Five Reasons Why Hoarding at Neopets is an Awesomely Good Thing

Why is hoarding a good thing? If you were around for the massive price spike on Spooky Doughnuts, Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Cookies for the Eliv Thade quest during the Haunted Faire then you saw how hoarding things can net you a huge profit. No one knows what is going to rise or fall in price. Something that might be worth thousands today might be worth hundreds tomorrow if it gets released as a prize for the trivia question or a site event. Key Quest is another way things deflate in price; when the market gets flooded and things drop in price people do complain but don't waste your energy - hoard.

1.) Hoarding is a good thing. It keeps things from completely bottoming out and when the prices do go back to normal (it can take years for that to happen with some items) you will be set. In the case of things that are used for quests, well, there are people that grossly overprice then hoping that noobs will buy them. That is one of the reasons why I refuse to join a mall or a guild that endorses price gouging. I am in it to make a profit but raking people over the coals is not my thing.

2.) Does anyone really need 229 "Deluxe Toffee Apples" or 1,938 "Zombie Aisha Lolly's"? No, of course not. Some people collect things just to have a sideline hobby at the site; I am collecting "Altador Cup Chocolate Coins" (2,077 / 10,000) just for the fun of it and because eventually they will end up a retired item. My Spooky Gallery is something that will never stop growing because there are always new things added to the site or items that are in the millions of points.

3.) Hoarding can pay off or you can lose your shirt. If you start buying things that are 500 - 600 NP with the hopes that you will be able to increase the price - it won't work. Even if you have 10K of an item - there are still more at the site. I have seen so many people waste millions of NP trying to buy up the stock of something (most notable was the Black Grundo Plushie) to jack up the price and not even a half hour later people caught on and started pricing their 50 NP less. You have no choice but to admit defeat or start buying all the ones that are priced less than yours. Take my advice, don't do it because that type of scheme never works. Before you think about recruiting others to "mass purchase" to drive up the price - that won't work either because TNT considers that a violation of the Terms of Service.

4.) Hoarders do the site a huge service. In addition to buying up all the cheap unwanted items that clog up shops, hoarders won't do a "dump" when there is a price spike. Sure, we will sell off some of our stock but never too much. For me, I have a comfort zone. If I don't have 200 - 400 of something I just don't feel 'safe'. A good example of that is when a book or stamp retires. As soon as it is discovered there is a huge jump in the price on the Shop Wizard; sometimes it burns off and the prices drop when the market is flooded and sometimes the prices keep climbing. With stamps, once you add them to your album they are there for good so while you can look at them you can never remove them. Books are also a one time use item, once you read them to your pet they are gone. Food is a risky thing to hoard; cheap foods in the 5 - 10 NP range are worth buying because you never know when they are going to be used for an avatar or something around the site.

5.) Your Safety Deposit Box can get hard to handle. The last time I checked I had over 180 pages; thankfully things are split in to sections so you can navigate them but the search function is the easiest way to find things to sell. I wish that Neopets would allow users to sort things according to the number you have in your SDB or according to rarity / if they are retired but I don't think they are listening to the pleas. If you are looking for things to stock for a holiday or season it helps to write down key words to search your SDB with. For Halloween you could use these terms: haunted, ghost, spooky, Halloween, black, evil, devil, korbat, costume, mask, candy corn, pumpkin, spyder, spider and so on. Checking out other players galleries can also give you ideas on what to search for. If you want to check out my screenies of deals and steals, check out NeoCrazyScreenies