was going sideways too, as in the one month before the current sideway fluctuation, the prices of practically all rares doubled. For comparison: on average, throughout the past years, rares grow ~15% per month in price. Still, the period that rares have been going sideways is starting to become kind of long. Similiar periods in the past have never lasted longer than 3-4 months tops. The stabilization period should long be over by now and rares should continue to go up - but they neglect to do so. To be honest I have been thinking about this for quite a while already, but I cannot seem to come up with a suitable answer for the continuing sideways fluctuation... As far as I know, the money supply in RuneScape is still growing fast and the player population is still growing as well (although less then it used to). Unless I'm missing something important, I can only conclude that rares should go up in price again sooner or later. Though, if Jagex can keep up with bringing out new high cost pseud-rare items, the expectancy that rares will go up sooner or later again may never become true. Bottom line is that Jagex has much power over the direction of rares and the direction of the game's economy. The money used to go into the negative. Jagex has corrected that and now you just can't accept any money if it gets you more then ~2.1bil gp. Hm, whats the problem with expensive armor?