Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hi. My name is Kirksome, and I've been on Gaia since I was in fifth grade (I've since graduated high school. So over seven years?). I'm a bit of an old lady when it comes to Gaia; I remember the days when having 1mill was a big deal. I have not been particularly active the past few years, but I recently came back to Gaia and quickly noticed that all the items in the marketplace had become grossly inflated in price. I promptly sold all my 2K8 christmas swag that I've been holding onto for my entire Gaia career for what I considered a huge score; but then I noticed that most desirable items in the marketplace had moved from the millions to the billions in price.

Anyway, I currently hold about 600mil. I am also interested in giving this all away and closing down my Gaia account, but I could really use someone who knows a bit about Gaia's economy to give me perspective on how much that actually is. How valuable is 600mill anymore? Is it even a good prize for a small contest? Anyway, any and all answers are gratefully accepted. Thanks a bunch

EDIT: This seemed like the most appropriate place for this thread, but I've never been good at categorizing my posts based on these forum heads. Give me a heads up if I should move it

Not really that old of a lady. Started in early 2005 here, only two years after it started. though I was in 10th grade. (I think your birthday is off in your profile, When Gaia started I would have been 14, and my birthday is in '89)

As for perspective:

In march 2005, the march donation item cost 7000 gold.

Last month's donation letter (now monthly collectible) cost roughly 12,875,000,000 gold.
For each 1 gold that the march 2005 letter cost you, it now costs you 1,839,286 (rounded) gold to get the same.
So, 600 million (600,000,000) divided by the inflation number listed above, is about 326 gold.

Sad isn't it? the gaia economy is still reeling from the massive influx of gold generators that generated simply enormous amounts of gold for relatively low amounts of gaia cash.
Governments have things in place to ensure that they don't print too much money. Otherwise the value of the money goes down worldwide. Things don't cost more, money just doesn't cover as much.