Neopets "Money Tree": Does Donating Have Undisclosed Benefits?

If you are a regular at the Neopets website then you will notice an option on the Quick Stock screen to "donate" things. Where do they go? Most of them will end up at the Money Tree but clothing items will go to the Second Hand Shoppe, a recently added section of the site.

The Money Tree gets its items from Neopians that choose to 'donate' things when they are restocking or adding things to their Safety Deposit Box. Unless you have tour scripts disabled you will see a pop up box every time you discard or donate an item. If you are doing a mass donation you should check the list of items before you click the box because you never know when you are going to have a Random Event that graces you with a rare item.

Are there any benefits to donating to the Money Tree? There might be but Neopets won't say one way or the other. Personally I think that it's cool to donate things but I only do it about once a day. I go to the Shop Wizard and look for cheap items that are usually selling for 1NP. Why? Most of the people that sit there and refresh the page at the Money Tree aren't really all that picky; they are looking for things to restock with and it is, after all, free. There are limitations as to the number of things that you can get per day so if you are going to camp out there, make sure you try for the items that are actually worth something.

I started donating on a regular basis about two weeks ago. I averaged about 300 items a day and spent about all of ten minutes buying cheap stuff from shops to donate. I did get a couple of NeoMails from people thanking me for donations but they turned out to be scammers. No sooner did I get their first email than another arrived asking me if I could just send them items because they didn't have a fast enough connection to get things when they appeared on the Money Tree. Have I seen any changes in things since I started donating on a regular basis? Not really. I did get a shop size increase but I can't say that was directly from donating to the Money Tree.

Do the various Money Tree cheats, hacks and scams work? I wouldn't try it because it will lead to your account getting frozen. The "Money Tree Grabber" program is easily detected by TNT (The Neopets Team) and considering most sites make you pay to download it, you are going to get screwed twice. The Money Tree exists as a place to donate things as well as to get something for free. It was not created as a place for people to spend hours trying to get free things. That's what the Game section is for. If they spent half the time earning NP playing games they'd have no need to hawk the Money Tree and outright abuse it.

From time to time you might get a Random Event that the Ghosts have stolen NP from you and placed it on the Money Tree. I have never had them take more than 100NP at any given time so it isn't a big deal when it happens. Most of the time there is another Random Event a few hours later that gifts you with a piece of food.