2009 Market Crash
From the RuneScape Wiki, the wiki for all things RuneScape
Soon after the release of the new Bounty worlds and the new offence system during early-to-mid May 2009, many high priced, high demand items crashed in price. Items that experienced a sudden decrease in price included the Bandos godsword, Bandos armour, the Dragonfire shield, Armadyl armour, the Dragon Chainbody, and the Dragon full helm.
[edit] Causes
One significant factor leading to these price decreases was the release of Bounty Worlds on 6 May 2009. On these worlds, players occasionally lose an expensive item such as a Godsword when they are killed. The player who receives the item puts it up for sale on the Grand Exchange, leading to an oversupply of such items, causing a lower demand for the item, and the price to drop.
On 16 July, players where talking about the Saradomin Sword dropping by a great price from 8.5m to 4.8m, this however, is false, as it only dropped around 800k in the first half of the day. However, the Armadyl Godsword dropped over 7m (approx 7.4) in the first half of the day and was expected to drop another 5m before the day was over. Many other high level items such as other godswords, bandos armour, Dragon Claws and the dragonfire shield have dropped significantly. Bandos Godsword dropped a little less than 1m, while the Saradomin and Zamorak Godsword dropped 4m and 3m. Dragon claws have fallen 3m and the dragonfire shield and Bandos Armour about 800k. This is due to panic and a scare of a market crash due to the "no protect item" rule on Bounty worlds (as updated on July 15th)
On 17 July, Andrew had made a post on the forums stating that they will create Bounty world +1. The world is almost exactly the same as Bounty worlds, but players will always keep one item. The update caused a huge demand for items that were previously sold. Godswords and dragon claws were mostly affected once again. They were soon bought out from the market and are being sold well over the maximum price.
