BeerDrinker [2140025] —
Original article
Find out how Christmas Town, Duke and Dirty Bombs will affect prices at the item market in our December Market Report.
December will see many different items being handed out for free via Christmas Town and various other events, so you can bet your frosty *** that the trading markets will react accordingly. But that's not all, because, with the forthcoming release of Warring and Dirty Bombs, and the recent announcement of Slash Wednesday, it seems December could be the most volatile month for trading we've seen in years.
Dirty Bomb Price Explosion
Back in November, Chedburn revealed via this newspaper that Dirty Bombs would return in December. In response, the items associated with building and protecting against DBs have jumped massively in value.
Cesium was valued at $179 million on November 23rd - the day of the article's release - but by December 8th, its price had risen to over $200 million for the first time since summer. Cesium is a vital part of Dirty Bomb construction, and in recent weeks, we've received multiple reports of factions embarking upon DB builds. Given the announcement of the Insurgency Alliance, the Times expects Cesium prices to rise further, although it remains to be seen if they will surpass the year's high of $238 million from May.
Hazmat Suits are also required during the construction of a Dirty Bomb, however, with only a few hundred in existence, and just a handful on the market at any one time, their recent $1 billion price increase cannot be considered much of a trend at all. It's like if one guy down at the bus station starts wearing shoes on his hands and raw chicken breasts as earrings. Sure, he's doing it, but one person a trend makes not. As such, young trader imSkyler believes Hazmats are not worth investing in.
"Hazmat suits have also seen an increase in the market now sitting 6b, up from around 4.8b. The possibility of capitalizing on the price increase is unlikely as so few are in circulation or for sale at this point."
A wiser investment, according to imSkyler, would be Neumune tablets, whose price was already rising before the DB announcement but have doubled in value since. Neumune can be used by ordinary citizens to mitigate the effects of radioactive explosions in their immediate aftermath, and when the bombs start to fall later this month, imSkyler believes their price will increase as people start to panic. Yet Hopslam, a much more experienced trader, disagrees entirely.
"I would be wary of going too heavy in Neumune tablets. They can be bought in Switz at 6.5m so there is kind of a soft cap a little above that. The travel distance required to get them yourself does make the cap higher than items one can get in Torn, but a lot of highly active players travel to Switz regularly anyway."
"Without knowing any potential changes to DB effects, it is hard to project what would happen to related items like tablets. In prior years' DB drops, I remember seeing tablets spike up immediately after from desperate buyers and from traders looking for a quick flip. Again the prices, historically, cap off at a certain point and then drop back down to the Switz price over time."
The Christmas Town Crunch
The forthcoming release of Christmas Town is typically associated with a huge dip in the price of certain candies, cans and alcohol products since many of these can be found for free in CT. This leads to a post-Christmas hangover for many sellers, especially those who are too inexperienced to know which items are handed out.
Mistletoe Madness and Christmas Cocktails were the most commonly found items last year, with 138,439 and 129,768 discovered respectively. The former has a predictable trend of dropping value every Christmas, but the latter has been less stable in recent years, suffering a permanent $600k value loss in winter 2017. Could the same happen again to another Christmas Town item? We wouldn't rule it out.
Third and fourth in the list of the most popular CT items were Bags of Candy Kisses and Bags of Tootsie Rolls, at totals of 128.452 and 125,552 respectively. Once more, we should see a noticeable downturn for both items around Christmas Town's release, with Kisses and Tootsie bags each dropping nearly 50% and 40% last year.
Energy drink prices typically fall by a few hundred thousand over the Christmas period too, and this year they've started early, with Munster & Santa Shooters, Red Cow & Rockstar Rudolph, and Tourine Elite & X-MASS having dropped roughly 100k, 200k, and 300k, respectively in valuation in the past month - roughly equivalent to a 5% fall in value. Rockstar Rudolph (124,756) and Santa Shooters (123,995) were the most common cans from CT last year, and a full list of all 100,000+ item dumps can be found below:
Bottle of Mistletoe Madness - 138,439
Bottle of Christmas Cocktail - 129,768
Bag of Candy Kisses - 128,452
Bag of Tootsie Rolls - 125,552
Can of Rockstar Rudolph - 124,756
Can of Santa Shooters - 123,995
Bottle of Kandy Kane - 123,137
Bag of Chocolate Truffles - 122,709
Bag of Reindeer Droppings - 121,477
Bottle of Minty Mayhem - 121,266
Can of X-MASS - 120,214
Christmas Town is scheduled to be released on the 18th of December, and will likely run for two to three weeks afterwards. imSkyler believes that players will continue to try to offload their cans until Christmas Town is released before the huge influx comes in and that savvy players should look to take advantage.
"This is an ideal time to buy cans if you are an end-user looking to stock up for the years training ahead or a trader looking to resell in a few months time as prices start to rise again."
A quick look at the yearly graphs for can prices shows us that late-December through to early February gives us the cheapest can prices, so contrary to what imSkyler suggests, bulk-buyers for cans and indeed all Christmas Town items may wish to hold off for a few weeks yet to allow them to fully enter the market. Furthermore, since Torn now has more active players than it has in a long time, it may be that 2018 sees more participants than ever before, and this, in turn, will mean a larger influx of items into the market. As such, prices may take far longer into the new year to recover.
Duke's Kiss of Death
The annual tradition of Duke dumping items during the twelve days leading up to Christmas seems to have a varied effect on item prices, depending on what he donates and when. Last year he began by giving out 100 Beer Kegs and Drug Packs, none of which declined in value to any great extent, despite the former seeing their circulation increase by a massive 6%
It was a different story when 100 Books of Carols were dumped, as they saw several million wiped off their value in a matter of days. Casino Passes also dropped by $20 million shortly after twenty of them were given away, with Donator Packs losing $500k themselves one day after their release into the dump.
More expensive items such as Devil's Pitchforks, Egyptian Amulets and Stat Enhancers saw no related depreciation since relatively few were handed out. It therefore seems that mid-value items are most likely to suffer a price drop thanks to Duke's activities. An anonymous Torn insider confirmed that some of the items mentioned in this article will be part of Duke's dump giveaway once more this year. However, the most important news on this year's giveaway, as far as trading is concerned, can be found in the quote below:
"Poison mistletoe was released for the first time last year. This year it will be released again, and that means anyone who held on to them from last year should be prepared to use them or see them lose value. Also, there may be an effect on alcohol prices due to another secret item which will be announced in due course."
Donator Prices Stay Steady
In the last market report published by the newspaper, BeerDrinker predicted that Donator Pack prices would remain more or less the same. And, lo and behold, this prediction has come true. Donator Packs have kept their valuation of roughly 27.3m to 27.5m for some time now, and this valuation should hold for the foreseeable future.
imSkyler's thoughts regarding this are as follows:
"Donator Pack prices have been fairly stable at around 27m this past month, but unfortunately I can not predict the changes here but you can be certain that everyone will still need a donator pack if they don't have subscriber status."
The only major event we can foresee having an effect on Donator Packs is the impending war of the alliances. Most big factions require their members to have donator status. If new factions are drawn into the conflict, it may be on condition that their members also take up donator status. This would see the need for Donator Packs increase massively, but at this point, such an outcome is pure conjecture on our part. And thankfully, we have Hopslam ready to quash our speculation with a little something called knowledge:
"DP prices aren't going to be affected by events much. The market price is largely driven by Ched's pawn shop pricing, and by the unknown factor of how many players buy them from the donator house for the purpose of selling them in game, and also from big trader's price manipulations. Those are the 3 biggest things I can think of off the top of my head. If none of those factors change much over a given time, their pricing typically stays pretty stable."
What's The Point?
Aside from a short blip mid-November when points prices seem to have been artificially deflated, the valuation of points has remained the same throughout the past month, and will probably remain so for a while. The constant influx and demand for flower and plushie sets help to keep point prices stable, so keep an eye on these to see which direction points are heading. Hopslam had the following to say:
"Flowers and plushies are going to be dependent on the point market pricing. The low point being 50,000. I don't see a big spike in points price unless there is a major game change that allows players to use a lot more points than the average player is using today, on a daily basis."
Plushie and flower pricings have been relatively stable for a month, very rarely going higher or lower in valuation per day by a large amount. Their value should remain roughly the same over Christmas; however, once again, the upcoming war may increase demand for points. This may cause some plushie and flower prices to rise. We shall wait and see.
Happy Endings For All?
Since their October rise to a yearly high of $4.85 million, Erotic DVD prices shed $350k into some tissues over the course of the following month, dropping to $4.51 million towards the end of November. This period nevertheless represents a period of relative stability for pornos compared to the rest of the year, and porno prices are predicted to stay stable for the time being - although they may rise over the next few weeks depending on faction events.
Forthcoming wars may also impact the price of Feathery Hotel Coupons - an item which provides energy and happy - which took a sharp drop of 300k near the end of November. This is traditionally a quiet time of year for FHCs, so a wise investor may wish to stock up before the outbreak of war causes demand to increase.
Pictured: After a hard battle, all a soldier wants is a nice comfy bed and a pornographic movie.
Medical Supplies see Enormous Spike in Value
Boxes of Medical Supplies have been growing slowly in value since August, but in recent weeks they have seen enormous gains, jumping from $750k in early October to more than $1.1 million today.
This increase has been caused by a similar rise in the value of the items contained within. Morphine has risen from a Sept-Nov average of $48k to $69k on December 2nd, although it now seems to be falling toward a more sensible price of $55-58k. First Aid Kits averaged at $25-27k throughout the same period, and they have also seen a rise, with $10k being added to their price in recent weeks, with no sign of a slump as yet. Small First Aid Kits hovered between $14-17k during Sept-Nov, but a late-November jump saw their value climb to $24k.
Many of these gains can be attributed to the increased demands caused by the Dog Tags competition, and in a typical year, their value would be expected to drop over Christmas due to the end of these competitive events. However, 2018 is no ordinary year. We initially speculated that this could cause all medical items to suffer rapidly inflating prices due to the imminent start of Raiding, but legendary trader Hopslam disagrees:
"I don't think there would be much more of an increase because of the city price cap for buying small first aid kits, first aid kits, and morphine directly from the city. I was a little surprised the market prices went as high as they did compared to city prices. I just don't see prices going too much higher when players can get them at certain prices from the city."
On a side note, Blood Bags of all types and Empty Blood Bags have mostly maintained their values, probably because they require an education course to use - and we all know how educated some of Torn's citizens are...
Supply Pack Prices Turn For the Worse
While Boxes of Medical supplies seem to be gaining value, many other supply packs have experienced the opposite, with three, in particular, proving especially volatile.
Lottery Vouchers have declined steadily over the past three months, falling from $987,000 on September 10th to $918,000 on December 5th. $40k has been recovered in the past week or so, and this is likely due to the inflated Lucky Shot jackpots of $10.6 and $8 billion - both of which outstripped the Holy Grail by some margin. Prices for Lottery Vouchers are not expected to fall much lower than their early December low point now the jackpots are lower, though, since the value of one lottery ticket from the casino costs $10k, meaning the price for 100 within a Lottery Voucher should rarely stray too far from $1 million.
Pictured: Balls
Drug Pack valuations are much harder to predict than other supply packs since the value of their contents can vary wildly between $8,400,000 for 10 Xanax and $90,000 for 10 Vicodin, hence their middle-ground price of about $4-5 million. However, their valuation has been much higher and incredibly volatile since the summer.
For example, within the space of thirteen days between 14th and 27th of June, Drug Packs lost $100k, gained $300k, then lost another 200k. Similar periods of volatility have been quite regular ever since, so perhaps its unpredictability is the most predictable thing about this item. On December 7th Drug Packs hit a yearly high of $4.81 million, but to do so had to gain $350k in a matter of four days. Drug Packs have since lost $200k since the 7th, and I for one would not risk putting any money into this wildly unpredictable pack item.
Finally, with Goodie Bags rumoured to be part of Duke's forthcoming giveaway, I would avoid investing in these items too since their contents of cans and candy are among the items predicted to drop in value soon anyway. GB's have slowly bled out to the tune of $6 million in value since summer, and as you can see from their graph, they have recently been prone to brief periods of huge devaluation, losing $6 million, $7 million and $12 million on three such occasions in November, albeit restoring their value one day later.
These temporary drops are almost certainly due to ridiculously low item market prices being offered by a sole trader since this item is rarely offered in huge quantities for open sale. Nevertheless, I expect a more permanent drop to occur when Christmas is over. If you have a Goodie Bag, you may wish to get rid of it sooner rather than later.
VIRUSES INFECTED?
Dalon contacted the Torn City Times this month to express his belief how virus prices seem to have fallen of late.
"I've noticed the virus prices have all dropped a lot - I used to be able to sell a simple at about 2k, but now I can't lose them for 1.6k. the tunnelling and polymorphic have both lost about 5k, significant as they only started at around 20k. the stealth virus has also lost about 20%. That's my two cents."
A look at the graphs shows us that Simple Viruses have remained below $1.6k on average through most of the year, so if you're selling them anywhere above that, you're doing well. Polymorphic viruses briefly experienced a strange dip and an equally strange rise over summer, but having spent much of 2018's second half above $20k, it looks like they will end the year well below that valuation.
Tunnelling viruses took a big dip from an 8-month high of $39k in September down to $11k on the 26th of November. The green shoots of recovery do seem to be sprouting now though, so it could be a good time to buy before their price improves too much. Firewalk viruses have had a weak year after starting brightly at $100k+ prices but losing 75% of their value later on. However, a recent surge has seen them double in price to more than $50k, and by the end of the year, they could be as high as $70k.
Armored viruses have seen steady if unspectacular growth over 2018, as aside from a few random increases, their value grew by just $15k all year until December. Then, in an unexpected turn of events, the aftermath of a random spike saw an additional $50k remain on the AV's price. A good time to sell, I'd say. And finally, Stealth viruses look to be ending the year how they started them, at a price just over $200k per piece. Summer and October saw brief rises, but we see no emerging trends which indicate another is on its way.
LOSSES LOSING OUT?
Finally, Little_Grey reached out to the trading pages to tell us how the sale of losses seems to be less popular lately, which is almost certainly due to a lack of public demand.
"In the past month, I've been waiting and waiting on the uses of losses. It's been nearly a month, and the amount of losses are declining. I see way more people selling, and fewer people buying. This will be a major loss to our Torn Economy until more people start to do it again. I only wish people had more of a reward when buying and selling losses to players. If there was an achievement for a certain amount of attacks lost, I would be more interested in this topic."
This practice is known as 'slutting', and you can expect a downturn in the demand for this service when events such as Elimination or Dog Tags take place since many active players are too busy concentrating on attacking targets for points and tags, rather than boosting their own personal statistics.
SUBMIT YOUR SPECULATION
And that concludes this month's market report. Thank you to BeerDrinker for the initial draft, to imSkyler and Hopslam for your comments, and to Dalon and Little_Grey for your market comments. All players are welcome to send in their own market predictions using the "Tell Your Story" function. Please title your entry MARKET REPORT to be eligible to be added to the article and receive a Donator Pack.
We hope this report brings you riches and wealth over the festive period. Merry Christmas!
Dirty Bomb Price Explosion
Back in November, Chedburn revealed via this newspaper that Dirty Bombs would return in December. In response, the items associated with building and protecting against DBs have jumped massively in value.
Cesium was valued at $179 million on November 23rd - the day of the article's release - but by December 8th, its price had risen to over $200 million for the first time since summer. Cesium is a vital part of Dirty Bomb construction, and in recent weeks, we've received multiple reports of factions embarking upon DB builds. Given the announcement of the Insurgency Alliance, the Times expects Cesium prices to rise further, although it remains to be seen if they will surpass the year's high of $238 million from May.
Hazmat Suits are also required during the construction of a Dirty Bomb, however, with only a few hundred in existence, and just a handful on the market at any one time, their recent $1 billion price increase cannot be considered much of a trend at all. It's like if one guy down at the bus station starts wearing shoes on his hands and raw chicken breasts as earrings. Sure, he's doing it, but one person a trend makes not. As such, young trader imSkyler believes Hazmats are not worth investing in.
"Hazmat suits have also seen an increase in the market now sitting 6b, up from around 4.8b. The possibility of capitalizing on the price increase is unlikely as so few are in circulation or for sale at this point."
A wiser investment, according to imSkyler, would be Neumune tablets, whose price was already rising before the DB announcement but have doubled in value since. Neumune can be used by ordinary citizens to mitigate the effects of radioactive explosions in their immediate aftermath, and when the bombs start to fall later this month, imSkyler believes their price will increase as people start to panic. Yet Hopslam, a much more experienced trader, disagrees entirely.
"I would be wary of going too heavy in Neumune tablets. They can be bought in Switz at 6.5m so there is kind of a soft cap a little above that. The travel distance required to get them yourself does make the cap higher than items one can get in Torn, but a lot of highly active players travel to Switz regularly anyway."
"Without knowing any potential changes to DB effects, it is hard to project what would happen to related items like tablets. In prior years' DB drops, I remember seeing tablets spike up immediately after from desperate buyers and from traders looking for a quick flip. Again the prices, historically, cap off at a certain point and then drop back down to the Switz price over time."
The Christmas Town Crunch
The forthcoming release of Christmas Town is typically associated with a huge dip in the price of certain candies, cans and alcohol products since many of these can be found for free in CT. This leads to a post-Christmas hangover for many sellers, especially those who are too inexperienced to know which items are handed out.
Mistletoe Madness and Christmas Cocktails were the most commonly found items last year, with 138,439 and 129,768 discovered respectively. The former has a predictable trend of dropping value every Christmas, but the latter has been less stable in recent years, suffering a permanent $600k value loss in winter 2017. Could the same happen again to another Christmas Town item? We wouldn't rule it out.
Third and fourth in the list of the most popular CT items were Bags of Candy Kisses and Bags of Tootsie Rolls, at totals of 128.452 and 125,552 respectively. Once more, we should see a noticeable downturn for both items around Christmas Town's release, with Kisses and Tootsie bags each dropping nearly 50% and 40% last year.
Energy drink prices typically fall by a few hundred thousand over the Christmas period too, and this year they've started early, with Munster & Santa Shooters, Red Cow & Rockstar Rudolph, and Tourine Elite & X-MASS having dropped roughly 100k, 200k, and 300k, respectively in valuation in the past month - roughly equivalent to a 5% fall in value. Rockstar Rudolph (124,756) and Santa Shooters (123,995) were the most common cans from CT last year, and a full list of all 100,000+ item dumps can be found below:
Bottle of Mistletoe Madness - 138,439
Bottle of Christmas Cocktail - 129,768
Bag of Candy Kisses - 128,452
Bag of Tootsie Rolls - 125,552
Can of Rockstar Rudolph - 124,756
Can of Santa Shooters - 123,995
Bottle of Kandy Kane - 123,137
Bag of Chocolate Truffles - 122,709
Bag of Reindeer Droppings - 121,477
Bottle of Minty Mayhem - 121,266
Can of X-MASS - 120,214
Christmas Town is scheduled to be released on the 18th of December, and will likely run for two to three weeks afterwards. imSkyler believes that players will continue to try to offload their cans until Christmas Town is released before the huge influx comes in and that savvy players should look to take advantage.
"This is an ideal time to buy cans if you are an end-user looking to stock up for the years training ahead or a trader looking to resell in a few months time as prices start to rise again."
A quick look at the yearly graphs for can prices shows us that late-December through to early February gives us the cheapest can prices, so contrary to what imSkyler suggests, bulk-buyers for cans and indeed all Christmas Town items may wish to hold off for a few weeks yet to allow them to fully enter the market. Furthermore, since Torn now has more active players than it has in a long time, it may be that 2018 sees more participants than ever before, and this, in turn, will mean a larger influx of items into the market. As such, prices may take far longer into the new year to recover.
Duke's Kiss of Death
The annual tradition of Duke dumping items during the twelve days leading up to Christmas seems to have a varied effect on item prices, depending on what he donates and when. Last year he began by giving out 100 Beer Kegs and Drug Packs, none of which declined in value to any great extent, despite the former seeing their circulation increase by a massive 6%
It was a different story when 100 Books of Carols were dumped, as they saw several million wiped off their value in a matter of days. Casino Passes also dropped by $20 million shortly after twenty of them were given away, with Donator Packs losing $500k themselves one day after their release into the dump.
More expensive items such as Devil's Pitchforks, Egyptian Amulets and Stat Enhancers saw no related depreciation since relatively few were handed out. It therefore seems that mid-value items are most likely to suffer a price drop thanks to Duke's activities. An anonymous Torn insider confirmed that some of the items mentioned in this article will be part of Duke's dump giveaway once more this year. However, the most important news on this year's giveaway, as far as trading is concerned, can be found in the quote below:
"Poison mistletoe was released for the first time last year. This year it will be released again, and that means anyone who held on to them from last year should be prepared to use them or see them lose value. Also, there may be an effect on alcohol prices due to another secret item which will be announced in due course."
Donator Prices Stay Steady
In the last market report published by the newspaper, BeerDrinker predicted that Donator Pack prices would remain more or less the same. And, lo and behold, this prediction has come true. Donator Packs have kept their valuation of roughly 27.3m to 27.5m for some time now, and this valuation should hold for the foreseeable future.
imSkyler's thoughts regarding this are as follows:
"Donator Pack prices have been fairly stable at around 27m this past month, but unfortunately I can not predict the changes here but you can be certain that everyone will still need a donator pack if they don't have subscriber status."
The only major event we can foresee having an effect on Donator Packs is the impending war of the alliances. Most big factions require their members to have donator status. If new factions are drawn into the conflict, it may be on condition that their members also take up donator status. This would see the need for Donator Packs increase massively, but at this point, such an outcome is pure conjecture on our part. And thankfully, we have Hopslam ready to quash our speculation with a little something called knowledge:
"DP prices aren't going to be affected by events much. The market price is largely driven by Ched's pawn shop pricing, and by the unknown factor of how many players buy them from the donator house for the purpose of selling them in game, and also from big trader's price manipulations. Those are the 3 biggest things I can think of off the top of my head. If none of those factors change much over a given time, their pricing typically stays pretty stable."
What's The Point?
Aside from a short blip mid-November when points prices seem to have been artificially deflated, the valuation of points has remained the same throughout the past month, and will probably remain so for a while. The constant influx and demand for flower and plushie sets help to keep point prices stable, so keep an eye on these to see which direction points are heading. Hopslam had the following to say:
"Flowers and plushies are going to be dependent on the point market pricing. The low point being 50,000. I don't see a big spike in points price unless there is a major game change that allows players to use a lot more points than the average player is using today, on a daily basis."
Plushie and flower pricings have been relatively stable for a month, very rarely going higher or lower in valuation per day by a large amount. Their value should remain roughly the same over Christmas; however, once again, the upcoming war may increase demand for points. This may cause some plushie and flower prices to rise. We shall wait and see.
Happy Endings For All?
Since their October rise to a yearly high of $4.85 million, Erotic DVD prices shed $350k into some tissues over the course of the following month, dropping to $4.51 million towards the end of November. This period nevertheless represents a period of relative stability for pornos compared to the rest of the year, and porno prices are predicted to stay stable for the time being - although they may rise over the next few weeks depending on faction events.
Forthcoming wars may also impact the price of Feathery Hotel Coupons - an item which provides energy and happy - which took a sharp drop of 300k near the end of November. This is traditionally a quiet time of year for FHCs, so a wise investor may wish to stock up before the outbreak of war causes demand to increase.
Pictured: After a hard battle, all a soldier wants is a nice comfy bed and a pornographic movie.
Medical Supplies see Enormous Spike in Value
Boxes of Medical Supplies have been growing slowly in value since August, but in recent weeks they have seen enormous gains, jumping from $750k in early October to more than $1.1 million today.
This increase has been caused by a similar rise in the value of the items contained within. Morphine has risen from a Sept-Nov average of $48k to $69k on December 2nd, although it now seems to be falling toward a more sensible price of $55-58k. First Aid Kits averaged at $25-27k throughout the same period, and they have also seen a rise, with $10k being added to their price in recent weeks, with no sign of a slump as yet. Small First Aid Kits hovered between $14-17k during Sept-Nov, but a late-November jump saw their value climb to $24k.
Many of these gains can be attributed to the increased demands caused by the Dog Tags competition, and in a typical year, their value would be expected to drop over Christmas due to the end of these competitive events. However, 2018 is no ordinary year. We initially speculated that this could cause all medical items to suffer rapidly inflating prices due to the imminent start of Raiding, but legendary trader Hopslam disagrees:
"I don't think there would be much more of an increase because of the city price cap for buying small first aid kits, first aid kits, and morphine directly from the city. I was a little surprised the market prices went as high as they did compared to city prices. I just don't see prices going too much higher when players can get them at certain prices from the city."
On a side note, Blood Bags of all types and Empty Blood Bags have mostly maintained their values, probably because they require an education course to use - and we all know how educated some of Torn's citizens are...
Supply Pack Prices Turn For the Worse
While Boxes of Medical supplies seem to be gaining value, many other supply packs have experienced the opposite, with three, in particular, proving especially volatile.
Lottery Vouchers have declined steadily over the past three months, falling from $987,000 on September 10th to $918,000 on December 5th. $40k has been recovered in the past week or so, and this is likely due to the inflated Lucky Shot jackpots of $10.6 and $8 billion - both of which outstripped the Holy Grail by some margin. Prices for Lottery Vouchers are not expected to fall much lower than their early December low point now the jackpots are lower, though, since the value of one lottery ticket from the casino costs $10k, meaning the price for 100 within a Lottery Voucher should rarely stray too far from $1 million.
Pictured: Balls
Drug Pack valuations are much harder to predict than other supply packs since the value of their contents can vary wildly between $8,400,000 for 10 Xanax and $90,000 for 10 Vicodin, hence their middle-ground price of about $4-5 million. However, their valuation has been much higher and incredibly volatile since the summer.
For example, within the space of thirteen days between 14th and 27th of June, Drug Packs lost $100k, gained $300k, then lost another 200k. Similar periods of volatility have been quite regular ever since, so perhaps its unpredictability is the most predictable thing about this item. On December 7th Drug Packs hit a yearly high of $4.81 million, but to do so had to gain $350k in a matter of four days. Drug Packs have since lost $200k since the 7th, and I for one would not risk putting any money into this wildly unpredictable pack item.
Finally, with Goodie Bags rumoured to be part of Duke's forthcoming giveaway, I would avoid investing in these items too since their contents of cans and candy are among the items predicted to drop in value soon anyway. GB's have slowly bled out to the tune of $6 million in value since summer, and as you can see from their graph, they have recently been prone to brief periods of huge devaluation, losing $6 million, $7 million and $12 million on three such occasions in November, albeit restoring their value one day later.
These temporary drops are almost certainly due to ridiculously low item market prices being offered by a sole trader since this item is rarely offered in huge quantities for open sale. Nevertheless, I expect a more permanent drop to occur when Christmas is over. If you have a Goodie Bag, you may wish to get rid of it sooner rather than later.
VIRUSES INFECTED?
Dalon contacted the Torn City Times this month to express his belief how virus prices seem to have fallen of late.
"I've noticed the virus prices have all dropped a lot - I used to be able to sell a simple at about 2k, but now I can't lose them for 1.6k. the tunnelling and polymorphic have both lost about 5k, significant as they only started at around 20k. the stealth virus has also lost about 20%. That's my two cents."
A look at the graphs shows us that Simple Viruses have remained below $1.6k on average through most of the year, so if you're selling them anywhere above that, you're doing well. Polymorphic viruses briefly experienced a strange dip and an equally strange rise over summer, but having spent much of 2018's second half above $20k, it looks like they will end the year well below that valuation.
Tunnelling viruses took a big dip from an 8-month high of $39k in September down to $11k on the 26th of November. The green shoots of recovery do seem to be sprouting now though, so it could be a good time to buy before their price improves too much. Firewalk viruses have had a weak year after starting brightly at $100k+ prices but losing 75% of their value later on. However, a recent surge has seen them double in price to more than $50k, and by the end of the year, they could be as high as $70k.
Armored viruses have seen steady if unspectacular growth over 2018, as aside from a few random increases, their value grew by just $15k all year until December. Then, in an unexpected turn of events, the aftermath of a random spike saw an additional $50k remain on the AV's price. A good time to sell, I'd say. And finally, Stealth viruses look to be ending the year how they started them, at a price just over $200k per piece. Summer and October saw brief rises, but we see no emerging trends which indicate another is on its way.
LOSSES LOSING OUT?
Finally, Little_Grey reached out to the trading pages to tell us how the sale of losses seems to be less popular lately, which is almost certainly due to a lack of public demand.
"In the past month, I've been waiting and waiting on the uses of losses. It's been nearly a month, and the amount of losses are declining. I see way more people selling, and fewer people buying. This will be a major loss to our Torn Economy until more people start to do it again. I only wish people had more of a reward when buying and selling losses to players. If there was an achievement for a certain amount of attacks lost, I would be more interested in this topic."
This practice is known as 'slutting', and you can expect a downturn in the demand for this service when events such as Elimination or Dog Tags take place since many active players are too busy concentrating on attacking targets for points and tags, rather than boosting their own personal statistics.
SUBMIT YOUR SPECULATION
And that concludes this month's market report. Thank you to BeerDrinker for the initial draft, to imSkyler and Hopslam for your comments, and to Dalon and Little_Grey for your market comments. All players are welcome to send in their own market predictions using the "Tell Your Story" function. Please title your entry MARKET REPORT to be eligible to be added to the article and receive a Donator Pack.
We hope this report brings you riches and wealth over the festive period. Merry Christmas!
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