An auction is being hosted by the TraderClub Community-based Rare Value Fansite, lead by Inx and the TraderClub Staff Team. TraderClub is a new and growing Fansite with over 1,400 Members - it's currently one of the largest community servers and the largest valuations Fansite. I had the pleasure of interviewing Inx to see what his motivations were for hosting this auction. The item up for auction is the PH Box - a rare being dubbed as the first super rare item on Habbo Hotel: Origins.

The PH Box is a bugged item that was only received by players who bought the 12 Month Premier HC Bundle on the *very first day* of the Habbo Hotel: Origins release, it was patched by the second day, so only an estimated 200 odd PH Boxes will ever exist in the economy.

TraderClub is using this opportunity to run a charity event, Inx and -Brad (a member of the TraderClub Staff Team) will each be donating $2.50 per Habbo Club Sofa that the PH Box returns, this money will be donated to SpecialEffect. They will use these smaller rares to evenly distribute amongst the hotel through giveaways and events/games hosted by TraderClub.


SpecialEffect is a UK-based Charity whose mission is to provide access of Technology (including Video Games) to members of the community with disabilities, by using solutions ranging from modified controllers to eye-tracking sensors.



If you're interested in buying what is being called "the First Super Rare in the economy" and want to support a good cause at the same time, you might want to check it out. The interview with Inx is to follow.

Skipper's Interview with Inx

Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?

"I'm from the UK originally, but I live in Japan. I did play [Habbo] quite a bit between 2007-2009, though I always came back for wired, it was a ton of fun building niche little games/mazes after so many years of playing FF [Falling Furniture]."

What is TraderClub?

"TraderClub is a community I started on the second day of Origins, as I saw a huge amount of disparity between trades, and wanted to help people more quickly establish an idea of what items were worth so that everyone is getting a fair trade.



The community picked up steam quicker than I intended, and we were able to put out our own value site. As a big open-source fan, I wanted to ensure there was a place players could visit for reliable values driven by a mix of data, including public room trades, community-submitted/voted price suggestions, and trade confirmations from a wider community as well as dedicated rare reporters. While each of these data collection points have some level of vulnerability to them, together they help us draw a value consensus to figure out where the floors/ceilings of values are, and what a fair/equitable value to report on items is.



Trading/collecting is a huge part of the Habbo experience, and it is incredibly important to me that value reporting is taken seriously, and is done so transparently, to the point where we allow any user to join our community and challenge our data collection methods, prices, or any other way we handle values - mishandling/incorrect data does lead to market manipulation, even if it is unintentional. We must ensure we are publicly held accountable, and continue to invest time into running/developing our processes to maintain a healthy economy. We are certainly not a "final source of truth" on values, and (while with some bias) I do believe we have very accurate values, there can not be a perfect solution, but we want to get as close as we can! Outside of rare values, I love running community events - having done a wide range of event organising for IRL events in the past prior to COVID, I really missed that sense of community building - to do that as a player of a game that had a huge impact on me growing up is seriously so much fun. Bringing people together, playing some games, distributing furni to a wider range of players to help more people have an equitable stake in the game, I really love it!"

What are your goals with TraderClub going forward? What are you aiming to achieve?

"My focuses going forward are split between:



- Maintaining and developing our value reporting practices



- Running larger/more intricate events + spreading awareness to those NOT interested in trading, as they will be the ones to benefit most from our giveaways. I'd also like to continue to leverage the power of the trading community to do more charity-related events, not only can we use this as a great way of building community spirit and player engagement, we can do some good for others along the way!



- Expand our ambassador programme; I highly value the power of autonomy when you give someone with epic ideas and strong passion to run wild. There's so many potential initiatives/programmes we can run, and I have already seen some incredible ideas from our first cohort of ambassadors."

Why did you choose SpecialEffect as the charity to donate to, have you interacted with this charity before?

"I've ran a few events in the past where we have donated to this charity, and have been in touch with them for some time!



Accessibility in games is a very important topic for me as a game developer, and to see a charity dedicated to helping gamers, regardless of physical disabilities, a comparable level of access to the joy of games is such a wonderful cause."

Is there anything you'd like to add to conclude?

"Firstly, thank you for reaching out! Reporting on news like this within the community is such a nice way to cultivate community spirit, so I'm really happy to see that being taken up here.



If anyone would like to check out more of what we do, you can take a peak at our discord community over at https://discord.gg/traderclub (at 1400 members and growing!) and our site at https://traderclub.gg/



If you're keen to help out an awesome cause and get an Epic Trophy and PH box, I'd love to see you there on Saturday 2PM BST - We'll be donating $5 ($2.50 from me, $2.50 from -brad) per value of HC [Habbo Club Sofa] of the final price to SpecialEffect, as well as donating all of the furni we receive back out to the community in future events!"