✌Trade&Sell Memorial☮™

The Trade and Sell was a very popular, always crowded trading area where Fantagians of all kinds gathered to trade their valuables (and not so valuables). It was immensely popular, but also hated for it’s sectionalism and it’s leniency towards members. It was the official replacement of the Vintage Shop and was replaced by Vintage Gold. The Trade and Sell (officially known as the Trade&Sell) officially closed on November 4th, 2013. Now, many Fantagians may still remember this ‘mainstream’ shoppe, but for those of you who have registered before the Time of Trade (TOT), I proudly present, the Trade&Sell Memorial!

How did it work?

The system of trade for the TOT was highly complex and quite frustrating. The lifestyle of trading was adapted by frequent traders, but to the new eye, it seems very complicated. Fantage limited everyone’s power by letting us trade anything we wanted, as long as it was the same currency. Now, trading at the time was broken down into 3 main parts: Starred (star), Coined (coin or koin), and Double (Dble).

Starred and Coined: Because of the Same Currency Policy (SCP), Fantagians could only trade starred items for other starred items and coined for coined. The method of sticking to the SCP was fairly simple. A person ‘posts’ or puts up for sale/trade a starred or coined item. Then, others may offer for the item, or buy the item depending on if it can be bought, or if it was up for trade. As I said, fairly simple.

Double Trading: This method was popular among newcomers or to those who were desperate for the item*. In this type (which was highly dangerous and resulted in scamming) two people would post up items at the same time. One coined, or one starred*. They would both offer for it and, in a perfect world, they would both accept and then move on. Sadly, the ‘scammers’ would let the other post first, offer, get accepted, and run away with everything. This is what made double trading so dangerous. People became famous for scamming items out of innocent Fantagians, such as AngelWish12.

So What was the Big Deal?

The Trade and Sell became really popular because of popular items. Those included many limited items, or items that were retired, vintage. Those kinds of things. Everyone started to ‘crave’ the items and wanted to get it. The Trade&Sell allowed them to get those items! Some were harder to obtain than others, so the really popular ones were always the hardest to get. Popular items which were worth the most included Limited Items and Fantage Game Card Clothing.

Some examples of popular items included:

Cool Cat Hair (CC)

 

Basketball Hair (BB. Came in blonde or brown. Blonde was worth more)

Chloe Hair

Chalk

Autumn Leaf Hair

Stained Glass Tee

Beta Santa Items

2008 Items

Movie Star Hair

Polar Bear Hat

 

Glowies

Braids and Pigtails

Gum

Bunny Nose

and there is way more! These are just the things that most everyone wants! These items always cost a lot, but some nice people are cool enough to sell them at a really low price.

So How is all this a Bad Thing?

Scamming is the bad thing. If you had a really good account and got hacked, most likely, everything valuable would have been gone. How? Scammers would post up all of the items using your money and get the items for themselves! Another bad thing was that people who had no coins couldn’t trade since it cost 10 coins to put something up. Also, it was really unfair to non-members because nons couldn’t get a lot of good member items. Think about it: Children are being encouraged by society to actually deceive and trick other children into giving up their ‘loved’ pixels.

Another downside to this is that everyone wants the good stuff so badly, they were willing to do almost anything for it. It drove people insane and almost into maniacs that they didn’t have the items they wanted.

Items that used to be easy to get were turned into what humans treat as gold, diamonds, and platinum. Yeah, items like CC and Blonde BB were like gold to Fantagians and it was valued, treasured, and sadly, stolen. The epic surge into popularity caused real crime to happen in Fantage as well as the whole concept of superiority. If one Fantagian had CC and the other didn’t, it was like the CC person was superior to the one without it.

Maximum and Minimum

Fantage also added a ‘dumb’ policy as to the values of items  since they didn’t get the whole ‘popular items’ concept. They thought that the original pricing was its value not even considering it’s release date or title*. So, that’s where maximum and minimum prices came in. Basically, Fantage put a maximum price of offer and a minimum price of offer. This is only used in trading. So, if you were to put up an item that cost 150 stars, there was a range of prices that your item(s) had to match. So, you definitely couldn’t have offered a 2,000 star item for a 150 star item. You get the point.

Values in Currency

The Trade&Sell also opened up a new set of values. To keep it simple, it basically allowed us to decide which was worth more: star or coins. Obviously, coins were worth more than stars, so coined items were cheaper. Fantage makes the mistake of treating stars and coins as equals, which they are not. A starred item that is 3,000 stars at the T&S could be only 1,000 coins there. Overall, coins were worth way more than stars.

Cliques

The Trade&Sell was also famous for creating Trade Cliques. Many don’t know it, but if you look closing in the Trade and Sell store, you will see small groups of people. Sort of like in school where there are supposed to be Nerds, Jocks, Pops and those people

• Superiors: The Superiors are those with all the good items. They usually fly on the walls to show them off in secret and everyone always crowds around them to get their items. They deny always unless they find something that they don’t have.
• Frantics: The people who are shouting out loud advertisements and names of items, desperate to find the item(s) that they are looking for. Crazier than the normal people.
• Partiers: The people who go to the shop, simply to shout that the people there can trade in the ‘conveninece’ of someone else’s home.
• The Crowd: That giant blob of people who are idle, still, inactive, browsing and very in the middle of the T&S.

The Big Deal

So it’s confusing, but it sounds like I’m making this into a bigger deal than it seems like it is. Well, it IS a really big deal! If you look at the whole thing in retrospect, the achievements accomplished thanks to one shop was monumental. I mean:

• A bunch of kids (aged  7-12) created a whole new LANGUAGE specifically used in trading!
• A bunch of kids are talking like ADULTS when trading, taking in values and popularity.
• Children are TRICKING others out of their items!
• An entire empire of ‘worth’ was introduced by kids!

I mean, when you think about it, try creating a new language widely used by people today. Or try giving a new value used by everyone to a large variety of objects. It’s simply amazing that all this was able to be pulled off!

Conclusion

So, this is the Trade and Sell. A highly loved, hated, complex, simple, and gravity defying place that will be missed. Despite it’s loose ends and crazy consumerism methods, it was the only place that drove kids to their craziest, laziest, best, worst, and overall weirdest selves. Remember this as the most neutral and divided place of all of Fantage and remember all the good, bad, and strange times you have had there. Because one time or another, it brought you the happiness and joy of getting that one thing that you have always wanted. Here are some pictures of items that the staff here has got from the Trade&Sell that they really liked!

Asterixs/Stars

*Many people would do anything for popular items.

*Sometimes, if an item was too expensive for the other to trade, the double method had to be used even with the SCP.

*Titles include: Limited, Rare, Beta, Vintage and those kinds of things

Thanks for reading! Please comment 🙂