This all seems like a classic issue of too little money chasing too many goods, its like the reverse of the inflation happening IRL. Everyones spending their bells on Red Envelopes, or cookies, or golden watering cans and- you get the picture. What this means is thousands of TBT funnelling away from the collectible market that is already struggling to stay afloat with its modern 'issues' (depending on how you view it) of collectibles being much more abundant these days and those at the top of the ladder not wanting to give away what they've got anymore. So even those middle tier purchases are off limits to most because they're forking out hundreds, potentially more, to be able to maximise their gains from other events - then it comes to the general market and it just seems too unimportant compared to getting those new items!
It seems rather ironic that back in 2014, there was too much TBT in circulation. Yes, the higher activity justifies this many Bells, but we also didn’t have these kinds of incentives. At least four different members made it to 100,000 TBT at one point, and the richest member on the forums besides these four had little over 30,000 TBT.
Additionally, I hold the idea that it could be that those active users who have the most TBT and collectibles are cautious about using that wealth because it is decreasing in real terms. The collectible market is wider now, so many things have decreased in value which in past years would've cost a TBT users life savings lol. I know Im not selling some of my collectibles because I would make a decent loss these days and those are only middle tier, just Imagine those blue candy havers.
That reminds me of back in my richer days, I used to buy collectibles for other members or buy collectibles just so others can make more TBT (even if I didn’t want the collectible). I don’t think I could do that anymore, even if I get back to 10k TBT or 20k TBT.
Ultimately, even if my suggestion is unpopular, I believe that the TBT earning system needs a reworking that is more liberal. The old system worked fine when there were not too many collectibles and money was more abundant generally due to more activity and less expensive events but the fact of the matter is there are too many collectibles, each with their own significant TBT value, to go around all of these people who are primarily getting their TBT the same way users did 5-10 years ago. I have 5.5K -ish, and if I had that 7 years ago I would be decently well off but these days I could by 2 or 3 good collectibles and then that would be my wealth gone, my wealth that took a really long time to build up - now times that by however many regular users are going broke. I would suggest increasing the amount of TBT from lines of text posted, decreasing the cost of participating in events and perhaps building certain events around the concept of trading collectibles for TBT bells as a way to encourage growth and encourage wery users.
When there's a tier list that splits collectables over 1K TBT into five categories while most people don't even have more than 1K, that's when you know you need a more generous system. Otherwise things will get cheaper and cheaper and the market will collapse or things will get more and more expensive and.... haha..... the market will collapse.
The early modern-era TBT economy was much different, and it goes further than more Bells and less collectibles. As what
@Justin said years ago, part of the reason why members were a lot richer when New Leaf came out was because we had Welcome Bells, which paid members for account creation. At the start, they were paid nearly 1,000 TBT, but it progressively went downwards. But people have abused this system by creating alternative accounts and giving away their Bells to their main accounts, which is why the system was revoked. The Welcome Bells was why we had so many TBT in the first place. Another commonly brought-up feature was the interest system, which has been abused, and only benefitted the much richer members. In fact, there were a whole bunch of other ways to make TBT Bells back then, only for these features to be revoked because of people abusing the systems beyond moderator control. Without these systems, new TBT can only be generated by posting.
Since late 2015, they did have more events that encouraged users to spend more TBT to participate (like that Red Envelope thing you mentioned), which pulled more TBT out of circulation. There was also a time where a couple users got fined for exploiting the username change glitch where they could reconfigure the same username change add-on for free username changes, which not only took out more Bells, but it sent a couple users into the negatives. So it’s like after the great rise in TBT Bell generation, there came the great fall of TBT into circulation. It’s not just the decreasing site activity resulting from a lack of new AC game.
Another thing that was hot during 2013-2015 was Club Nintendo codes, which users spent TBT to collect Club Nintendo codes, which gave them more currency for special items from Club Nintendo. After it shut down in 2015, selling codes was no longer a thing on TBT. So you could only make Bells from collectibles, art, AC items and villagers, and Pokémon (and posting too). And in the case of art, even art shops are charging for less these days. My 500 TBT to 1,000 TBT payments to get the art I want is more generous in comparison to what art shops are asking for these days, if they are asking for TBT.
