World of Warcraft player accidentally sold extremely rare pet at 1/10th of the value: "That's like all my game savings for the last 17 years gone"

A World of Warcraft gamer is considering quitting the game after accidentally selling an extremely rare and expensive trading card game pet at a fraction of its value.

The title of the Reddit post, posted by The_Tiddy_Fiend says it all. "Sold my Ethereal Trader for 174k instead 1.7M." It's like all my game savings from the last 17 years are gone.

According to Tiddy's report, they used a feature of the World of Warcraft Auction House that automatically sets a price for an item listed for sales to match other listings for the item. This is a failsafe for sloppy typers to avoid accidentally undercutting themselves.

In this case, the Ethereal soul Trader was not listed at the 1.7m gold price other pets were selling for. Instead, it was listed for 174,000 gold. Someone bought it immediately.

Icy Veins, a Blizzard-related news site, says that there are several possible explanations for this mishap. It's possible Tiddy didn't see some lowball listings in the WoW auction that subtracted his own offer. There's also the chance the auction house glitched and moved the decimal two points to the wrong side. It could also have been a scam. Redditor Fvzzyyy says that unscrupulous gamers will sometimes list an object at a low price, but then cancel the auction in order to lure someone else into listing their own item at the lower price.

But that's unlikely. Others in the thread have pointed out that listing an item so cheaply, or even very briefly, could result in the same outcome as Tiddy_Fiend. Tiddy insists that there were no other auctions with the Ethereal soul Trader listed at lowball prices. "All were 1.7M." I'm literally saying that the feature intended to prevent this did not work and I lost my gold as a consequence.

The Ethereal soul Trader is expensive because it is so rare. Warcraftpets.com noted that it was an "extremely scarce" reward from The Hunt for Illidan - a 2008 expansion for the World of Warcraft TCG. In a second post, Tiddy stated that their value had been boosted even further by YouTube influencers, which was what prompted them in the first instance to put the pet on sale.

It's a huge loss that makes him consider quitting WoW: "I don’t grind or farm, so there is no chance I can recover that loss in the coming years."

That's a real bummer. I can't even imagine how it would feel to lose two decades of in-game money. Darth Microtransaction's account was hacked, and items worth 4.8 billion dollars in gold were taken from him. This story ended well, with Jagex restoring Darth's items. But, it seems unlikely that this will happen in Tiddy’s case. Unless he can show that a WoW bug caused the pricing mistake, I think a warning that “buyer beware” also applies to sellers is more likely.

Tiddy_Fiend will use his experience to warn others for the time being. "Don't make the same mistake as me, double- or triple-check your auction listings," wrote they. "Whoever bought my Soul Trader at 174k... I guess you can enjoy your easy profit. I'm feeling a little embarrassed about it. I don't know if I will be able to log in for a little while, what the heck? I can post a item and it will match the lowest price auction, but what happens when you do one that costs a lot of money? "I made a huge mistake that cost me a lot of money. I want to share this with others so they don't lose their gold."