10 Most expensive in-game items ever
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00:00 are the 10 most expensive in-game items ever.
00:03 Number 10, Javelin, Star Citizen, $2,500.
00:07 Star Citizen's Javelins are one of the best examples
00:10 of gamers trusting in the long-term investment model.
00:13 While it certainly wasn't the first title
00:15 to have in-game items double up as currency,
00:18 the amount developers Cloud Imperium Games
00:20 have been able to raise for a game still in development
00:22 is staggering.
00:24 The items that have made the biggest splash
00:25 over the course of the game's lifetime
00:27 have been Javelin destroyer spaceships.
00:30 According to Cloud Imperium,
00:31 these 1,132-foot-long Javelin destroyers
00:35 come with four primary thrusters,
00:37 private rooms for the captain and officer,
00:40 a hefty hangar bay capable of housing a gunship,
00:43 12 manoeuvring thrusters, a heavily armoured bridge,
00:46 and a lifetime insurance warranty.
00:48 Players were also told that these ships were battle-hardened,
00:52 meaning they'd also have to fork out
00:54 for the missing 20 gun turrets and two torpedo launchers.
00:57 The end total needed to get one of these ships
00:59 in working order?
01:00 2,500 real-world US dollars.
01:04 Not that that stopped the game's investors, however.
01:07 Within a minute of the auction going live,
01:09 all 200 Javelins had been sold,
01:11 raising over half a million dollars
01:13 for Cloud Imperium Games.
01:15 All of this in a game that still hasn't been released,
01:18 even after a decade in development.
01:20 Number nine, Blue Party Hat, RuneScape.
01:23 $4,000.
01:25 Going from a juggernaut spaceship
01:26 capable of conquering entire galaxies
01:28 to something far more humble,
01:30 RuneScape's famous blue party hat
01:32 once set a player back over $6,500.
01:36 In 2001, developers Jagex decided to hold
01:39 a special Christmas celebration in RuneScape,
01:42 spreading the season of goodwill
01:43 by dropping Christmas crackers to players,
01:45 which, when pulled, would result in the winners getting items
01:48 and the losers getting a consolation party hat.
01:52 Despite all being a bit of fun
01:53 that wasn't really worth more than a few pennies initially,
01:56 ultimately, these party hats were discontinued
01:59 and not obtainable after the celebration.
02:01 The value of these hats subsequently began to soar,
02:05 far eclipsing the maximum value allowed
02:07 at the in-game Grand Exchange marketplace.
02:09 Price estimates for the items
02:11 still value the blue party hat
02:13 at over two billion RuneScape gold,
02:16 with recorded sales roughly equating to over $4,000.
02:19 And with no other hats being introduced since,
02:22 it seems these incredibly rare items
02:24 will only continue to rise in value over the coming years.
02:27 Again, though, it's just a paper party hat.
02:30 Number eight, Zuzo, World of Warcraft, $9,500.
02:35 World of Warcraft is the world's most popular MMORPG,
02:38 home to some of the most dedicated gamers
02:41 that the industry has ever seen.
02:42 Back in 2007, one of these players took dedication
02:45 to the game to a staggering new height
02:47 in a transaction that would see Blizzard clamp down
02:50 on their character.
02:51 Zuzo was a level 70 night elf rogue in WoW
02:54 who managed to sell his character to a player called Shax
02:57 for roughly 7,000 euro, about $9,500 at the time.
03:02 The justification for this life-changing amount of money
03:04 was that this rogue came
03:06 with the legendary Twin Blades of Azinoth,
03:09 which could only be looted off Illidan Stormrage's corpse
03:12 in the Black Temple.
03:13 Zuzo then continued to play the game for years
03:15 after the sale with a different rogue build.
03:18 As for Shax, the character quickly disappeared from the game
03:21 with most assuming they'd probably been banned.
03:23 Blizzard have always been firm on their policy
03:25 of selling accounts being a big no-no,
03:28 so it's safe to say this might not have been
03:30 the smartest of investments from this not-so-slick buyer.
03:33 Number seven, Burning Killer Exclusive, Team Fortress 2,
03:37 $12,000.
03:38 The Killer Exclusive is an in-game cosmetic item
03:41 for Team Fortress 2 made by its community.
03:44 Named after the term for a juicy breaking news story,
03:47 this item is a light beige fedora
03:49 that can be worn by all classes
03:51 with a card saying "Press" sticking out the front.
03:54 The item was initially just a promotional tie-in
03:57 launched with PC Gamer,
03:58 but soon found its way into the game as a cosmetic,
04:01 with the flaming variant quickly becoming
04:03 one of the rarest pieces of equipment on the market.
04:06 The Burning Killer Exclusive stock
04:07 continued to climb over the following years,
04:10 eventually being sold via TF2's marketplace
04:12 for 400 buds in 2014,
04:15 as some which, when converted, works out to around $12,000.
04:20 The trade was made between a player known as Shadow
04:22 and the buyer Gora,
04:24 and became endemic of the impact community marketplaces
04:27 can have on virtual items.
04:29 It remains the highest value trade ever
04:31 in the Team Fortress 2 community,
04:32 and as a result has become pretty famous, or infamous.
04:36 Number six, Echoing Fury Mace, Diablo III, $15,000.
04:42 With the highest damage of any one-handed weapon,
04:44 the Echoing Fury Mace's discovery in Diablo III
04:47 was a watershed moment in the game's history.
04:50 Requiring a character level of 60 to drop,
04:52 this infamous mace gained a reputation
04:54 for exploiting a damage allocation bug,
04:57 so naturally it was pretty sought after.
04:59 With 1,166.2 to 1,433.8 damage per second,
05:04 and 1.25 to 1.26 attacks per second,
05:10 the Echoing Fury Mace is the ultimate DPS dealing machine.
05:14 Following the 2.6.6 patch,
05:16 the weapon gained a unique stacking element
05:19 that increases attack speed and movement
05:21 by 75%, 25% in total for every enemy killed,
05:26 just in case it wasn't powerful enough.
05:28 The original owner of the weapon
05:29 famously sold the Echoing Fury Mace for a few thousand dollars
05:32 to allegedly help pay their rent,
05:35 but that didn't stop its stock
05:36 from soaring in the years since.
05:38 A bid of 40 billion in-game gold
05:40 was later offered up for the weapon,
05:42 which when you work out the conversion, is about $15,000.
05:46 Number five, Dragon Slaying Saber, Age of Wulin, $16,000.
05:51 Snail's Age of Wulin/Wu Shu launched in China
05:54 in August of 2012, but shot to the gaming world's attention
05:58 with an auction in China on Christmas Day of 2011.
06:01 The auction was held to various digital in-game items
06:04 that players would be able to use when the game launched.
06:07 Various items were listed and commanded decent prices,
06:10 with the likes of the Hook of Departure,
06:12 of which there's only 10 in the game,
06:13 and a Lordly Spear Sheath, of which there's only five,
06:16 selling for 10,000 yuan, which is about 1,600 US dollars,
06:20 and 18,300 yuan, which is about 2,500 US dollars, respectively.
06:26 However, the biggest lot of the auction
06:28 was a scabbard called the Dragon Slaying Saber,
06:30 which ended up going for 100,000 yuan,
06:33 which is about 16,000 US dollars.
06:36 With the game still in beta at this point,
06:38 it was an astonishing moment,
06:40 but the promise of it being a one-of-a-kind item
06:42 that would only have one owner in its lifespan
06:45 managed to coax someone into burning
06:47 a very big hole in their wallet.
06:48 Number four, Gold Magnate, EVE Online, $33,000.
06:53 In January of 2020, YouTuber Scott Manley
06:55 broke internet headlines everywhere
06:58 when he lobbed a whopping $33,000
07:01 on a Gold Magnate in EVE Online,
07:03 making it the most expensive ship sold in the game.
07:06 One of the rarest ships, these powerful frigates
07:09 have only ever popped up sporadically
07:11 over the course of EVE's history
07:13 and have only been obtainable via in-game tournament rewards.
07:16 The historic purchase actually came
07:18 during CCP Games' Plex for Good campaign,
07:20 which was an initiative run to help raise money
07:23 for the Australian bushfire effort.
07:25 The YouTuber purchased this Gold Magnate
07:27 from user KeylonDarklight's auction
07:29 with a bid of 1,001,001 Plex.
07:33 For reference, Plex is an in-game currency in EVE,
07:35 with 1,000,000 Plex worth approximately
07:37 $32,500 in real-world money.
07:40 That 1,000,000 Plex is worth about 3.3 trillion ISK,
07:45 the game's primary currency that most players deal in.
07:48 Given the fact players start off
07:49 with a ship worth around 5,000,000 ISK, about five cents,
07:54 that makes this sale worth about 170 years of time in-game.
07:58 This $33,000 purchase certainly made a splash,
08:01 but at least in the case of this particular transaction,
08:04 it did some good outside the game too.
08:06 Number three, Ethereal Flame's Pink War Dog, Dota 2, $38,000.
08:11 In Valve's Dota 2, couriers are used to transport items
08:15 to and from a base to players dotted across the map.
08:18 Every player gets one, they're invulnerable
08:20 when they're in their home fountain,
08:21 and they basically get player for the gold
08:23 passively throughout the match.
08:25 It's safe to say couriers aren't
08:26 the most jaw-dropping part of this MOBA.
08:28 However, that all changed in November of 2013
08:31 when it was revealed a player had forked out
08:33 a whopping $38,000 for one of these trusty steeds.
08:37 According to a player named Pada,
08:40 they sold their Ethereal Flame's Pink War Dog
08:42 to another user for that five-figure sum.
08:45 The War Dogs are already amongst
08:47 the most powerful couriers in the game,
08:48 and the Ethereal Flame effect is a striking visual.
08:52 But where the value in the item
08:53 really comes from is in its rarity.
08:55 Allegedly, only four creatures of this kind
08:57 existed in the game at the time,
08:59 mainly due to Valve not having pink
09:01 set as one of its primary 10 colors,
09:03 on account of glitches that could occur with black skins.
09:06 In turn, this made the rarity of the items skyrocket,
09:09 and one user was there to capitalize.
09:11 Number two, Souvenir AWP Dragon Lore, CSGO, $61,000.
09:16 Valve's Counter-Strike Global Offensive
09:20 has a whole array of weapon and item skins
09:22 available from the Steam Marketplace.
09:24 These in no way enhance someone's abilities in the game,
09:27 but some of the designs have commanded
09:28 a hefty price tag over the years.
09:30 The most legendary is the Dragon Lore AWP,
09:33 which was added to the game in 2014
09:35 as part of the Boston 2018 Cobblestone Souvenir Package
09:39 during Operation Breakout.
09:41 There are 10 different cases that include the Dragon Lore
09:43 that players can grab,
09:44 but it does have one of the rarest drop rates
09:46 in the game of just 0.64%.
09:49 The striking design coupled with this rarity
09:52 has contributed to Dragon Lore's price fluctuating
09:54 from $2,700 to $8,600,
09:59 depending on its attached quality stat.
10:01 For one particular player, though, that wasn't sufficient.
10:04 Following the release of the Souvenir Package
10:06 in the wake of the Boston Major,
10:07 one player forked over a hefty $61,000
10:11 for the Souvenir version of this legendary sniper rifle.
10:14 Number one, Planet Calypso, Entropia Universe, $6,000,000.
10:19 From its launch, MindArk emphasized
10:22 that Entropia Universe would prioritise capitalism
10:25 over gameplay.
10:26 The game's open marketplace allows players
10:28 to redeem the in-game project Entropia Dollar
10:31 for US dollars at a fixed 10 to 1 exchange rate,
10:35 which has led to some hefty investments
10:37 into various in-game items.
10:38 The game has seen in-game items such as a nest egg,
10:41 holiday resort and sections of a space station
10:44 all auctioned off for tens of thousands of dollars.
10:47 However, the biggest investment of all
10:49 was reserved for its very first piece of major content added,
10:53 Planet Calypso.
10:54 Having attracted over 950,000 registered accounts
10:57 from over 200 countries,
11:00 Planet Calypso acted as the centerpiece
11:02 to Entropia's universe,
11:03 which prompted a mind-boggling $6,000,000 purchase
11:07 from fellow developers C Virtual Worlds in 2011.
11:11 The studio had planned to turn Calypso
11:13 into a wacky tribute to Michael Jackson,
11:16 where players could make donations to his various charities
11:19 whilst remembering the King of Pop,
11:21 but instead channeled that energy
11:22 into the thankfully cancelled game, Planet Michael.
11:25 Regardless, with $428,000,000 sunk into the game
11:29 over its lifespan,
11:31 you can see where the developers' lofty valuation came from.
11:34 That's the end of our list,
11:35 but do let me know down in that comment section
11:37 if you can think of any other entries
11:39 for the most expensive in-game items ever.
11:42 As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture.
11:44 Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
11:46 If you like, you can come say hi to me
11:47 on my Twitter account, where I'm @JessMcDonald,
11:50 but make sure you stay tuned to us here
11:51 for plenty more great gaming lists.