And it was pretty easy to make a killing playing off d2jsp against the official forums because their prices on a lot of stuff were not aligned. Ebay sellers, mass dupers and the PvP scene all did some crazy things to prices in-game (or in trading forums). Obviously, I can trade either GC for 12-20 hrs, swap those to FG, or buy your weapno from that but I don't like to trade to re-trade." So, my gcs are worth more than your weapon, in game, but that has no relevance to my d2 site which is how I base trades.
The cold 40/pcombat 37 lifer will fetch me $15.99 - $19.99 (while it's worth well over 10-12 hrs 37 life, cold 40 is probably 12-15+ too). I'll sell your stormlash for $19.99 - $24.99 (while it's worth maybe 5-8 hrs at it's low ed) "FG isn't something I base my trades off of, nor is highrunes. Slightly related, I saved a message I was sent during January 2006 on d2jsp that gave me my first little window into this world, You could see the same thing happen with the RMAH in Diablo 3. The only things that keep value are extremely rare items. In a new ladder you'd see prices of almost everything drop as it progressed (as the supply keeps coming but less and less people need them). What had happened was these RMT sites had started selling them in seamlessly unlimited supply, with that they started selling pretty much anything you'd ever want and their prices essentially dictated the items value. As time passed something very strange happened to the value of skillers with +45 life, they had always been worth way more than say a skiller with +40 life, but all of a sudden they price dropped massively. I asked him what he was going to do with it, he said something like, "probably try to sell it for 100euros" - wow, that was a big eye-opener for me. Near the start of that ladder I got really lucky and cubed a cold skiller with +45 life, it may have been the only one existing on the new ladder and some rich guy on d2jsp bought it for 20 hrs (high runes). I remember back in 2005 when I started using d2jsp I sold all my non-season gear for 20-30 sojs, sold them all for fg (forum gold) and then used that fg to buy an Infinity for my merc on the new ladder. The economy has been controlled by 3rd party RMT hacking/duping sites for 10+ years.