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So I have a Quest for the impossible: DJs. I get a bigass donation from Ruuvan, who has more gold than man, I swear(and I never would've guessed; he's not cocky at all) forcing me to update my items list and values.

The last time I messed with the values of all the items on that list was August, and now it's October, so it's only been two months, which isn't that long at all, speaking in economic terms(or my economic terms, rather).

Anyway, I use only the lowest Lucky Devil guide denominator; not the highest or the mid. The lowest. This is where you beging ot see a lot of changes monetarily in some of the bigger items.

While going through the items, DJs have gone down in price by 1 million. From 27.6mill to 26.6 mill.

Chain wallets went from 109k to 104k. These are the only '03 donation items I have been keeping tabs on(since I own the chain wallet and am questing for the DJs). Now I was talking with Mr. Malfunction about what could constitute such a drop.

One of my theories was that the economy is just in a depression right now, since it has been steadily going down since the casino(although I've never really been able to figure out why). Mr. Malfunction was saying that people simply do not have the money to pay these outrageous prices for items, which could be true and also supports the depression theory.

However, some items still remain high and are getting hire. The 2k4 Zombie Labcoat went from 97k to 110k(when it was on notice about the price decreasing), while the 2003 Monster paper bag has remained steady at 8k.
The Zombie t-shirt went from 83k to a startling 120k(but it was being cautioned about increasing, anyway), and I have no other '03 event items to compare to.

Now suffice to say, it is possible that the paper bag collection just isn't in enough demand, or isn't expensive enough to be affected by these price changes. However, in an item with such a low value as the chain wallet - 104k - to be lowered due to depression, it doesn't make sense that a 98k piece of labcoat from a newer year would surpass it at 110k in the next economical jump.

So my guess is that the economy is not actually in a depression, rather interest is draining in the 2003 items.

The common conception of 2003 items is that "Those things are so expensive, I'll NEVER get one." Back in 2003, no matter how much you donated to Gaia, you only got one letter. Unless you had a ton of mules to donate under, you only got one letter no matter if you donated 2.50 USD or 250.

Since 2003 was the first year of Gaia online, I highly doubt anyone was thinking about economics and selling items that appreciate later. The people probably focused on what mattered at the time - donating to make the site run.

This is a common psychological response that I've seen in many websites that encourage donating for a reward. In the first year people usually do not care about the reward, rather want the site to run.

It is only after the 6 month mark that people start thinking about the future and what they can do to get more out of donating, usually.

For Gaia it seems a little delayed. The site is mostly comprised of children and teenagers, with a very huge amount of adults, but the minority on this site, nevertheless. If the adults were greedy, they were likely the ones who would play the exchange, just as you play the stock market.

It wasn't until mid 2004 that I noticed the exchange play becoming wide-spread on gaia, coming to such a height that sealeds rose in price from 2-3k to 5k.

It seemed like a combined effort of the ninja headbands and winged anklets + distributing what was already "common knowledge" among the adults to those in Q&A who asked to get gold.

"Playing the market" wasn't even on the guide to collecting gold until after 2003, showing that media and word of mouth really does spread far, much like the rumor that gas was going to run out after Katrina, so it only ran out because everyone rushed to get gas (for those of us in the states, other countries probably weren't stupid enough to cause a pandemic like us stupid americans- yes I'm being serious).

Because of media's influence, anything two years old has become "unattainable", and thus, nobody wants them because they're "too expensive".
I'm sure the stray thought comes along about "Well, it'd be cool if I had that, but I'd never get enough money", thus leading people to not even look at the price for selected items.

Even though the items are so rare, they should be rising in price, not only because of age but also rarity, as every day "oldbies" leave Gaia and don't bother giving away or selling their rare items beforehand.

So with decreased interest, there is decreased demand. And with decreased demand, there's even less supply, thus making how much these things are truly worth hard to track down or even attain.

This leads me to believe that items have approximately a 2 year fermenting period. After the 2 years, you have one month to sell your items before the prices start dropping dramatically.

So if I had something from November of '03, I'd be selling it right now.

However, if everyone gets in a panic about this/reads this entry, the supply will be increased and competition will reign, thus lowering your prices anyway- but I guess if you have items from '03 you already know how the exchange works.