I had this problem when I was looking for my dreamy, Coco. I only had 10 NMT to trade (I saved up Bells for her and wanted to use that), and I saw outrageous prices for 50-100 NMT, and the more popular villagers went for 100+, I even saw Raymond for 3000 NMT! I was thinking to myself, how in the world do people gather up this much NMT from the time this game started? We've only had it for a month! Besides, I'd much rather use an excess amount of NMT to gather resources. Nonetheless, I bought a lot of NMT that night, and someone always outbid me each auction I was in (I gathered like 50 in one night). I eventually got a kind-hearted person selling Coco for cheap in IGB, but I was left with so much excess NMT (half of which I used to gather materials), all I could think to myself was, does it really take this much?