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Events & Collectibles General Discussion

I loved the popcorn! I have a couple.
The cotton candy I thought was cute but, I went for other things instead.
See, I have 2 popcorn, 2 Vask Candies, Jack, which was a line up itself. And the candy and jack wasn't known about until later in the event. It was a pleasant surprise for me. I have a Halloween or autumn line up that isn't Halloweeny.
I got the mermaid egg because it reminded me of Betta and I happened to acquire a dragonscale egg during that time so decided to go for it. I also sold a carnival pinwheel on discount.
I could see the price and demand of the green cotton candy going up later when more colors are released.
 
I actually really love the Green Cotton Candy! I'm not normally super into food collectibles, but I thought it was really cute (and it's something else I could use for Code: Realize themed lineups, so win-win), so it was actually one of my top priorities from that event. I'm not sure how I feel about the purple background with it (though I am happy to see the return of the purple Halloween background in general), but I hope they make more colors of cotton candy in the future. I'd love to have a set of green, pink, and blue at least!
 
I love the green cotton candy but I'm not sure how I would use it in a lineup though.
 
Some say 2023 was the best year for TBT events. But I would give that to 2017 since it created the most memorable event on the site.

No site event had more activities than the 2017 Fair, not even Camp TBT from 2023. It had contests, staff favorite events, championship series, and the Flash-based arcade games. Can the 2024 Fair beat that? I hope so, since this is the 20th anniversary edition.
 
I wonder, how did glow wands rise to becoming the most popular collectible on TBT? Back in 2016 (when they first came out), everyone was after the Pokéball and Pinwheel. And I’ll never forget when chocolate cakes were all the rage.
 
I wonder, how did glow wands rise to becoming the most popular collectible on TBT? Back in 2016 (when they first came out), everyone was after the Pokéball and Pinwheel. And I’ll never forget when chocolate cakes were all the rage.
They were difficult to obtain, looked good, and more kept releasing over the years. They are very versatile and the events they were released in were very popular, too.
 
I wonder, how did glow wands rise to becoming the most popular collectible on TBT? Back in 2016 (when they first came out), everyone was after the Pokéball and Pinwheel. And I’ll never forget when chocolate cakes were all the rage.
There's about a bunch of peak ones, and they're behind a peak background. Plus I do remember them being popular back in New Leaf. (I don't recall any being in NH.)
 
I wasn't too involved in the marketplace back then, but I remember loving the wands from when I first saw them, and my star wand hunt thread was initially a hunt thread for all the wands and retro collectibles I wasn't able to afford during both the 2016 and 2017 fairs I got busy with school I think? But the star wand just ended up being the last one to find.

Crazy to see how much it's blown up over the years, but I'm also not surprised. I think any glowy collectible on a night sky background is going to be popular. Plus, if I'm remembering correctly, the 2016 (and 2017) fairs had the least amount of participants out of any of the fairs, adding to their limited availability in the market.
 
My desire for the glow wands isn’t coming from their aesthetics, but rather for nostalgia for the year 2016, including the entire time the 2016 TBT Fair has been going on. But now, if I had to pick a favorite wand from the 2016 Fair, it would be the flower wand. Even if my snowflake wand and pumpkin wand weren’t one of these wands, they’re still doing a good job fulfilling my glow wand needs. But now that I’m trying to do three of each of some collectibles, all I need is a third glow wand. But more importantly, it’s not just the glow wands I’m after. I miss the Summer Nights TBT Fair, but even bringing that back won’t be enough to take me back into 2016 because of the other factors that’s been going on related to personal life (for example, I’m no longer as young as I used to be).

Heck, it goes further back than that. Back in 2015, I wanted to have glow wand collectibles since the glow wands were very cool items in ACNL. And when they did come out, I was hoping that the site would have snowflake wands and pumpkin wands. Now we have more glow wands than we do of a couple of other categories, including fruits, balloons, letters, and the feathers and star fragments if we exclude the multi-colored ones.
 
We were discussing this in the collectibles discord not too long ago. From what I can recall, wands were reasonably priced until 2019 when people suddenly started making threads like "Buying star wand for 20K" because no one was selling them on the market anymore. The price hasn't come down since then.

Some people may remember that the flower glow wand was actually relatively undesirable when it was first released, because everyone liked star and heart better. More people were selling flower wands than buying, and they probably went for like 2K at the beginning. But by 2019, many of the people who participated in the 2016 fair were inactive, so even the flower wands were now desirable due to limited amounts in circulation.

I frequently kick myself because I purchased a star wand at the 2016 fair and, not predicting it would one day become the most desired collectible, did.....this 🤪

Traded star glow wand for Yoshi Egg.png
 
We were discussing this in the collectibles discord not too long ago. From what I can recall, wands were reasonably priced until 2019 when people suddenly started making threads like "Buying star wand for 20K" because no one was selling them on the market anymore. The price hasn't come down since then.

Some people may remember that the flower glow wand was actually relatively undesirable when it was first released, because everyone liked star and heart better. More people were selling flower wands than buying, and they probably went for like 2K at the beginning. But by 2019, many of the people who participated in the 2016 fair were inactive, so even the flower wands were now desirable due to limited amounts in circulation.

I frequently kick myself because I purchased a star wand at the 2016 fair and, not predicting it would one day become the most desired collectible, did.....this 🤪

View attachment 539450
Yeah, it’s kinda crazy how glow wands have evolved from a minor abundant collectible with less demand than the once-coveted Pokéball to the collectible that rigged the polls and slowed TBT Bell transactions. Even if we get more star wands, heart wands, and flower wands in circulation than the newer wands, the older wands will still have a much higher demand.

I kinda feel that in the future, the Halloween Carnival collectibles will eventually become like this, including the Ghost Kitty plush. My advice is, don’t sell your Halloween collectibles now, because you’ll regret it once they become rarer and more expensive.
 
I frequently kick myself because I purchased a star wand at the 2016 fair and, not predicting it would one day become the most desired collectible, did.....this 🤪

View attachment 539450
omg nooo… i traded my 2016 heart wand for a toy hammer, rad feather and popsicle back in 2020 and i kick myself over it at least once a day LOL

i left the forums shortly after the 2016 fair and didn’t realize how valuable the heart wand had become in those 4 years 😫
 
it's crazy looking back at how much all collectible prices have changed - reading through this inspired me to have a little search and i just found evidence of me buying a pokeball for 500tbt back in 2013. sold it in i think 2020 for 10k! and these days they barely seem to move lol.
 
Just to make a brief diversion from the glow wand demand, let’s talk about the chocolate cake and a few others. Back when I first joined, they were like, 4,000 TBT. To a new user, that was way out of my league. Though in those days, stuff like the white feather, pinwheel, and Pokéball were so rare and expensive that many would find to be less realistic, so the other collectibles got more demand. At the lower end of the spectrum, there were pears, oranges, regular cakes, cyan letters, regular Easter eggs, yellow candies, and red candies. Those were more like “poor man’s collectibles”. On the other side, we had chocolate cakes, peaches, Yoshi eggs, the unlimited stock feathers, and eventually, apples and toy hammers. Whatever the glow wands have become was what the toy hammers were intended to be. As for apples, peaches, and chocolate cakes, because of their limited stock with the only chance of being restocked being at the directs, they were much higher in demand. When there were much fewer collectibles, these were the ones people wanted. But the excessive restocks of these collectibles, combined with an influx of a whole bunch or collectibles, has made them lose their value. Everyone wanted them at first, but when their demands were fulfilled, they lost value and now they have become basic beginner collectibles.

Let’s also not forget that apples were so high in demand from the start that the staff had to make them unique every time they were restocked. Now they’re unlimited stock.

I do miss those days when they used to be the most coveted collectibles. Now they’re towards the lower end of the demand spectrum. Needless to say, there was a time when new fruit was much higher in demand. Now new glow wands aren’t as high in demand.
 
I'd like to throw my $0.02 in and say.. be the change you want to see. If we want to see overall lower collectible prices, list your collectibles for lower prices 🤷‍♀️ Sure, there is the collectible tier list and that's how we kind of determine the overall market value, but we're literally making all of this up. There is no TBT gold standard. If we all start listing them lower, sure we'll get less TBT, but the more frequent exchange would happen thus allowing more TBT and collectible flow. But idk, at the same time, I'm no economist.
 
I’m gonna go ahead and try this experiment. Once I get up to 5,000 TBT (after I pay 700 TBT to another member for an iOS wallpaper I commissioned), I’ll set up a buying thread for a Flower Glow Wand for - 5,000 TBT! Let’s see if I can get a more expensive collectible for much cheaper.
 
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