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mer·can·tile |ˈmərkənˌtēl; -ˌtīl|
adjective
· of or relating to trade or commerce; commercial : the shift of wealth to the mercantile classes.
· of or relating to mercantilism.
noun dated
a general store: we walked to the local mercantile.
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from French, from Italian, from merchant ‘merchant.’
As long as anyone can remember, trading has been a part of Habbo Hotel. Trading was the first (and back then, the only) way to exchange furniture between Habbos. The theory behind trading is really simple: furniture is traded for other furniture. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less. Truth is, it’s a lot harder and more difficult than it looks.
In reality, not all furniture are worth the same. Some furniture are worth more than others (e.g. a Lodge bench, worth 3 credits, is worth more than a Rubber duck, worth 1 credit; a typewriter is worth even more: over a 1000 credits) so more furniture should be offered to obtain the more valuable item (e.g. 3 rubber ducks for a Lodge bench, or a whole bunch of rubber ducks for a typewriter). In reality, people offering typewriters won’t actually ask for rubber ducks, but for other rares or credits, though this was only an example.
But not all items are tradeable, and at that time there was no specific way to check which items were tradeable. The only way to check if an item was tradeable was by putting it inside the trading screen: tradeable items were just shown inside the trading screen, whereas non-tradeable items were put back into your Hand, and a warning was shown -
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Trading didn’t change a lot over time. Most of the changes were visual or to make trading more safe, secure and easy.
For as long as we know (stop us if you know more), this is what the trading screen looked like -
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As you can see, each Habbo just grabbed whatever items they wanted to trade from the Big Hand -
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on the top right of their screen, and dragged it into the trading screen. Having 27 rugs meant 3 extra ‘pages’ in your Hand. When satisfied, each Habbo accepted what was offered. Done, trade complete. A new update brought some visual changes, making this the trading screen most Habbos will recognize -
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There are however bad Habbos out there, who found a little trick: just before a Habbo accepted the trade, they switched their offer with a less valuable item, or they swithed it with the same furniture, but another (and so less valuable) color. You can imagine a lot of Habbos being scammed this way, so Sulake eventually decided to do something about it.
With v30, Habbo introduced a new, safer way to trade, which was based on two features: the Trading Pass and double verifying, and updated trading so you could now put 9 different furniture inside the trading screen in stead of 6.
The first feature is the Trading Pass, and the idea behind it is simple: if you have no Trading Pass, you are not able to place a furniture inside the trading screen -
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The criteria to obtain a Trading Pass are:
The second feature is double Verifying. When you do agree with a trade, Habbo now counts down from 3, and asks you to accept the trade again, just to make sure this is what you really wanted, and there are no quick-swaps -
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It’s simple and effective, so make sure you double check your trade before you just agree!
The introduction of v34 (Habbo Beta) brought a lot of visual changes. For instance, to check if an item is tradeable, you only have to open the Inventory, click the item and check for the trading logo (two hands pointing to each other) -
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When a Habbo starts a trade, this now happens ‘inside’ your Inventory: the Inventory gets bigger, and the trading screen appears at the bottom -
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So, except for these small visual changes, nothing else changed. The idea behind trading stays the same as before v34, and so does its security.
Donating was and still is one of the most quick and easy ways to lose or obtain furniture. Donating has two different meanings nowadays, so we’ll try to explain them here.
The first meaning of ‘donating’ is the oldest one. Back in the days, having rights in someone’s room also meant being able to place furniture in that room. Rights could be given to individuals or to everyone in a room, using a specific option on the Room-O-Matic (special ‘donate rooms’ were created with this feature). Some items, however (e.g. Pets) could not be donated. No worries though, there was always a warning, so you could not place your rare Typewriter in another Habbos room by accident (If you did press ‘Yes’ instead of ‘Cancel’ however, there was a slightly bigger problem... ). There was a downside to this part of having rights though. Not only friends, but also hackers/scammers could easily transfer furniture to their own rooms. This is why Sulake deleted the feature. As always, people complained, and still regret Sulake’s decision to delete this feature.
The second meaning of ‘donating’ is more recent, but could easily be applied since the beginning. This one is not so dangerous, and also pretty clever: whenever someone wanted to/wants to ‘donate’ something, he/she starts to trade with the Habbo he/she would like to have the furniture, places the furniture in the trading window, and both Habbos accept the trade. This way, both Habbos got what they asked for, using a simple but effective trick. Pretty clever, huh?
Who doesn’t like them? Exactly, so Sulake decided to bring them to Habbo. It’s just as in real life: you spend your money/credits to buy a gift for your friend or lover, just as a treat, to show them you like/love them, or to wish them a happy birthday. And just to make sure there are no misunderstandings (your boy- or girlfriend thinking it’s from their secret lover, ayayay!), you can leave a message, which will be added automatically and totally free onto the present.
Buying a present is not difficult. Just open the catalogue, choose whatever item you would like to buy for the other Habbo and click the ‘Purchase’ button. Here you can confirm your purchase (if you really really really want it yourself, it’s totally cool), or choose to gift the item to another Habbo. Don’t make any promises on what to get your friends yet, though. Some items aren’t giftable (anymore). ‘Exchange’ below is an example of an item Habbo used to wrap, until Sulake decided they were a waste of boxes. And, you know, there’s the environmental aspect too... For more about boxes and the environment, check ‘Recycling’.
Presents didn’t actually go through a lot of changes, but the biggest change came with v43. Before v43, there was only 1 gift wrapper with 7 different colors -
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The downside about this was that you couldn’t choose which wrapper your present would get. You just clicked ‘Send gift’, and a random color was chosen. All of this changed with v43. For 1 extra credit, you could choose between completely new wrappers and colors, and you could write an even longer message. No worries if you just spent all your credits on the present though, you can always choose to have the old, free, random-colored giftwrappers instead of having to pay another extra credit. V43 was also good news for people who collect Badges, as 20 new Achievements were introduced with these new gift wrappers: 10 Achievements for sending x amount of gifts, and 10 Achievements for receiving x amount of gifts.
To view the new wrappers, click here and view ‘Presents’.
With the introduction of v12, Sulake extended the capabilities of Habbo’s credit system with the introduction of Exchange Furniture to the catalogue.
Exchange gave credits more of a physical presence within the hotel - as it enabled users to store credits in a ‘furniture’ state; coins, sacks, and bars. Coins are worth the least, a Bronze Coin was worth 1 credit, and thus cost 1 credit to buy, a Silver Coin was worth 5 credits, and cost 5 credits to buy, and a Gold Coin was worth 10 credits, and again cost 10 credits to buy. A Sack of Credits, however, was worth and cost lightly more; 20 credits, and the Gold Bar was worth and cost even more - 50 Credits - making it the most expensive exchange item, and thus most valuable.
Once obtained, Exchange Furniture can be redeemed and returned back to its spendable state - in your purse - by double-clicking the coin, sack or bar -
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The introduction of Exchange Furniture meant Habbos could finally - legally - trade credits, and purchase them for other users. However, the transfer from Shockwave to Flash (v33 to v34 Beta) brough some changes: the dialog was updated visually, and the ability to purchase Exchange Furniture as gifts was removed, most likely for security reasons, e.g. a Habbo being hacked and the contents of their purse gifted to the hackers account -
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Overall, however, Exchange Furniture massively reduced ‘credit code scams’ where Habbos would sell fake credit codes for a sum of furniture. (Please remember that if a Habbo does try to sell you a credit code!)
The first update to the Exchange section happened when Pixels were introduced to the Hotel, another currency that co-exists with Credits. Pixels are, however, free, and are awarded to you depending on your activity and achievements in the Hotel, thus are worth a lot less than credits. So, any credit item from the Exchange section would now cost you x amount of credits + a small amount of pixels.
In 2009, inflation struck, so things changed a bit: Sulake added a 1 credit ‘tax’ to the Exchange Furniture. That means, Exchange Furniture now cost their value, x, + one extra credit. Thus, a Gold Bar now costs 51 credits to purchase, but will only be worth 50 credits when redeemed.
As the whole world turns greener and greener, Habbo couldn’t stay behind. Together with the introduction of v13, the Ecotron was introduced, an easy way to replace some of your old furniture with brand new ones.
The first version of the Ecotron was easy: put as many furniture as you want in the Ecotron, and get a reward. There was a minimum and maximum amount of furniture though, so you wouldn’t get a prize for recycling 2 furniture. And there was a little catch: you had to own the furniture you wanted to recycle for at least 720 hours, and after you’d recycle, you had to wait one hour to recycle again -
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Recycleable items were recognizable by a green ‘recycle’-icon stuck to the furniture when you opened the Big Hand. Here’s a list of how many furniture you had to recycle, and what the reward was:
25 furni - Palm Chair
30 furni - Water Garden
35 furni - Polar Sofa
Some countries also offered a Small Ticket Bundle for 10 furni.
These tickets could be used to play Wobble Squabble or to take a High Dive in the Habbo Lido.
In a later stage, with v21, the Moon Lamp was introduced, changing the amount of furni for each reward. Here’s what the list looked like after the introduction of the Moon Lamp:
20 furni - Palm Chair
30 furni - Water Garden
40 furni - Polar Sofa
50 furni - Moon Lamp
Not much after the introduction of the Moon Lamp, with v29, another furniture was introduced: the Eco Friendly Penguin. This was the reward you got for recycling 15 furniture. To wrap up this part, here’s the final list:
15 furni - Eco Friendly Penguin
20 furni - Palm Chair
30 furni - Water Garden
40 furni - Polar Sofa
50 furni - Moon Lamp
To view all Ecotron Furniture of the lists above, click here.
The second version of the Ecotron was entirely different: with v31, what we knew about the Ecotron completely changed. For only 5 furniture, you could now get a (completely recycleable) box with a random (brand new) Ecotron furniture in, and you have to wait only 5 minutes to recycle again -
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The two most rare items, the Orange Tree and Pear Tree, seemed like they were there to stay. You can find a list with the new rewards here (check Ecotron :: phase II), and by hovering over each furniture, you see how big your chances are of getting one of these items.
With the introduction of v34 (Habbo Beta), the Ecotron disappeared. At this stage, only the important features were transferred and updated, so there was no time for the Ecotron yet. But, with v38, the Ecotron returned -
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If you wanted to know which items were recycleable, you had to open the Inventory and click the item you wanted to recycle, and check for the recycle icon -
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After a while, Habbo introduced two new items: the Eco Mushroom 1 and 2. These items weren’t just added to the Ecotron, they replaced the Pear Tree and Orange Tree.
Though it has been a while since Habbo updated the Ecotron furniture, it’s not sure whether or not they will replace the Mushrooms with, yet again, new furniture.
Trading is nice, but complicated, as seen above (see ‘Trading’). One of the most important things in trading is knowing exactly how much your furniture is worth, and without trading values, that’s really complicated. So fansites all over the world made their own ‘Trading Values’- and ‘Rare Values’-system. You can imagine this is not exactly the best way to see how much your furniture is worth, as different fansites have different values, and if you were an owner of one of those fansites and in possession of a Rare furniture you wanted to trade, you just updated the Rare Values a bit. And even if you had your values, you still had to find that one Habbo who just happens to need or offer that particular furniture you were offering or searching, so going around trading rooms, shouting about how desperatly you want to get rid of or need that one particular furniture, was the only way to trade. Sure, you could register on a fansite or forum and post a message you were offering or searching that one furniture, but there were still no guarantees of you getting or losing that furniture.
Habbo got the idea of Trading Values, but always warned its users for them, as there were no official Trading Values. All that changed with v42, as the Marketplace was introduced. The Marketplace is a safe and easy way to buy or sell items for a (mostly) lower price than originally available in the catalogue.
Note: To use the Marketplace, you need a Trading Pass. To see the criteria for a Trading Pass, check ‘Trading’.
To sell furniture at the Marketplace, you have to be inside a room. Open your ‘Inventory’, select the item you would like to sell and click the ‘Sell in marketplace’-button on the bottom right. If you have run out of tokens (needed to sell items at the Marketplace), you will be asked to buy new ones (if you are a normal Habbo or a member of HabboClub, you’ll get 5 tokens for 1 credit; if you are a member of VIP, you’ll get 10 tokens for 1 credit). Once you bought new tokens, you have to fill in an asking price, and an average is given (if you do have enough tokens, you see this screen immediately). Be warned though, Habbo adds a ‘marketplace commission’ to your asking price. This marketplace commission depends on your asking price: if your asking price is between 1 credit and 100 credits, a commission of 1 credit is added; if your asking price is between 101 credits and 200 credits, a commission of 2 credits is added, and so on. This commission is for Habbo only, and won’t be added to your total amount of received credits when the item is sold. Your item will be at the Marketplace for 48 hours (2 days), unless it’s taken back or sold. To take back items or to see if they are sold, open the Catalogue, click the ‘Marketplace’-tab and select ‘My sales’. From here, you can take a furniture back (you will lose your token) or collect credits from sold items.
To buy things at the Marketplace, you don’t have to be inside of a room. Just open the Catalogue, click the tab ‘Marketplace’ and select ‘Offers’. Here you can browse through some of the offers.
In the first version of the Marketplace, you could just search by name or minimum asking price, and there were no averages or amount of offers shown -
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As there were no averages shown, Habbos got tricked into buying items for a much higher price than normal, as they saw a furniture they never saw before ‘for such a good price’.
With the second version of the Marketplace, Habbo added the averages, the amount of furni available, and the ability to search by value or by activity, perform an advanced search, or sort the items by order -
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So that’s all the past and present ways to get a piece of furniture transferred to another person. Most probably to be changed and tweaked in multiple ways in months, and years, to come.