The Patient Millionaires

Some people might have an idea what investing is, and others think they know, but really haven’t a slightest clue. Investing is where you purchase an item (to ‘invest’ in,) and over time, the value of the item will grow either because it is retired and there are less of them in the market, or because of an event that happened that caused the demand of that particular item to rise.

There are lots and lots of things to invest in, whether they can be just any old regular items, or things that have a chance of retiring or items that are already retired. I, myself, separate my investments into four groups. I have the seasonal, retired, Battledome, and medicine investments. I like to have my investments scattered so I can always rely on a steady income if one of my groups become inactive. So first I’ll start with the seasonal investments.

Seasonal Investments

There are lots of things you can invest in that are ‘seasonal’, but I’ll share some of the few secrets that I have kept to make me become an investor. We’ll start at the beginning of the year and go with our first seasonal event, Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is on February 14th, and lots of love and giving are practiced throughout the day. This can range from giving just a card, or chocolates or even valentine earrings! My favorite thing to invest on this occasion is “A Mysterious Valentines Card.” This item is a great investment because on February 14th, Neopets gives out a special prize (to those that don’t already have it) to any Neopian who sends A Mysterious Valentines Card to any other Neopian. When the time is right, you can probably buy these cards for about 30,000-35,000 neopoints. They stock hundreds at a time about a week or two before Valentine’s Day in the Gift Shop so if you cannot afford to pay 30,000 NP for them, just restock them! They can go all the way up to 50,000-80,000 NP when you find the right time to sell them. So if you buy 10 A Mysterious Valentines Cards for 30,000 NP and sell them for 60,000 NP, you have made 300,000 neopoints just like that! (600,000 – 300,000 = 300,000) Imagine if you bought more or even restocked some of them from the gift shop!! That’s more profit heading your way!

After Valentine’s Day, we can crawl our way into Easter! But thanks to Neopets, they have an Easter Bunny that goes around Easter time to give out special colored neggs so we can move on to the next holiday!

Unfortunately, the next seasonal item does not come until Halloween. During this October festive month, people like to dress their pet up in spooky costumes and open trick or treat bags!! So for this holiday, I like to invest in Halloween Paint Brushes. I don’t invest in trick or treat bags because they give different ones out every year! (But since they become retired after given out, they can become a good retired investment!) These Paint Brushes can go down to the price of around 600,000 neopoints and come to an amazing price of 1,000,000 neopoints! So if you bought just two of these Paint Brushes, you can make a whopping 400,000 NP from each one to make a total of 800,000 NP! Besides the fact that these are a bit on the expensive side, the good news to counter this is that they are very easy to sell, especially around Halloween time. So you should have no problem finding a Neopian who would like to dress up their neopet with this Halloween Paint Brush!

Luckily, after you sell your Halloween Paint Brushes, you can immediately go to selling things for Thanksgiving! There are a few items you can sell at this time that are turkey or Thanksgiving related, but my favorite thing to invest in is the original, big, fat, juicy Turkey Dinner. Last year the prices of these gigantic dinners were down to a price near 8,000 neopoints a turkey, and they reached a high of about 15,000 neopoints around Thanksgiving time! That’s almost double your investment in just a silly gobbling turkey! So making 7,000 neopoints per turkey times however many you get will accumulate to a big profit!! Of course lots of Neopians love eating turkey for Thanksgiving, and giving their pets some as well! I always make sure my pet gets its yummy turkey!

After stuffing your neopet and other neopets with turkey, you have no time to rest because Christmas is just around the corner... in less than two months! And I’m sure you could guess what there is to invest around this time... Yup! Christmas Paint Brushes! These cheap Paint Brushes can go down to near 30,000 neopoints, and go all the way up to near 80,000 neopoints at the right time! But a big factor countering this is that for the past two years, Neopets has been very nice and giving these out in the advent calendar. So the supply of these Paint Brushes are outrageous but even still knowing this factor, they always seem to go up in price. (WARNING: DO NOT MAKE MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS TO GET ADVENT CALENDAR ITEMS OR YOU WILL BE FROZEN.) So what I advise is to just buy them, and buy as many as you can afford to make another huge profit at this time of the year!

Retired Investments

These investments are more for the long term unlike the seasonal investments which happen annually. There are lots of retired items on Neopets, and of various kinds too! Personally, I like retired books and stamps since they have a history of inflating rapidly due to album collectors and book worms! I’m not going to sit here and list you all the retired books and stamps there are to collect since they can range from 15,000 neopoints to up to 50 million neopoints!

But for starters, I’ll list a few buyable retired books and stamps that might increase in value over time. Besides the regular books, I like to invest in special books that don’t come from the original book shop, so the first on the list is Seasonal Faerie Tales. About two years ago, these books were selling for around 8,000 neopoints, but now they’re priced at 15,000 neopoints and still rising! Another special book that might be interesting to invest in is Kreludan Christmas Carols. These have also more than doubled in the past two years and now they’re around the price range of 25,000 neopoints. What I also like about this book is that it is a Booktastic Book and there is a special trophy award for those neopets who have read the most booktastic books! So you’ll know that these will rise over time! Another popular retired item is the Chomby Stamp. I do not quite remember what they were last sold for two years ago, but I remember when these first came out, they were under 1,000 neopoints! Now they’re reaching well over 70,000 NP! Lastly, another good investment is to buy books that came from past plots or AAA Games, such as prizes from the Altador Cups (e.g. Slushie Slinging for Novices & Sore Throat Remedies) or any of the recent Plots we had. They also have nice stamps too! So if you can afford the plot prizes, or participate in them to redeem them for your points or participation, I’d recommend getting a couple of retired books and stamps.

Battledome Investments

About once every one to two years, TNT gives us a plot that involves battling. When this happens, the demand for Battledome supply goes up so the price of Battledome items rise. As you know, there are Neopians with different budgets on what they wish to spend on battling. Some people will spend just a couple of thousand neopoints, while others might get a Battledome set worth hundreds of thousands or millions! Since I do not have a lot of funds to invest with, I usually like to target market the cheaper battle sets. If you do not already know, there are many basic items that every battler should have relating to their budget. The items for the cheap battle sets can range anywhere from a Scarab Ring, as cheap as 2,000 neopoints, all the way up to a Prickly Potion, which is around 400,000 neopoints. There are lots of items to invest in that are common for low-level battling sets. Let’s take the Prickly Potion, for example... If you buy a Prickly Potion now, it’ll only cost you around 400,000 neopoints. If, however, there ever is a war or a plot that involves battling, these Potions can raise all the way up to 600,000 NP or even more! So that’s making 200,000 NP profit just by holding on to it before a war comes! The minor problem about investing in Battledome items is that you will never know when the next war will be, or anything of the sort. Lately, TNT has not provided us with wars as good as the earlier years on Neopets. Hopefully, there will be a much better one in coming time.

Medicine Investments

The last and my favorite type of investments... When you go to Faerieland and spin the Wheel of Excitement as a daily or hourly habit, there is a chance when the pointer will land on the ‘skull.’ This skull gives you a disease that the Wheel of Excitement gives out and everybody gets the same disease, or until the disease is changed. For the Neopians that have been on Neopets for some time, they know that once about every year or so the Wheel of Excitement disease changes. And you can imagine since lots of good Neopians want to take care of their pet to their best ability, they would heal it right away with the right cure. The current disease of the Wheel of Excitement is “Chickaroo” and the cure for it is Herbal Scrambled Eggs. Since it has been quite some time since the last change in the Wheel of Excitement, this cure has come to cost to an outrageous 20,000 neopoints a pop! Medicines rarely usually get this expensive but since this disease has been out for a long time, it has thus become so. Usually the price of medicines can range from about 2,500-5,000 neopoints when it becomes the disease for the Wheel of Excitement.

These are investments cheap and fun to buy, but in order to make a lot of profit, you have to buy a large quantity. Let’s take Step Out Shoes for example. They cost around 300 neopoints now, but when the time comes where it turns into the cure that everybody needs after landing on the skull on the wheel, these can go for about 2,500 neopoints! That’s making at least 2,000 neopoints per medicine! If you collected 100 of these Shoes, that will be making at least 200,000 neopoints in profit, just by spending only 40,000 neopoints! It sounds easy, right? Wrong! You have to remember that there are lots of medicines that the Wheel of Excitement can choose from and so in order to make a profit, you either have to guess and invest in a few of the cures, or just have a little bit of all of them!! Since I am an unlucky Neopian, I just collect a little bit of each medicine so I know I can’t go wrong.

Now you know a few of the secrets that I have been keeping for myself for quite some time to acquire my riches! Some of you might have already known a few of them or maybe all of them, but since I want every Neopian to be successful, I would like everybody to know. The main problem you might have while investing is having the right funds, and knowing how much you want to spend on investing. You would not want to spend your whole account’s worth on investing, since you should keep some to spend for yourself and your neopet, but even investing just a little bit is healthy in order to keep up your accounts’ value. There are lots of other ways to make neopoints, some do it by playing games, restocking, the stock market, and I, of course, do it by investing! So go out there, and have fun, and get on your way to becoming an Elite Neopian!! (or in this case, a Patient Millionaire! :])