Having liquidated my bank for a phat/cracker has me wondering if now is such a good time to buy. We still have 11 more weekends left of the rare event. Edit: correction, 9 weekends left.
Do you think we’ll see a decrease in prices or is it just gradual and steady increase from here?
Would be interested in your predictions and thoughts on the matter.
Thanks 
Firstly, 7 weekends have passed, and 4 months = 16 weekends, so there are only 9 weekends left.
Short answer, probably. I wouldn’t buy any atm.
The first weekend was July 12. 4 months from then is Nov 12. There are 18 weekends in that time period. That’s how I arrived at my number
More come into the game every weekend, and we’ll see a significant increase still over the next half of the event.
Supply goes up, demand mostly goes down because people are rolling them. At the same time, demand can slightly go up as the people who want them don’t roll them yet. Overall, prices likely fall until the end of the event. Then, demand shoots up because everyone holding out on buying one now knows for sure they won’t be rolling one for free.
Supply stagnates, prices rise forever.
Interesting, you aren’t wrong I didn’t specify a hard end date, but I did only envision 16 weekends and my comments on length allude to that 
I do think there’s likely a price bubble. The numbers you players picked were set arbitrarily by the first to set the stage of what those few wanted them to be worth - yet prices remain nearly the same week to week while supply goes up. The volume of rares traded isn’t as high as the amount in the game however, so maybe there is merit to its stagnation.
I think a lot of people are realizing that there’s a good chance they never roll one. I suspect this “increasing demand” will typically outweigh the “increasing supply” of ~20 or so that come into the game every weekend (some of which aren’t wearable). I expect there to be some sort of trading frenzy towards the end of the event, though I don’t know if prices will rise or fall around that time.
A lot of people also have hindsight of RS2/3 (e.g. I at one point owned a Santa then but sold it to train smithing, and now it’s worth a crazy amount), and I sense that there is a tremendous amount of caution or “clinging” to any rares they have (except if they want to swap for other rares).
The current lack of end-game content (besides going for skill levels, which some people aren’t interested in) makes it so that there is a point where additional wealth doesn’t really get you much, so you may as well park it in an investment.
I don’t think that the true prices are arbitrary (though some people list unreasonable offers), but rather they are set by how much a buyer and seller values them at. For example, if I didn’t think the Santa I bought was worth 55m, I wouldn’t have bought it. I would much rather trade away 55m which I don’t mind rebuilding over time than be sitting on 55m at the end of the event unable to purchase a rare (since I can’t predict those prices at this time), having to pray that I can grind money making harder and faster than prices skyrocket due to them being discontinued.
As wealthier players buy up rares from those willing to sell, the only available trades will be for lower prices. Whether rare owners are interested in those remains to be seen.
I’m curious how many trades involving rares are “one-sided”, meaning that a rare was traded in return for an offer that did not include a rare. Divided by the number of rares in the game, this could be a decent indication of how tightly rares are being clung onto.
The amount of speculation and economic theorizing people put into the situation around in-game rares is more amazing to me than the rares themselves. The prices are arbitrary (as Pazaz already pointed out.)
This is a literal definition of arbitrariness: “Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference.” Outside of their high alchemy value, there is nothing inherent to the items themselves that makes them hold a certain value. As you point out with your example, the price was set by how much players think the items are worth. I think you’ve correctly pointed out that the value is driven by emotions (and maybe that’s a dirty word because people think economics is science and facts), such as the “fear of missing out” and nostalgia.
Certainly, we are free to make predictions here about what we think will happen with rares and their prices, but not admitting that prices are driven by emotional factors as well as others (practical considerations, such as weighing the value of money gained by selling a rare to buy skilling materials against the time spent gathering those materials manually, for example) is a mistake.
By that definition every player-to-player price is arbitrary no? The sense I got from his message was more along the lines of “pulled the number out of their behinds”.
Yes, but only to a certain extent, hence why I pointed out high alchemy value as a control value. In the current in-game economy on OSRS, a lot of items’ GE values are not far off their high alchemy value.
Also, yes, “pulled out of their behinds” would also mean it was arbitrarily chosen, because it was whatever that person thought or felt it to be worth.
Your purchase isn’t a bad value, nor is arbitrary a “bad” thing. Players are free to speculate and trade at whatever prices the market can support. It is valued really high at this time though, most players do not have that much in their bank.
Sellers set their prices high because there isn’t any competition driving it downwards and they are willing to wait if necessary.
Let me go over some hard numbers:
2025-08-23 04:00:00 UTC - 2025-08-25 04:00:00 UTC there were 843 unique accounts online (rares weekend 7).Prices appear unaffected weekend to weekend.
Thanks for those numbers – so it seems that maybe 12-15% of players will have one by the end of the event?
I would guesstimate around that. 12% means 1 in ~8 players! OSRS players may be confused since these items are commons there.
A generation of people that have gone through magic/pokemon cards, crypto, and the Post-Covid Robin Hood investment app…are the ones creating the “arbitrary” prices right now.
I don’t believe this is a bubble mainly because I do not lump all rares into one category. IMO that is a huge mistake. Look at the individual numbers, especially the wearables. They are overpriced now because we are the generation that saw all of those items I mentioned before and realized if we would have just held on to them…we don’t price for now, we price for the future, which oddly becomes the price for the now.
I think prices are already factored in because we all can do the math on the individual items and how many there will be. The main thing that will change the market values is the randomness of not knowing how Pazaz will tweak RNG weekend to weekend.
Or I’m wrong and all rares tank - Hoping for this…
I just struggle to imagine a situation where the average rare-holder would sell their rare in exchange for non-rare items/gp given the rarity (~12% of players total). Outliers would be those who believe that they can get a better price for it later (i.e. merchers), or those who value account progression/gear more than a discontinued item (my guess is not many players are like this, especially given that there is not much buyable end-game content if they aren’t planning on doing something like maxing or high base stats).
There may also be a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: since there will be so few rares, there is anxiety to obtain one ASAP (and on the flip side, rare-holders will cling to them harder). The resulting low trade volume perpetuates this anxiety, further heightening demand.
Another aspect to this is that not many players have amassed a huge amount of wealth. If we were pricing for later, there may not even be enough wealth on the richest player’s account to buy one. For example, in RS3 Santa hats were ~100m in 2010, now they’re 4b+. Yes that’s 15 years of time, but this is a preservation server and the current player base is pretty dedicated.
All 843 accounts qualify to receive a rare?
this is why i think the wines/disks/pumpkins/egg should have been made a little bit more common so that people who don’t have 50,000,000 - 100,000,000 GP C@$h can still climb the rare ladder without losing progress
I think we are in a rare price bubble until 2005. The buyer really has the power, the seller can’t sell their rares unless the buyer agrees. The price of rares is set by a mutually understood agreement between players, however, if people don’t have the money for rares (which they don’t), they simply aren’t going to buy them and the rare-holders will be forced to sell low, causing the bubble to pop and have a drastic decrease in price.
Now, if somehow streamers/youtubers start getting 2005 content out there, and we see a spike in the playerbase again, then I would say that would be a good time to sell rares. But I think between 2004 - 2005 we will see a drop, because people are only getting rares to sell for quick cash and levelling up skills, they don’t care so much about the rares themselves.
I bought my first phat in 2006 after saving up for a while merching, staking, barrows, etc. It took a lil while, but not crazy long. It was attainable for an everyday player like me. With the # of rares that are going to be ingame here, they will be completely unattainable for players 2 years down the road. Like, no sellers. I’ve got a 100m bank now and no one with a cracker is remotely interested, even the one supposedly for sale on the marketplace. It’s NFS he said, even if offered the asking price in gp. Same story for blue/white phats I believe, which I’m also interested in. How bad will it be 2 years from now?
Truth is, I think we need way, way more rares. No, not because I’m mad about not rolling one. I rolled one and am very happy about it. But so the rare market actually has trading volume for all rares for years to come. Thinking out loud about it now, I guess high prices are not the problem, it’s the zero trading volume. I think more rares would solve that.
I would have been burned at the stake if there wasn’t a supply of wearables to start. Non-wearables are gonna fill as we get closer to the intended ratios 