Guild Wars 2

What are trophy items for/do ?

I assume the the ones that say Trophy Salvage item can be salvaged for usable craft stuff.

OK, found this -

Trophy items (with text in grey) are all sold with the “sell junk” option at merchants. So I figure that, generally speaking, that’s their purpose.

Salvage items can also be sold, but the difference is that you can get crafting materials applying a salvage kit on them.

Other trophy items won’t appear as salvageable, but they won’t be considered junk either (their text will be white instead of grey), because some NPC collects them (indicated on the item description). You can return them to the NPC that claims them or you can sell them.

That covers most. Trophy items in general are one of the possible “rewards”

The grey “junk” items are just an extra source of money from mob drops. Their only purpose is to sell to NPC’s. You will eventually get many, many junk bones from Risen.

The salvage items are indeed either a source of money to sell to NPC’s, or something you can salvage for crafting materials. This will be your main source (with “white” gear close behind) of leather and cloth materials, which tend to be among the hardest to get.

Many hearts and DE’s have specific item collection parts, and those items are also considered trophies. All but a few are soulbound (and I assume the ones that are not are just bugs). All but a few have no NPC value, and thus cannot be sold. If you are not doing that heart or event any more, you will have to simply delete the item.

Yeah, to prevent loosing trophy’s needed for hearts, it’s best to not sell them when filling a heart. Personally I always like to see what the heartsgiver is selling for karma when it is filled, then it is a easy click to clean up inventory by selling stuff.