Guild Wars 2

I noticed the price of the mini karka skyrocket in the last few days, from 63 gold to 200, back down to 130’ish. Do the young karka’s still drop the mini karka?

Can anybody confirm whether they still drop or not? I get some thinking they do, but wiki no longer has the young karka as a possibility for acquisition. Would be nice to know, of course if they are still able to drop, getting one would be a nice surprise. But still, I am a mini collector (working on the title) not that the karka counts towards the title, I just like to have all the minis. Should I buy one, or is there still a possibility to get one as a drop?

TL;DR: I don’t know if the young karkas are still dropping minis but I’d wait and see on buying a mini karka. Read on for the long explanation why.

1) I’d hope ANet would put a change like that in the patch notes, but they’ve acknowledged the notes don’t contain all changes. However, since no note was included, no one should know for sure, so that should not be the reason for the price increase. Also, the other Lost Shores minis did not spike in price.

2) I don’t like to scream market manipulation, but if I’ve ever seen a borderline case of it, this would be it because: a) very low supply item (20 prior to the spike) with no obvious source of additional supply now that people don’t go to Southsun and many Southsun bots were banned and b) it did not look like a natural buyout on gw2spidy because there was no corresponding rise in buy orders until after the spike and even now the gap between buy and sell is much larger than the average spread of other minis

3) Anyone can edit the wiki. If there was manipulation, they could also have changed the wiki.

4) Guild missions will take place in Southsun so if the minis do still drop, we’re likely to see an influx of supply and prices drop as soon as those missions are unlocked.

Now all that said, I may be wrong. The primary argument against manipulation spiking prices is that any good trader able to buy out 1000+ gold of minis should know minis are a very slow market and be aware of the upcoming Southsun event. So maybe other people know something I don’t. It really comes down to how much YOU think they’re worth. If the karka is worth 130 gold to you (or 115-ish, you could probably get a buy order filled quickly at that price) then by all means go for it. If you don’t, and other people don’t, its price will naturally go back down.

For the record, I am also a mini collector. I have only the karka and hatchlings left (and some HoM ones). So I do have an interest in seeing the karka price go down. For full disclosure. That said, I also don’t think it’s worth that much, so I may just have to go with an empty slot in my collection. We’ll see if others like us feel the same way.

Thanks, I agree with the analysis after the “lost shores” mini’s I am also missing the wintersday quaggan, didn’t have enough money to buy gems for more wintersday chest minis to create the foostivoo.