Today we’d like to introduce a new shop to the Cave: Rikur’s Rarities!

You may recognize its shopkeeper from the Cave Exchange. Rikur has spent the last several years buying and selling gems, and as such, has amassed a bit of a fortune. He’s got a lot of old, rare items cluttering up his cavern, but has realized that he much prefers cold, hard gems. In the interest of liquidating some of his collection, he’s decided to open up his own shop in the market.

This shop is unique in several ways:

• Gems are the only currency accepted at Rikur’s Rarities.
• His shop front is fairly small, so he will only be stocking 10 items at a time, quickly replacing any sold merchandise.
• Having spent so long focusing on gem exchange rates, Rikur is not very well versed in item values. As such, he’s decided to go with a “price ‘em high, reduce until they sell” sales model.
• To reflect this, he’s sorted his stock into three pricing tiers based on their age and general availability:
  • Low-tier items start at 50 gems. This tier contains mostly equippable items from various sources.
  • Medium-tier items start at 100 gems. This tier includes mostly mushrooms from various sources.
  • High-tier items start at 250 gems. This tier includes Glowing Changingshrooms and other items that may be unobtainable through normal means.
• Rikur will reduce the price of each item by 1 gem every 24 hours it has been on sale, until it is bought and replaced by another item starting at the full price.
  • Each item’s timeline is tracked individually. This means that if an item goes up for sale at 14:00 ST, its price will be reduced daily at that same time — not at midnight.
  • When an item is reduced to a price of 0 gems, Rikur will pull the item from the shop and replace it with another item at full starting price. He will assume that there is little interest in these items, and will try not to stock them again for some time.
  • Additionally, Rikur will be keeping a close eye on the prices at which items sell. If things are selling too quickly or slowly, tier prices may be adjusted to accommodate.

Rikur expects that most items will sit for quite some time before someone is willing to purchase them. He’s more interested in letting shoppers decide what they value an item at than making a quick gem. It’s his hope that you’ll check the shop regularly and pounce on anything you fancy once it’s reached a price your coin-purse finds manageable!

(As a side note, Rikur is also interested in starting a stocking shop, but thinks he’ll need to find some interesting items and a partner in order to expand his business.  He’ll be working on the launch of a stocking shop sometime in the next couple of months after he’s put a bit more thought into the mechanics and what sort of items he’d like to sell!)

This is very surprising! I’m interested in seeing how this works out :)

if a twilight woods mushroom comes up im dead

DoveCrowglitchMyla

Would it be possible to see a list of whats sold and for how much? This could be a great asset for people wanting to get a good idea of somethings value! :D Even it was published once a month with the monthly newsletter, I think it could be really neat!!!

Hello!

Quick note on this shop that I think didn’t make it into the announcement: with the exception of some Cave Capsules, this shop will be the only way of getting old event / OotS items going forward (that is, event shopkeepers won’t sell you old event items at a markup anymore, etc.) This will help prevent any kind of “flooding” of old items and allow us to more carefully control their release.

Foxcat: I think that’s a great idea! I do track of the prices at which all items in this shop sell, and it’s absolutely data that we would consider publishing :) I think it would probably make sense to publish numbers for items that have sold at least some reasonable number (as opposed to what may be an outlier sale), so it may take some time to build up coherent data, but I can definitely see it becoming a very useful resource. I’ll bring it up for staff discussion!

Okay but is anyone else sitting here looking at this shop feeling like they’re playing a giant game of chicken?

It’s an interesting idea though! Both to keep items circulating and to maybe give gems some value again.

Sheppard

Show spoiler

As a side note, Rikur is also interested in starting a stocking shopDove

I was…very confused there for a bit

(I’ve since figured out what “stocking shop” means in this context, but that’s where my mind went at first :|)

Bone Monster, please forgive my poor MS Paint skills *cowers*

(also Rikur those aren’t exactly covering your feet either but they do look a lot better than the pink blobby ones. You’ve uncovered a prospering market, kudos)

This… really helps my anxieties about GCS. I’ve paid anywhere from 100 to 197 gems for those suckers. (Only one was 197 gems, the rest were below the 150 mark.) I’m always afraid a new color would be added and things would get even higher than 200 gems and ahhh. That was my hard line.

But this way, one day those GCS mushrooms should come around that you are waiting for? (And take the scariness of random out of that mushroom.) Hopefully it’ll curb prices on them since every one won’t be so desperate to get one @@;

I most likely not use this shop often, but it’s a really nice concept!

Is this the first time GCS mushrooms as their own items have been available for people that aren’t the artists?

Also, if there is an unseen GCS coat, is it possible the mushroom may show up in the shop before someone finds one via a GCS?

(pings removed) EDIT: oops i didn’t even check the shop before posting, ahaha. sorry, nevermind! |D
Oh wow, this sounds really neat! I’ve got a clarification request though; is the same stock shown/available to the entire userbase? Like if an item gets bought by one user, it won’t be available to other users until it rotates back in?

Fie95
That’s correct! Riker’s Rarities was designed with previously released items in mind, and we currently have no plans of using it to release anything new :)

What a complex, amazingly well thought out mechanic!  I can’t wait to see the new GCS coats come onto the market c= 

Also, this “has amassed a bit of a fortune. He’s got a lot of old, rare items cluttering up his cavern, but has realized that he much prefers cold, hard gems. In the interest of liquidating some of his collection, he’s decided to open up his own shop in the market. ”  made me think of Frieza xD

Lawl, Rikur is Frieza’s spirit animal. ^^

On a more serious note, if the perceived demand for items is based on sales, and if availability of items is purely based on random chance, I do worry about some of the more common and easily accessible past event items.

Taking the currently stocked Gardenia Blossoms as an example, they’re available at 5k Nuggets (which would be around 1-2 Gems) in the Bazaar. Either they linger for 48 more days, or more likely, I believe the shop slot and its potential future item will be valued much higher than the actual item, and someone will pick it up much sooner.

Could this end up skewing the expected demand for the item, causing the Gardenia to show up more often, despite not really filling a demand? Given that seasonal event items will no longer show up in future seasonal events, I worry about otherwise low-demand items flooding the slots over higher-demand items that just don’t ping the random number generator.

On a similar note, would it be acceptable to host a site-wide vote for most desired event/OotS items, to possibly gauge community interest in which items they might want to see available in the Shop more often?

I’d also like to suggest maybe allowing a single purchase of a past seasonal item during its appropriate seasonal event time, though that might be personal bias talking… *mourns the loss of future Bottles of Starlight XD*