Minsoo

...Did someone say math? @/Twizz has the closest math so far, but it's still off a skosh. Here's some better numbers, along with an idea of what dumping in "Roundsey-retired" fest stuff would do!

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First let's define what's inside Spare Inventory Crates (x): Note that the item pool includes not just old items, but also recolors; Crates don't necessarily contain an old fest item. We also don't care about Prismatic Tokens for this, as they can only be used to buy recolors.

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According to the Game Database, Spare Inventory Crates have a pool of 251 non-skin/accent items to pull from (at the time of this post). The chance to pull any specific item sits at 0.398%. At this pool size, it would take 173 Crates to reach a 50% chance of successfully pulling the item you want. Assuming a Crate price of 80,000 T and a G:T ratio of 1:1000, it would take 13,840,000 T or 13,840 G to obtain enough Crates; however, this would likely be much higher given the market price of Crates. As there are only 21 Crates currently listed, mean prices are much higher than LAH, but in the best case scenario if all Crates were obtained at the current LAH of 332 G this would mean it would cost 57,436 G to have a 50% of pulling any specific item.

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77 items are currently "Roundsey-retired" (only available through Roundsey).
By year, each month we have:
2013-14 -- 1 familiar, 2 apparel (3 items total;33 items total for fest year)
2014-15 -- 2 apparel (2 items total;22 items total for fest year)
2015-16 -- 1 familiar, 1 apparel (2 items total;22 items total for fest year)

Adding these items to the current pool would give us 328 items to pull from. The chance to pull any specific item sits at 0.305%. At this pool size, it would take 231 Crates to reach a 50% chance of successfully pulling the item you want. Assuming a Crate price of 80,000 T and a G:T ratio of 1:1000, it would take 18,480,000 T or 18,480 G to obtain enough Crates; however, this would likely be much higher given the market price of Crates. As there are only 21 Crates currently listed, mean prices are much higher than LAH, but in the best case scenario if all Crates were obtained at the current LAH of 332 G this would mean it would cost 76,692 G to have a 50% of pulling any specific item.

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Now let's consider how many players are pulling from Crates. The World Map does not differentiate between active and non-active/locked clans. At the time I'm writing this, there are 605,769 total accounts on FR (I used Dragon Search to find the most recent progens, then manually increased account number until I found the most recent). We want to consider the absolute worst case-scenario for Sprite value, so let's say that all 605,769 accounts (including deities, admins, locked, and brand-new accounts) open a Crate right this moment. If all fest stuff was in the Crates at this moment, this would result in the generation of approximately 1,847 Light Sprites.

Now clearly, this number would be much lower. Deities/admins/locked/new/inactive accounts wouldn't be opening a Crate. Let's be (very) generous and suppose that FR has 50,000 players who are 1) active, 2) have the currency to purchase a Crate, and 3) actually do purchase and open a Crate. That would still only be 152 Light Sprites, and I guarantee that the number of players who meet those criteria are much lower than that. Additionally, the odds of pulling a Light Sprite (or whatever really) will continue to drop with each fest; unfortunately I don't have the stats on hand to try and calculate if the pool inflation outpaces the Crate-purchasing player base inflation, but I'm guessing it either does or matches close enough to negate player base increases.

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So in all, how would dropping Sprites and other "Roundsey-retired" stuff into Spare Inventory Crates right this moment affect their value? By my calculations, it wouldn't do much. The number of generated Sprites would be pretty small, especially since many (most?) would end up in permanent homes that would otherwise not purchase a Sprite, meaning they weren't even a part of the market to begin with. Of course, economics are a social science, meaning all the math in the world doesn't actually dictate how things are bought and sold (especially in cases of stocks/speculation like the Sprite market), so there is no guarantee that prices wouldn't be affected; it's entirely possible that prices could fall, or they might even rise.

So in terms of the suggestion itself, I'd support the reintroduction of retired fest items through Joxar as he currently stands. I really do think the numbers of old items generated won't severely affect the market, and in any case I think all the items obtained via the same method should be treated the same, as it's just... fair (Marva cloaks in chests when?). At current odds, the gamble of obtaining a Light Sprite via Crates is just not worth it, as you are likely to spend much more than outright purchasing it on Crates and still fail to get it, and odds will only continue to drop.