The future of rares

Let's discuss our predictions on rare's future in Runescape 3! Specifically far future.

What do you think the prices of the rares will be 3 years from now? Will SoF rares ever rise to several hundred millions?
Will ultra rares like half full wine jug or christmas cracker ever become "extinct"?

Personally I think if RS lasts enough, a 500m Santa/50m Fish mask could very well be possible, but it would take a long time. I am talking about more than a decade. I believe there are simply too many of these items in game for them to become that expensive. Most people when they quit RS they sell their rares keeping them in circulation. I am not sure how often are rares actually lost(supply falls -> price increases). Don't think people alch/drop/die with them to a monster very often I hear Jagex even puts rares on ge when perma banning accounts that had them.

What do you think?

Well if the legacy update becomes a hit and rs3 starts getting more people, I think the demand will rise. Hoping that rs3 gets awesome new feature and few other things, I'm counting on seen a 100m fish mask

A 400m Santa looks like a possibility. But sof rares like a fish mask going over 10m idk doesnt look good enough if u know what i mean. Crown of seasons maybe might hit the 50m mark again but again for the sof rares there is way too much stock out there. Its literally going to take people dumping them to make them go up considerably if you know what i mean.

Of course there are many many sof "rares" in game currently, but what about DECADES from now(if rs remains, lol)?

That's the thing though really. Look at easter eggs as an example. They were released in 2002 and it took them until 2012 before they even hit 50m, plus you have to remember that many get "accidentally" eaten and therefore removed from the game lowering their numbers. It still took 10 years for them to crack 50m, so if your banking on fish masks to make money you will have a very long wait. Specially since way more of them were released into the game and they rarely ever leave it.

Even if the game all of a sudden gains a huge user base, to see the prices being talked about here will take several years. Besides edibles, it is super rare that "rares" leave the game and so the prices should very slowly rise in the long term as the supply can't keep up with buyers demand for them and the average players wealth grows. However if player numbers start falling drastically you get to a point of over supply for the buyers demand and as such prices will drop until this balances out.

Having huge chunks of wealth tied up in rares for long term investments is seriously under utilizing your capital as you can make 10 times more by short term investing and flipping over that same period of time. Plus you always have that risk hanging over your head that players will quit and the game will shrink dramatically if not die altogether, which in turn drops their value. Still over a 10 year period the prices in the OP would seem pretty accurate to me if the game still exists and the game economy continues on it's current path.

I believe rares to be simply the precious metals of the Runescape world in that they primarily combat inflation. Barring inflation they may tend to increase on their own due to an increase in rarity, but I think that's tough to prove, I think the sentiment regarding the item at the time is a far, far bigger factor.

In any event, I think so long as Runescape continues on its current path of inflation, which I believe to be supply-side inflation (i.e. too much gp chasing too few goods) then rares will continue to trend upward long-term. I believe the main cause of this supply shortage to be coming from resources: summoning items, herblore items, prayer items, etc. If players have to spend more to level up these essential combat skills, then they will have to charge more for the goods they provide. And if pvmers are making more money, they will have more money to put into rares. This is a very poor explanation of my belief of the rs economy, but it's the best I can do at the moment.

Thus, I think so long as supplies (or the barriers of entry to pvming, if you will) become increasingly difficult to obtain then the value of rares will rise. If the reverse occurs, then the price of rares could very well decrease.

In order to be less wishy-washy I will say I think rares will continue to increase for the next few years because I believe supplies/essentials will become more difficult to obtain.

I do not think of sof rares as rares because they don't serve the same function, they do not have a sort of inherent or understood value to them. For that reason, they will trend as they will, and I'm unable to predict that.

I agree rares aren't perfect for investments as it turns out to be low cash/day in the long run.
Nice belief of RS economy Phileep :p
One thing that came to my mind now though, what if Jagex introduces more money sinks? Rares could then actually fall in price a bit right?
Recently it seems Jages has been trying to remove some of the gp from RS with updates like Bonds, Donation well thingy, Coinshare update etc. What if the new upcoming inventor skill will have some sort of money sink(Like summoning except it wouldn't produce products that are commonly alched by people)? Could it have a visible impact?

At first I had optimism that the money sinks would be effective, but the wishing well obviously caused inflation rather than the deflation they wanted. Again, because people didn't actually donate gp ... they donated items, namely tectonic pieces. And then, once again, you have supply-side inflation (more money chasing fewer goods) as a result.

So my prediction is that because Jags sucks at creating money sinks it shouldn't play a big part in future rare prices.

I just hope Jagex learnt from that and will introduce better money sinks in future :p

Fish masks will never be anything, I knew people who actually bought 100+ spins to get fish masks. Also, there was a dude with 9k+ fish masks when they were 10m then went to 1.5m.
Anyway, there will never be new rares from SoF because people purposely won stuff that in their imagination thought it will be new rares. Now imagine 100k+ rs players thought the same, just like fish masks/xmas tree hat.
About rs dying, it will not die because there are always new generation of gamers looking to explore MMORPG's, and the only rares that's going to rise are phats.
Another example, when jagex introduced the golden maul into rs, he gave it in the shape of the a golden cracker, which people keeps it till now.
New rares = not gonna happen