Story Time - When some guy paid me 50K to rent my Rabbit

[Beave]

This story is a bit long, but it's one of my favorite WoW moments. I know it sounds crazy, but I have a few friends who can vouch for the fact it's true.

Earlier this year, just as I was really getting into pet collecting, I decided I just HAD to have a Darkmoon Rabbit. It is consistently said to be one of the hardest to farm pets in the game, and I like a challenge. It proved to be particularly hard for me as someone who mains Horde on a PVE server. Two Darkmoon Faires in a row I camped him hard just sitting there in front of the cave trying not to go afk so long I didn't get logged out. Of the 5 times I saw him I only managed to actually get in a group and pull him once before Alliance stole him. I lost the roll. Finally in my 3rd month of camping him I got lucky, but a lot of that was due to my own work. I had a large group of guild members who knew that if I sent out a "Rabbit" message they needed to group up and get to the Faire asap. I got better at anticipating when it would spawn. 3 times in one week we got the pull. On the 3rd one I rolled a 98.

Not only did I win the rabbit, but it was an S/S! For two days I let it sit in my collection and didn't touch it. It was too magical to use. Then the guilt started to set in. This pet is worth upwards of 50k gold on bigger servers. As much as I wanted to keep it, should I? Could I justify to myself having a pet worth that much when I had less than 2k gold on my main and was going broke trying to level an alt? I couldn't even afford my flight license on the new Paladin I was working on, I'd blown what little money I did have on AH pets.

I don't know why, but I leveled the rabbit to lvl 4, then stopped playing him. Would leveling him hurt his value on the AH? I had the guilt because I was so poor. I couldn't justify keeping the rabbit. I figured I had to list it just once in the AH at a high minimum bid and see if I got any bites. I was considering moving to a PvE server at the time because a few friends had moved over there, and I already had low-level character, so I decided to list the rabbit on that server. 60K minimum bid, 100K buyout. I had my first bid within 20 minutes. It shot up to about 65k in the first 5 hours, then I didn't get any more bids until the auction ended.

I was sort of melancholy about selling the rabbit, but I got a good price and would be set for life on this new toon. (Or I could blow it all on AH pets as deals popped up which is what ended up happening.) Still, I wanted to congratulate the guy who won, so I sent him a mail saying I hoped he enjoyed the pet, and I was just getting into pets too. A day later I got a sort of weird email back saying he was going to resell the rabbit for more. I don't remember the exact wording, but it implied I wasn't smart enough to know what my item was worth and came across as gloating. I looked him up and he was even lower-level than I was but somehow had over 60K to spend on my auction. Probably a gold-seller. Oh well. Maybe I'd take some of my new fortune and buy another Darkmoon rabbit if someone else listed one on the AH.

For a few days I watched the AH and nobody listed anything. Then, by some miracle, a darkmoon rabbit popped up in the AH for 8k minimum bid with a buyout of 10k. I hit buyout as fast as I could. I ran to the mailbox and only then did I look at the details. It was the same guy as the seller. It was the same lvl 4 S/S Darkmoon Rabbit I'd sold days before for 65K (minus the AH cut). All told he ended up paying me around 50K gold for what ended up being a 3-day Rabbit Rental. I vividly recall someone in trade chat was desperately trying to sell a crawling claw for 10K at the same time I was scanning the AH, and shortly after I bought the rabbit muttered some sort of a curse about someone getting a great deal on a rabbit. We chatted and he explained to me how he used Undermine Journal to find pets cheap on other servers and then rolled a new toon there. It's a strategy I've used a lot filling out my collection, but usually with pets with lower pricetags. I told him about my rabbit rental and he was shocked. I sort of wonder if that guy is a member here.

The best part of the whole story is that I received a mail from the original rabbit buyer about an hour after I bought it back saying his AH program should have listed the rabbit for 100k gold, not 10k. I don't think the guy realized I was the same person who he gloated to about underpricing the rabbit earlier in the week. I may have felt bad if he hadn't been a dick earlier as he seemed to be hoping I'd sell it back to him because he made a mistake. I started typing a few snarky responses, then I just deleted them and didn't respond.

Now my rabbit and I have a story. It's why he's my avatar. I'm not ever going to sell or trade him. I do think he needs a good name though.

[Jazeel]

An absolutely great pet collecting tale, thank you for sharing it

[Jesjbrown]

You should name it "Faire Market Value".

[Stella3]

Maybe call it Karma? That is a really funny story but goes to show those who gloat will get it back in their face eventually. I want the Darkmoon rabbit so bad, its almost like an icon, i'd have better luck earning the money and purchasing it as I know I could never muster enough people to farm it with me, much less roll high enough.

[Kyozu]

Teaches us another lesson; don't rely on addons too much :p

I joined a large pug raid before WoD, when the darkmoon bosses were lvl 100 (and we were still 90).
It was a full raid of 40, this is the closest I got to winning a Darkmoon Rabbit roll...

[Pigpen]

You should definitely name him after the guy you rebought him after. That is what I would do.

Pigpen

[Graven]

That is a really great story. Grats on getting such a good deal on your own rabbit.

Also, Kyozu, you were robbed man! Seriously though that is brutal, joint-highest roll but denied. Better luck next time mate!