Dubloons - An All Time Low!

During your busy buying and selling lives here on Neopets have you noticed a significant decrease in the price of dubloons? I'm almost positive you have, thought this issue may have faded into the back of your mind.

Have you ventured into the Auctions and seen a fifty dubloon coin go for the low low price of 11,000 NP? For someone who is buying these dubloons, this is exciting news. No more paying 30,000+ NP for a fifty dubloon coin! Finally, they are getting cheaper!

For a seasoned dubloon seller though, these prices are failing to make ends meet for their Neopets. In the extreme, it cuts out a major income source for some users. Usually, dubloons are a profitable way to make Neopoints, being as they are normally free thanks to the Krawk Islands’ Anchor Management , however at the way they have been selling lately, Neopians around the world have begun hoarding dubloons until better times. It seems like the days where the Shop Wizard would provide a ten dubloon coin for 8,000 NP are no more!

According to various Neopians (who wish to remain anonymous) whom I interviewed for my findings, currently the fifty dubloon coin is selling at about roughly 10,100 NP in most shops, a One Hundred dubloon coin at 23,800 NP and a One Thousand dubloon coin at the unbelievable price of only 290,000 NP! Though prices have steadily decreased over the progression of time (example: According to a certain Purple and Orange Striped Kiko down in Kiko Lake, in January of 2009 a One Thousand dubloon coin sold for the hefty price of 1,500,000 NP, to which the price continued to fall slowly but surely to about 750,000 NP in early Y15) it’s only recently that things have taken a turn for the worse. Usually it takes about one Neopian year cycle for there to be a 200,000 NP decrease in selling price, however these prices are falling by this amount in less than 4 months! All in all, this is currently an excellent time to be buying Dubloons, but a terrible time to be selling them.

Thinking in the mind of a buyer, we have a certain Stock Broker Chia who provided some solid advice: It would be a wise business move to try and buy all the cheaply priced Dubloons you can, however one might get restless waiting for profit from your purchases, being as there's no definite peak in sight.

The experiment : In order to prove the point that dubloons have been on a harsh pricing decline, a very generous Kougra from Tyrannia put up their fifty dubloon coin for 20,000 NP on the Auctions. He listed this dubloon three different times a day, between 8 and 10 am NST, 12 and 2 pm NST and 6 and 7 pm NST, in order to see if there was any kind of relation between the times of day dubloons would sell or if it was simply the falling of the prices that contributed to the fact that dubloons were becoming simply unprofitable. He then waited patiently for the customers to begin the bidding war.

Even though He listed fifty dubloon coin on three different occasions in the same day, all priced at 20,000 NP, no bids whatsoever came in. This was shocking honestly, because our fellow Kougra disclosed that he paid about 27,300 NP for the coin, therefore he would have been making no profit from the sale if it was bought by someone, however even so the auction went by completely unnoticed. Upon relaying this information to my various anonymous interviewees, they were unsurprised.

Taking a more extreme route, we received a generous donation of a shiny five dubloon coin was given to our research, and prompt listed at 100 NP, hoping this cheap price would stimulate some kind of interest and hopefully a bidding war. Since this dubloon given to our studies completely free of charge, nobody worried about profit. The item was listed between 8 and 10 am NST and during this time we gave our interviewees a coffee break. Upon returning, A Neomail came in that it had sold and so we all opened it in anticipation.

501 NP.

That was especially shocking, even to our anonymous contributors who assumed it would rake in a possible 1,600 NP!

Upon speaking to the Shop Wizard about One Thousand Dubloon coins, he came up with nothing. Checking the trades, hope was somewhat restored. Though there was a lowball trade of 300k in exchange for the coin, there was also one asking for a fair 500k.

Neopets Staff have given pre-set values to dubloons that are way above what they would ever realistically sell for, but one must wonder if those prices should be what they actually sell for. If dubloons were as pricey as intended by the original set worth by NP Staff, would the market for them be harder to crash like this? It could also go the opposite way, with the thinking that nobody wants to buy them because they're so expensive so another crash would ensue.

As of current, there doesn't seem to be a possible increase in dubloon profit for possibly the end of this year into the next at best. It takes time for a profit bearing rise in price, and so a year's time might not even be enough time! It all depends on the Neopian economy really, but for now this is the time to buy buy buy and hoard until prices hit a high once again! If you are someone who needs dubloons, this is an optimum time for you to acquire as much as your budget may let you! If you are a Dubloon seller, keep your head high and stick out this time of struggle!

In conclusion, we all advise everyone to keep a close eye on the market of dubloons! There's a general agreement that in the next two years there will be a small rise in prices, but looks like we just have to hit Krawk bottom first.