Cool Beans Gacha Yard Sale

Yard sales

With the recent proliferation of gacha events in SL, yard sales have become “fashionable” as a way to get rid of the surplus of common items. Both of these shopping modalities have existed for a very long time (maybe since day one, old Yadni’s Junkyard comes to mind), but for a year plus now –mostly– due to The Arcade quarterly event they have steadily increased in popularity. Initially, I thought the hype was about having such a bunch of nice items for cheap (classic gachas were usually priced as low as 1L per try, as was the case with the now defunct Gacha-Ya), but after considering all the money some folks invest in this madness (and the increasing charges per play), obviously players aren’t there exactly for the savings.

Getting the items you want out of a gacha machine depends on luck… a luck that’s determined by the machine owner (as defined by a script), rather than by mere chance. As such, the outcome is highly manipulable, and for what I can tell some merchants are not that generous, sympathetic or “polite” to their customers. During the December 2013 round of The Arcade, for example, someone in a group chat said she had spent over 5,000L trying to get a particular rare item –that would have probably cost 250L at regular store prices–, and even after all those failed attempts, luck wasn’t smiling her way; yet she was determined to go on (the hell!). I won’t mention what store it was, not to publicly shame the owner (who probably deserves it anyway), but for that lot of money she could have rented a parcel, bought a house, gotten the furnishing, attired herself with a fabulous gown (including shoes, jewelry, hair, skin and makeup), and still have some spare coins for leisure time.

Since luck is such a bitch, I prefer to put my fortune aside and hop from one yard sale to the next in search of the commodities I want (it’s less laggy too). Most resellers –turn retailers, turn scalpers– set the prices of the transferable goods the same as the original ones; others even offer them at a discount, which makes the bargain even better. The “problem” comes when you’re looking for the rare prizes: Sometimes you never find them, oftentimes they are available for a very steep price. However, when you calculate how much money you could spend trying out your luck at the gacha machine for the very same reward, chances are you’d find yourself paying approximately a similar amount (or even saving some money), now to a third party instead of the original source. That infuriates a few creators, some of which –apparently– hate to see their products go for such juicy prices… because they aren’t the ones receiving the cash for sure. Too bad for them, for setting the odds of getting a rare at outrageously low percentages.

Cool Beans Gacha Yard Sale, main street

Here’s a list of the yard sales where I regularly find what I’m after lately. As far as I know they are open all year round too, and refresh their supplies with merchandise from different gacha events constantly, so you won’t have to wait three months for the next Arcade show for signs of revival. I have organized them in alphabetical order.

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Some of them are markets grouping several independent resellers, while others are personal (private) ones. In the pictures: Cool Beans Gacha Yard Sale (details).

10 comments

  1. xeriko says:

    Hi Case. In a highly controlled environment such as SL, luck per se doesn’t exist (from my personal perspective). Someone has to program it. If something so uncertain as chance happens, the system breaks down because it may not know what to do next (if it’s truly by chance). So having bad luck or not having any luck at all is more likely the result of what I would call meanness, trickery or even malice (not from the machine of course, but from whoever controls probability). In any case, I prefer yard sales because I pay for what I want to get, instead of letting a fictitious luck determine the reward, and then ending up with dozens of copies of an unwanted item.

  2. hey there, just a minor typo in your about blurb in the upper left hand corner… “Second Life residents with pemits …”

    Thanks for all the info and all the links you always provide, very information and really helpful.

  3. Debbie says:

    I am betting your friend spent all that money at ANC, it has great stuff but the worst set gachas in SL. Its a shame that creators cant see that many people don’t have a lot of money and truly want to have items by certain creators and greed leaves a bad taste in the mouth and makes people lose respect for the creator. Its on ething to make money for your work but its another to be ridiculously greedy . It sends a bad message

    • xeriko says:

      Nope, it wasn’t ANC. I don’t know that store that well to comment on its practices, but I’m aware some others fit in your description quite well. Just remember: how things turns out depend, not on a creator, but on your choosing. When I perceive (and stress be given to that word) a merchant is greedy I don’t buy from him/her even if I’m dying to have that particular item s/he’s selling. I rarely play gachas anymore for too many reasons, but especially for one thing: all gacha machines priced above 25L or with lots of prizes are intended to make a lot of easy money (I set that limit, it’s not written anywhere). That’s my “threshold”; beyond that, greed begins to take hold of the game. I simply like to get what I want (and of course, to pay for what I want), not to let an artificial chance dictate what I get. Obviously, gachas are not a safe shopping method, period.

      Sometimes I wonder if creators become customers at least occasionally, and if they do what is their opinion on gacha machines, on gacha prices, and on the chance of winning a desired item. What would they think if they pay 75L per play on a machine and keep getting the same common item four times in a row, and it’s actually the most useless item in the set (and I’m sure they know when they offer an item that is simply worthless). Thankfully there are some very conscious creators too.

      What I’ve learned during this gacha golden age is that, that product you saw for an outrageous price in a yard sale will come down to a minuscule sum if you’re willing to wait a bit. When demand is at a low, prices go down pretty fast. Since gachas are so common now and people have gone tired of them (for the most part), it usually takes a couple of months to happen. And if it doesn’t happen that soon, very likely another creator will get some “inspiration” from that object and will do his/her own version, usually surpassing the original appeal. So then you have a nice replacement for a fraction of that rare cost.

      I also keep this rule (applicable to gachas, yard sales, and regular stores): because I like something, it doesn’t mean I need it. As a customer, I think I have reached a point of “maturity”: now I judge a product more on needs instead of appeal. That’s been saving me a lot of money lately, both in SL and in RL.

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