WarcraftPets Forum

Some guy on one of the servers I'm on is selling three [pet]Ethereal Soul-Trader[/pet] for 50k a piece, about 30k lower than the other two people (five in total on my AH.) Is it fair to assume that these are fairly likely to be dupes?

I have one on my server selling the Ethereal Soul-Trader, Spectral Tiger Cub, & Dragon Kite for 50-60k each. I've suspected they are dupes as well.

It's impossible to tell, but my guess is they're all duped. Across multiple servers the price seems to be around 60k and continues to drop.

Duping does not necessarily need to be a factor. If people are not paying the higher prices, then the prices will drop if the sellers really want to sell. I saw a level 1 [pet]Ethereal Soul-Trader[/pet] on the AH with a starting bid of around 44k gold (an amount I was barely able to cover), so I bid on it (expecting to be outbid)... and won the auction. If people were willing to pay the higher buy out price, I would not have won that auction... and I was the first (and apparently only) one to bid on it.

I would like to add that it is my understanding that the known duping process always results in a level 6 pet, so I am confident that the one I got was not a dupe.

The whole level 6 thing came about with the earliest batch of suspect Spectral Tiger Cubs. Given the massive amount of level 1 cubs, EST and Dragon Kites that have suddenly shown up in nearly every trade channel and AH I've seen, I have no faith in using the pet's level to determine if it's legit.

Peanutty wrote:The whole level 6 thing came about with the earliest batch of suspect Spectral Tiger Cubs. Given the massive amount of level 1 cubs, EST and Dragon Kites that have suddenly shown up in nearly every trade channel and AH I've seen, I have no faith in using the pet's level to determine if it's legit.

Plus, if one buys from the auction house, they will probably not take anything away. It also guarantees that the pet will be learnable. Be wary of trade barking if you don't buy from the AH! If you do want to buy from trade, have them post it to the AH at 5% higher and you both will be happy!

On bonechewer, prices have dropped like hot rocks and we have had lower prices for high end pets as well. Overall, pet prices have dropped, perhaps because of the crz realm thing...which I hate btw. Not sure of pricing, but have been trying to sell eye of legions and grell...and got a DM eye last night on my first battle WOOHOOO that I'm trying to sell on AH. Flight and profession training is kicking my ole pocketbook My realm seems to go through cycles. One minute, prices are overall high as hell then the next prices are shockingly lowball.

It wasn't really the price that made me wonder about them. It was just that the seller was selling three of them for cheaper than what was already on the AH but not so cheap that it was unreasonable. That's a common method people use for selling stolen things. People are suspicious if they're too cheap but can rationalize it if they're discounted.

Ethereal is still a very rare pet and even on ebay it's going for over $200. So, either the seller has that kind of cash to spend on ebay and is willing to take that kind of cut in value or s/he got really lucky three times and found them for much cheaper on AH. Either way, you'd think the seller would want more for them. It's not like that pet is going away, ya know?

That's just what got me wondering.

Kendrah wrote:Ethereal is still a very rare pet

This is a misconception. There are 291 ESTs on Horde AHs at this moment across all US servers. Compare that to 116 Crawling Claws, 122 Crimson Whelplings, 65 Dragon Kites, 39 Rocket Chickens, 11 Tuskarr Kites. It's priced like a rare pet because historically it has been rare, and there has been no significant new supply from the only legit source (ie the trading card game). Nonetheless, the supply has increased massively and without any official notice (because it's almost certainly due to duping). Therefore we still perceive EST as rare even though it's not.

So the ESTs you see on your AH are almost certainly dupes. But we have to be careful about accusing people of duping. If it's on the AH, there's very little chance that they're being sold by an actual duper. Dupers avoid account bans by conducting business using barkers in trade chat, who will direct you to a separate toon that sells you the actual pet. The overwhelming likelihood is that this seller is a legit player who invested in cheap ESTs and is now trying to flip them for a profit, or--more likely--cut their losses.

Poofah is probably right. They were probably duped at some point but the current seller is probably not the duper. They may be trying to resell them for a profit, or cut their loss, or may be moving a large amount of gold between servers or something but probably not the duper. I've done one purchase of a EST that was exactly like he described. A barker in trade chat and when I met up with him some new character came and delivered the pet. It was quite surprising really because it was on my home server with is a Low pop RP server. One of the benefits of this type of server is that we usually don't have to deal with this type of spam.

I will say that while I haven't seen the EST there I assume he can show up in the BMAH which would give you some steady increase in supply but I doubt it could account for as much supply as there seems to be.

I don't believe EST shows up in BMAH but even if it did it would not account for the huge increase in availability. Rocket Chicken on the other hand does show up in BMAH, and yet holds it's value very well because it isn't being duped/suspected of being a dupe target.

The BMAH TCG pets are Bananas, Hippogryph, Dragon Kite, Rocket Chicken. The current availability of those pets on US horde AHs is 33, 60, 70, 41, respectively, compared to 262 ESTs.

My best guess is that legit players speculated on cheap ESTs during the course of 5.1-5.3, without knowing the extent of duping. These speculators are now holding a reservoir of ESTs, and as the xpac winds down, they are feeling pressure to make back some of their investment. If that's true, then we are only now beginning to see the true extent of the duping that has been going on since roughly June of last year. The numbers are very troubling -- ESTs are more common than Darkmoon Tonk, Viscidus Globule, etc etc. The current price is buoyed by EST's perceived scarcity, but it's completely unsustainable.