Is there a way to find out if a item is newbified? Other than wearing it and dying? I got a chest full of old cloth, and I'm pretty sure some of them are newbified, just don't know which ones...

Not being able to insure some newbified items was one way, but I'm not certain that works with clothing articles. The worst way to find out is to leave it on the ground and less than a minute later it vanishes!

you cannot cut them with scissors

there is a way to identifiy OLD "newbiefied" items. Try and lock the item down in your house. If it locks, it's not newby. If it says you cannot lock this down, then it IS newby. Just one thing, you gotta be quick in doing this, as a newby item left on the ground will poof in less than a minute. I recently bought a bag of old stuff from a vendor and tested the items this way, it works [got a scissors and a dagger out of the lot:]

Nice trick!

Doesn't the ItemID trick still works?
Newbie items have a value of 0 gold.

Thanks a lot - the lock-down trick worked fine. Didn't have the guts to try the cut-up-solution

What's the difference between OLD newby and NEW newby items? I only know the old style ones.

"old" newbie and "new" newbie are essentially the same thing with one big difference: New items are labeled as "blessed" [meaning they stay with your corpse when you die]. The old items have that same property, only most of them are not labeled that way. That's why you have to experiment with the lock down trick to see what you have. An exception is the old newbie weps they used to give you when you were first starting out. These are labeled "practice weapon" and are indeed newbiefied, nice for beginners who die a lot:]

Beginners dont die that much anymore with the Old Haven spawn, it has been way better for them. Except for those who try to train with 8 spellbinders too early

The good point in old newbie items is the blessed status, good for scissors and daggers mostly. So you don't need to insure them.