EPT![[image loading]](http://www.ageofempires.co.nz/images/aoe2/buildings/market.jpg)
'twas a brisk and bright day when old man Birdie, in his pre-senile indolence, noticed he had run out of
*Steam market*->
OTA2 Items*->*Sort Ascending*![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aVPhRtw.png)
THE HORROR!
Only one item available for three cents?
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![[image loading]](http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/scream.jpg)
And upon attempting to purchase several of those three-cent bracers, I quickly discovered that there was only one of them available, and it had already been snapped up. What terrible disaster had struck the Steam market, ridding it of all items selling for peanuts?
A Visit to the Side Shop
It is here that we must reflect on the foolish nature of a digital marketplace. Ordinary markets are affected by what is a very simple concept: supply and demand. In short, as supply increases, demand decreases (and vice-versa). Everything is produced in varying and variable quantities, making both price, supply, and demand incessantly fluctuate. However, in a digital marketplace there is one amazing thing that changes everything: supply can be, in essence, unlimited! With the click of a button, the person who controls the marketplace can simply flood the market with an item and immediately reduce the demand on that item (by increasing the supply).
This is made evident in the Steam community marketplace. At one stage the Arcs of Manta pack for Anti Mage were priced at the wallet-paining value of approximately $17. Then along came an event which made a unavailable treasure chests available for purchase on a particular day. One of those chests contained the Arcs of Manta. Immediately after that chest day came along, the Arcs of Manta pack on the market dropped in price, falling to $4.53. The supply had been created by the click of a button, reducing the price to an all-time low.
One of the ways in which digital marketplaces have coped with this problem is with what is known as a sink, or gold sink. The idea is that you have some method of completely removing items from the marketplace, thus keeping the supply at a manageable level. As people are usually unhappy if you simply delete their items, the typical way is to have some reimbursement for deleting your items.
In essence, this is what the Charm of the Crucible Jewel is. You sink ten marketable items into it, and assuming you predict correctly three times, you get approximately five non-marketable items back. Because your prophetic skills are most likely not as amazing as mine, the average amount of items back is probably closer to three. The market shrinks, and the quantity of items total also shrinks.
Where Birdie's Munchies Have Gone
Valve have most likely done this to attempt to fix the completely over-saturated part of the market: the part where the supply is very high (and thus price low). To make as many Charm of Crucible Jewels as possible, players are purchasing as many cheap items (three cent items, in this case) as they can. If the Charm of Crucible Jewels continues for some time we will almost definitely see the four cent items disappear too, further increasing the price floor of low-priced items. Unfortunately for me, I have to now spend more money to generate more hats, which suits Valve just fine.
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Why Not Fix What Is Broke?
While this helps remove part of the market glut of cheap common items, it does not yet solve a further problem. Supposedly "rare" items are common as chips, in part due to the massive influx of new players, and in part due to Valve ceaselessly throwing items at their players. While Valve's previous attempt of reducing the item drop rate and making the items more interesting presumably had a good effect on the market in terms of reducing supply and increasing demand, unfortunately they have returned to dropping the
Unfortunately, this is not an easy problem to fix beyond simply reducing the amount of items that are dropped (which the community rejected in their
With a fixed supply of items, this would ensure that demand remained healthy. Indeed, as the player base increases, the demand would increase, as the items would become comparatively rare. This would keep the market healthy, and still allow a large degree of free market trading to take place. While my hungry prophetic stomach desires more three-cent hats to turn into hat-generators, the trader in me wants to see a market where a rare item is reasonably rare and thus a little more pricey. And the community would remain happy as they would continue to get hat drops each game, and Valve would still get great wads of cash.
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![[image loading]](https://4316bd223ebdc131e650-eb3b436d25971e5860b39e72b0600342.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/Zjbp4Cd5o7oH.878x0.Z-Z96KYq.jpg)
that's what I get for having a keyboard with backslash and forward slash keys directly next to each other. 
