Well here is how I see it. We bring a little bit of our personalities into this game. Each of us have our own set of morals and although we can stretch it quite a ways while we play its not that far off as compared to what we believe in real life. In my mind, xsharding rares is no different than me collecting art or other valuables from across the world. I don't limit myself to only US art per se if I see some European art I like then I am going to collect it.

Everyday products is pretty much the same too, I don't really care if my dishes are made in China or if my cloths are made in Mexico. If its cheap, I'll wear or use it hehe.

Now there are folks out there I suppose who will use only "made in USA" items, but its just so hard these days.

The high end rares market is global. If I want to sell a unique event item, I will be asking traders from all shards, not just my home shard.

Other than that I only really trade on EU.

As for your last comment, that shard is usually the same.

What do you think will happen if a price is high on a certain shard and people xshard their scrolls/items over there? The supply will by higher than the demand, ergo the price will drop. Only x amount of people can afford a 120 magery scroll at 15. So after a while someone will drop to 14.5 if there's many for sale, in order to sell quick/at all. And so on.

Manti, real life collections do not reflect the same history/style as UO. Real life, should something be lost, stolen etc, it is acted upon and considered a real crime/tragedy. In this respect, when things are lost in UO it is still considered a tragedy, but nothing can be done. IRL collections are often highly insured, treasured, and generally available for public view. In UO, insuring a historic item is not possible, and though while treasured, many are afraid of public viewing now thanks to the rares market being what it is and people not caring where their new-gotten item came from in the first place, they just want it and that's that. So public museums, though while they exist, are more and more uncommon due to people being afraid of losing what they are trying to preserve.

Rares collections seem to be less and less about preserving something for the sake of UO history and more for the sake of 'I've got my pixel crack, yay!'. Perhaps EA-M should look into having a museum on each shard curated that way people can turn in items for display to preserve their history. Oh wait...that might not work either since so many xsharders will create a character or transfer just to get the item and offshard it in the first place...hm. Maybe at least a copy in the museum of whatever's given out in events, that way each shard will have their piece of history and the rares collectors will have their pixellized fixation piece?

Until there is some way to police and protect, no one's ever going to be happy, and situations such as Manti posted about his friend will continue to occur.

And on the small shard, from which scrolls was "exported" there is NO 120 magery scroll to buy. When someone finally puts one on a vendor, insted of selling to a broker, it's more like 20 million.

Is EU the cheapest or most expensive? I didn't get that one.

Last year Yale University agreed to return to Peru thousands of Inca relics that were excavated at Machu Picchu from 1911-15:

BBC NEWS | Americas | Yale to return Peruvian artefacts

U.S. Customs Returns Priceless Cultural Artifacts to Mexico, Peru, and Panama in 2001:

2000 Archived Press Releases

The J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles returns two prized antiquities to Greece in 2006:

Greece demands return of stolen heritage | World news | The Guardian

I'd compare server birth rares and unique event items to these cultural artifacts from Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Panama, Greece, Italy etc.

Unfortunately we can't track our rare "artifacts" when they leave our servers, so when something is taken from us, it's more or less a permanent loss.

Thats nice in all but tell that to the English government who currently hold the largest Egyptian artifacts collection ever. Or the Eight countries who pillaged the Chinese artifacts during the Boxer rebellion. At the end I guess its differnt strokes for different folks. It can be argued both ways I guess till there is no end. I am glad that there are rares to be collected in this game and no matter how bad the duppers want to ruin this there will always be some geniuine rares out there to collect. I love this game because of the collecting, all the other games can hack and slash but this one you can collect.

As for preserving items, Baja started doing that when Archmedes took over Season II and III. If you go to Moonglow Lyceum theer are display cases full of items from those 2 seasons.

As for my museum, it opens on ocassion because I don't want to bore people with it. But when its open, I often stand at Luna Bank and open moongates for the public to see and I announce it on stratics.

Manticore, I no longer play UO, but i'd love to see some screenshots when you get time.

Ok try to steer this back to the original post, the owner of the house actually made a post on the temporary stratics rares foreum. Well the 2nd post. His first post was wanting to buy super high end rares and quickly got slammed and the thread locked. The link below was his 2nd post of trying to keep his fame, and I don't think he is doing well on that either hehe.

Please Do Not Defame Me !!! - Temporary Stratics Forums

I cannot agree with this. People that would invest all of their uo earnings (especially if it took years to save) should/would look into the item they are buying and see it's not possible for there to be so many pairs for sale (they were posted for sale all over). That leads me to believe they knew something wasn't right, but they wanted them anyway. Thats not even close to what this guy must have felt. Knowingly buying a duped item and having it deleted is a far cry from having your account hacked and THEN seeing your collection in someone elses house! I know its pixels, but collecting rares on uo is a time consuming hobby as much as anything else and Im so sorry to hear someone would take that from him. Just remember karma IS real!

I have an idea.
Gather as many friends or guildmates as possible to stake out the house of the owner of the stolen property. as soon as that player or any player appears in the house page on them and target them. If you have enough people constantly hounding the GM's, something is bound to happen. UO life is much like real life...strength in numbers. The honest players of this game must take a stand TOGETHER. Individual pages are not good enough. Much like writing a petition to your congressman (or woman). Think of it as a protest.
Somthing of this magnitude could spark a reaction from EA.
A multi shard operation could be coordinated effectively to overload the ques.
Anyway, just a thought.