<story><title>Runescape gold more valuable than Venezuelan currency (2022)</title><url>https://sites.psu.edu/ist110pursel/2022/09/04/15154/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jongjong</author><text>I played it for a few months just for the economics of it. This is how I learned what it means to &amp;#x27;corner the market&amp;#x27;. I was trading water runes. It was a resource that had a niche usage for high-level wizards, when people wanted to sell it, (e.g. when they changed battle strategy), they usually wanted to sell them quickly, when they wanted to buy them, they also wanted to have them quickly. Also it was required for some more advanced spells so the people who bought them had been playing the game a while and had a lot of gold coins. Also because it was for such a niche use, substantial sales didn&amp;#x27;t occur very often. At one point, I had enough Runescape gold to buy up every offer that came up on the market for a low price, then I just waited for a desperate rich person to buy them all in bulk at a much higher price. Nobody else could provide them in bulk because I bought up all the smaller offers and big players who were engaged in high-stakes battles and had a lot of gold coins didn&amp;#x27;t want to run around buying up small amounts from a lot of different people.&lt;p&gt;Eventually, I had enough gold coins to buy a rare purple partyhat which already cost like 50 million gps at that time. I quit the game when I went to university, sold the partyhat and gave away all the gps to some in-game friends. I regret doing that haha becuase now they&amp;#x27;re worth billions today and you can sell them for real money for thousands of dollars.</text></comment>
<story><title>Runescape gold more valuable than Venezuelan currency (2022)</title><url>https://sites.psu.edu/ist110pursel/2022/09/04/15154/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>LordDragonfang</author><text>This is interesting, because back when I was still playing one of the frequent topics of discussion[1] on the RS3 side was the rampant in-game inflation. It&amp;#x27;s interesting to see an alternate explanation for it.&lt;p&gt;The Runescape economy is pretty interesting in general, in part because the community maintains such an extensive price history of every item, including commodity price indexes[2]. The wiki even has a page that gives a basic economics lesson[3], including supply&amp;#x2F;demand curves, arbitrage, and price controls. (And there&amp;#x27;s also the constant accusations of discontinued rare prices being artificially inflated through insider wash trading)&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;old.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;runescape&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;maohi7&amp;#x2F;the_cause_of_this_rapid_inflation&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;old.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;runescape&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;maohi7&amp;#x2F;the_cause...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;runescape.wiki&amp;#x2F;w&amp;#x2F;RuneScape:Grand_Exchange_Market_Watch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;runescape.wiki&amp;#x2F;w&amp;#x2F;RuneScape:Grand_Exchange_Market_Wat...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;runescape.wiki&amp;#x2F;w&amp;#x2F;Economy_guide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;runescape.wiki&amp;#x2F;w&amp;#x2F;Economy_guide&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>