Drys

when flight rising first started, registration was closed. there would be specific windows for a weekend every few months where new players could join, but otherwise you could not join the site. just before the site's fifth anniversary (march 2018), the devs announced open registration – no more windows, so anyone finding the site could join that same day if they so desired. this change resulted in a bit of a population boom for both players and dragons. more lairs meant more dragons of all elements, so while some elements remained (and remain!) rarer than others, there are overall more available.

so, earth flight is the smallest flight (as of right now, per the world map, our population is 21110 clans; the next smallest, fire, is 37028, which makes them 1.75x (approximately) as large as us; the largest flight, shadow, is 101442 (they just broke 100k a little while ago actually!), which makes them just shy of 5x the size of earth. as an aside, arcane used to be larger than shadow, so shadow doesn't have the strictly highest population of oldies, but i'll get there. even factoring in how many inactive accounts there are on site – whether people who made an account, progens, and never played again or people who played for a little bit but don't any longer – these population trends have been relatively stable. earth has always been the smallest flight, in part because people dislike the brown eyes, in part because people find earth 'boring' compared to things like arcane and lightning and shadow, in part just because people want to join the flight that pairs them with the friends who introduced them to the site – that's why i was in arcane when i first joined!, and in part for a million other reasons. earth's just small.

so, that's just looking at clan numbers. what about dragons? if we go to dragon search and look at all earth dragons, exalted and unexalted, progen and not, earth's total value is 3,507,791 dragons. the youngest dragon at time of typing this is #89677614. so that means, of all dragons ever generated on flight rising, earth dragons make up 3.9%. for comparison, the same search for fire yields 4,963,021 (5.5%) and for shadow 10,962,254 (12.2%). so now we add in the next layer - how many are non-progens (i.e. are eligible to leave their designated lair) and active (i.e. non-exalted)? for all flights, that brings us down to 17,462,230 (and dropping rapidly with the current dom battle!). if we apply flight filters, we wind up with 2,102,081 for shadow (approximately to scale, 12%), 1,018,929 for fire (also approximately the same, 5.8%) and 691,240 for earth (almost exactly 3.9% once again).

now, let's factor in age. the easiest way to do that is to look at population values for lower ids – the open registration inflection point of march 2018 is almost exactly at the #40000000 id mark (i don't remember the exact value rn, sry!), but there's no quick way to search that, so we'll instead just add the flags for every non-8-digit id. so for shadow, non-exalted, non-progen, non-8digs, we get 185,235 results – 1% of active, available dragons on site, and 8.8% of all active, available shadow dragons on site. for fire, the number is 111,335 – 0.6% of active, available dragons on site, and 10% of active, available fire dragons on site. for earth, the number is 58,311 – 0.33% of active, available dragons on site, and 8% of all active, available earth dragons. so for every unexalted earth oldie that it is theoretically possible for someone to acquire, there are 2 fire oldies and 3 shadow oldies. just for fun, that also means active, available earth oldies amount to 1.6% of all total earth dragons and 0.06% of all dragons ever generated on site.

and then we get to actual availability. a significant element of the issue is inactive lairs, sure, but it's also necessary to factor in the permanent clan members that just won't ever be for sale, whether for sentimental reasons, collection reasons, or anything else. this is the part that's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy – earth oldies are rare, so they're worth a lot, so they're valuable to collect and tend to mean a lot to the people who do buy or have them, so there's fewer available, so they're rare..... etc. etc. you get the idea. it's not a strict rule that one earth oldie is worth double the value of a fire oldie, of course, and there are a number of additional mitigating factors to the pricing of any oldie – colors, genes/vials (any pre-registration dragons with non-common eyes are vialed!), breeds (there are 33,356 active, available earth snappers on site. not oldies. total. for non-8digs, it's 4,230), unbred vs. offspring/if and how offspring have been named, special hatch dates (holidays usually) but even just looking at the quantifiable/numeric elements you can see why their pricing tends to be different than others – and why they're at higher risk of being sniped and resold for exorbitant prices if we're not careful.

so, with all that out of the way! let's look at drys. she's 6 years old, a year before open registration, 2/3 browns to match her eyes (and color 3 is a green, for the tree/natural aesthetic), not a g1, no recent/applied genes or vials, bred but with only a few offspring/no scroll bar, only one unnamed, no repeated/fodder names, and level 3. 

I am not sure if you are genuinely asking or not, but in the case you are, here are my tips:

-Train two fodders at once to either level 6 or 7. For maximum profit, either breed fodder yourself or buy hatchlings off the AH and let them grow.

-Use the AH to your advantage. Sell stacks of food, any battle stones that are often used, any valuables, most specialties, and if you get lucky, eggs. Sell cheap familiars and apparel, too.
-When using the AH, check both treasure and gem listings. If one is going for more than the other, go for the highest one. This is especially true for food and allows you to flip: usually treasure is going for more than gems, so if you buy stacks of food for gems and sell them for treasure, you can get a pretty penny. This is the case for meat most of the time.
-Bond with your familiars if you have not awakened them yet. Any chests you can sell on the AH for a good buck, especially gilded ones, as they often go for 29g and higher.
-Use Baldwin and Arlo. You can either melt down food for people in the items forum, which can get you between 190 and 250kt, or sell the mats on the AH. As for Arlo, go on the AH and check which genes from the digsites are going for the highest. From there, use your magnifying glasses to dig it out and proceed to sell it.
-Do your dailies. The profit is small, but it adds up. Same for G&G; if you are able to do it every day, you will bag yourself around 500kt per week.
-If you can draw or write and feel motivated to do so, then try opening a shop. Usually, art does much better than writing.
-Shove the profit into your vault. Do not allow yourself to make impulse purchases; otherwise, you will be losing profit. If it helps, avoid the Dragon Market or anything along those lines if you are prone to buying dragons.
-Bringing the AH back up; if you have the energy to do it, then sell any items that are helpful to either hidden tasks or Swipp. This is especially true for familiars.
As they can go for a lot. If not, hoardsell. Hoardsell everything useless; the profit stacks up quickly this way.

-Bringing up familiars again, hoardsell any that are currently above the price that fodder familiars are currently going for, that being between 1800 and 2000 usually. Familiars from the Mire are usually better off being hoard-sold.

-Capitalise on festivals. Sell the festival currency for the first few days, then on the final one, buy the familiars and whatever else you may want. Buy extras of the familiars, as they tend to go for the most. If you have skins and don't care to keep them, sell them right after the festival is over. This is because if you do so later, you will be waiting much longer, and sometimes the prices go down.

-Drop a few tickets into Roundsey. Sometimes you get lucky, and you can make a bit of a profit out of that.

-I'm sure you know this one, but if there is a DOM battle, train as many dragons as you can and save up for it. They are massive money-makers.

-If you have nocturne eggs, sell them in June. That is when they reach their highest peak.

I will chuck some more tips in here later.

To add on selling festival currency, the price tends to spike again the last day FR time (as in during the American daytime/evening) :)

Light & Fire have sought-after aesthetics so the currency tends to go for more during those