Having been ripped off at the trading post in my newbie days at Neopets, I learned the hard way about dishonest people, scamming, inflated prices and ‘product enhancement’. What’s that? Well, Neopets has a rarity scale that they use to gauge the worth of items but you can never trust that to be accurate. Things that are given out by the Tombola or other various places at the site will often be tagged with “special” next to it, this means that it is something that you can’t get any other place at the site [meaning shops]. Does that mean that it is worth more? Not always, that’s why you need to know what things are worth and if there is a special event that revolves around them. Take the Evil Blue Fuzzle; these weren’t really worth a lot until an avatar was available if your pet played with one. Sometimes you got it right away, other times people had to play with it for hours. The same thing goes with the Faerie Queen Doll
The Trading Post
It doesn’t cost anything to list items at the TP [Trading Post] but to bid you need to have items to bid with, you can not just bid NP [NeoPoints]. Most people have a couple of junk items in their inventory before they go to the TP to scout for bargains. You can’t really trust the rarity index or rarity ratings of items so it is helpful to have another browser window open and use the Shop Wizard to check the prices. You can add a text message at the bottom of your trade lot stating what you want for it or what you are looking for. There is a maximum of ten items per lot and you can only have ten lots active at any given time. Once you post your trade lot you can’t retract it for ten minutes. Lots stay at the Trading Post for two week, if you don’t accept, cancel or retract your lot and the two week limit ends, the items are put back into your inventory.
Once you post a lot you will receive a notification at the top left hand side of your page when someone places a bid; click on the image and you will go to the Trading Post, click the “show all” and you will see a list of the people who placed a bid or cancelled a bid. You can clear out the list by going to your Event Box and clicking “check all” to delete them all at the same time. You never have to accept an offer, if it isn’t what you want then hit the cancel button and the person who bid gets a notice saying that you declined the offer. Likewise, there is a button to accept the offer. Once you click either of them you will get a pop up box asking if you are sure about the transaction. This doesn’t happen if you disable the scripts for the page so if you choose to surf the site this way, be careful which button you click. Once you click it, you can’t retract it. On the same token, if you have multiple lots at the TP at the same time, make sure you are accepting or declining the correct lot or you might end up getting ripped off.
The Trading Post is only for items, you should never advertise your guild there and the chain letters should be reported to Neopets if you come across them. Most often chain letters will tell you to repost the message ten times then go to a certain part of the site to find a large amount of NP. This is not true and if you repost it and you get reported [or it is caught by a site monitor] you will get a warning. Do it again and your account will be frozen. There are no hidden tricks to making NP at the site and if you see anything that looks fishy, report it using the links that are on every listing at the TP. Likewise, if you see someone scamming or saying that the item will do something that it won’t, check to see if they are a newbie. They may have bought it thinking that it does something that it doesn’t [like a Fortune Cookie]. Send them a NeoMail and tell them, if they give you attitude, forward it to TNT [The Neopets Team] and tell them what is going on.
Breakdown of Rarity Ratings
This is something that you really have to take with a grain of salt; the ratings are rarely accurate and can change in the matter of a couple of minutes. When the “bread avatar’ was released the price of everything with the word ‘bread’ in it went up. The retired Bread leaves were going for 20K and higher, needless to say, I made a killing off that. This is why you have to stay on top of things and check the prices before you sell anything on the TP or price them for your shop. From time to time things are retired at the site; there is no announcement or notice, they just retire it. Neofashion [the name of the book still makes me sick] is one that caught me off guard. One day it was selling for about a thousand NP and I decided to get rid of all the ones that I had in my SDB. Not even a day later they were selling for upwards of ten thousand points. Why? They were retired. Now you can’t get one for under a million NP. Why are they worth so much? Ask anyone that is going for a trophy for the number of books they have read to a pet and they will tell you that every title matters.
Common and Uncommon Rarity Rating: 1-70
I really wish Neopets would redo the entire rating system because it can really trip up new people at the site. They see someone with the word ‘uncommon’ next to it at the TP and think that it is worth a ton of NP but most of the time they aren’t Uncommon usually means that they aren’t something that is stocked on a regular basis at the Neopet shops.
Examples of uncommon items: Magic Eyeballs, Bat Cookie, Yellow Wocky Plushie, Blue Shoyru Plushie, Gold Lipstick
Special Rarity Rating: 105-119
Special items can come from various places at the site like the Tombola and random events. If you look in your Safety Deposit Box there should be a description of the item and sometimes it says where it came from. The Fishing Hole is the one that has been giving out the most ‘special’ items lately but most of them aren’t all that special. Items that came from piñatas or the Advent Calendar are usually listed towards the end of the SDB and have the details of where they came from or what year they were given out. These have a numeric rarity rating of 105-119, the ones ranked 121-179 are even more rare than the 105-119; battle items, potions, scrolls and other Battledome items will have more power than those that are ranked with lower numbers.
Examples of special items: Cup of Hot Borovan, Broken Blue Fuzzle, Heart Shaped Charm, Sausage Omelette, Plum Chia Eraser
Rare Rarity Rating: 71-84
Ahhh the quandary that is the ‘rare’ rating. Without a doubt, healing potions in the lower numbers [one through ten] are the ones that are most often used in TP scams. Someone will advertise a Healing Potion I and say that it is something that will heal your pet; in a way it will because it restores lost hit points but it won’t cure it of a disease. Usually food items that are listed as rare are worth more than others except things that are given out as free food items by the Shrine or any of the various daily free site events like the Wheel of Excitement.
Examples of rare items: Healing Potion VIII, Bagguss, Jetsam Apple Cake, Mint Chocolate Grundo, Chocolate Aisha Ears, Blue Bruce Balloon
Very Rare Rarity Rating: 85-90
The term ‘very rare’ can mean several different things; most of the time it means that the items is rarely stocked in a shop. Ghost Marshmallows sell for about 90 – 125 NP at any given time but if you scour the Shop Wizard, you can usually find them for less. Since they are a seasonal type of item, when Halloween rolls around, the price usually goes up on them. These are often confused with the Magic Ghost Marshmallows that sell for about four to six thousand NP; people scam on the TP by advertising the Ghost Marshmallows as Magic Ghost Marshmallows and newbies always fall for it because they see the ‘very rare’ rage next to it.
Examples of very rare items: Ghost Marshmallows, Banana Achyfi, Usuki Scuba Diving Play Set, Chomby Battle Goggles, Inky Pen and Dire Lupe Neoquest Plushie
Mega Rare Rarity Rating: 100-104
The Mega Rare items are usually things that are given out but not all that often; that doesn’t mean that they are more valuable, just that your chances of getting one of them from any of the daily free events at the site are slim. Usually the rainbow items that are listed as mega rare sell for a little more than others but that is usually the normal with most rainbow items because they are something that people collect and put in their galleries.
Examples of mega rare items: Green Pepper Omelette, scratch card Poogles and Quiggles like the Rainbow Quiggle Plushie, Gold Meerca Plushie and Non-Magical Green Meerca Plushie
Super Rare Rarity Rating: 96-99
Lurk at any of the high traffic shops like the Pharmacy or Weapon Shop and you will see some great examples of super rare items but on the same token, there are things that are listed as super rare but that pertains to how often they are stocked in the shops. Honey Blossom is one thing that always shows up on the Trading Post as something that people are ‘inflating’; meaning they are misrepresenting it as something that is worth a lot more than the going price. The cheapest morphing potion on the site is the Green Nimmo; you can usually get these for around 15K and when you use one on a pet, you get an avatar
Examples of super rare items: Green Nimmo Morphing Potion, Raptraphant Leg, Evil Blancmange, Honey Blossom, Fright Pop
Ultra Rare Rarity Rating: 91-95
This is one of the most confusing ratings at the site; some of the items are worth a lot and others are worth almost nothing. You have to keep in mind that the rating system isn’t perfect so when you see one of these items at the Trading Post, it is worth it to check the going price on the Wiz before you place a bid. There are some ultra rare items that are worth a good bit of NP but you have to know the going prices on them in order to avoid being ripped off.
Examples of ultra rare items: Tree Pattern Stained Glass Window, Cartography For Beginners, Puntec Fruit, Winter Woolies Usuki Set, Sturdy Chomby Helmet, Slithering Snake Taco
Retired Rarity Rating: 180
These are items that are no longer released at the site. Usually when the new Advent Calendar comes out, items from the previous year become retired and the prices start to go up on them. Being the sick, compulsive shopper that I am, I try to buy tons of the food and book items that are given out because once they retire; the prices always go up on them. A prime example of that is the Cranberry Gummy Slorg; I bought hundreds of them when they were selling for 25 – 30 NP, now the price is well over 300 NP and climbing because they are now retired. Once you feed your pet a food item or read them a book, it disappears from your inventory; that means that the prices are always going to go up on them. There are items that are given out at the site that are retired; the Icy Negg is one of them. Most of the time you get these as a Winter Random Event.
Examples of retired items: Orange Snow Puff, Fizzy Quiggle Drink, Water Faerie Eraser, Halloween Goodie Bag, Bread, Nachos
These have their own rarity and they are done by color. Anytime you see a gray one you know that it is a retired card; these always increase in price because you need them to complete a part of your NeoDeck. The Super Icy Fun Shop cards that were given out were selling for about 100 NP a year or two ago, look them up now and they are close to two thousand points. The site gives you a break down of the colors and their rarity rating but those are sort of useless. Things go up and down in price all the time depending on the demand. Occasionally you will get a random event where it will say something to the effect of, “The Fire Paw has mysteriously found it’s way into your NeoDeck”. The site says that the green cards are ” Quite Rare” and the pink ones are ” Uncommon”; Fire Paw is worth a lot more than what the site suggests because it can be used for an avatar.
If you want to learn more about the rarity of cards and how they are classified, you can go to “My Deck” and click on the link for the rarity list or use this URL:
www.neopets.com/games/neodeck/colcardrarity.phtml
The Bottom Line
Using the Trading Post isn’t hard; everything you need to do to search through lots, check your inventory, look at bids you have placed and the main page are right there on one page. There are a lot of scams that go on at the site and there are people that are always looking to rip people off. They will email you if you don’t accept a bid right away and hand you every line in the book about why their offer is so great. I had one person say they were going to report me to TNT if I didn’t accept his trade. Surprisingly enough, less then ten minutes later the trade vanished and when I went to search his username it said that the account was frozen. The Trading Post is a great place to unload unwanted items quick but there are times when things just don’t seem to sell. I’ve had a lot of luck getting great deals but at the same time, I was scammed when I first started out. Like the old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
