Rejana: Several options have been discussed in order to reduce the value of fansite items. I myself had been a huge fan of making fansite items soulbound, and there were really several fansite admins who would have embraced that conclusion immediately, too. With the implementation of the Store, this matter was discussed more seriously internally as well.
For fansite items, this was not a good approach, though, and after the discussion, I agreed. Their main purpose for players is to commemorate the situation in which they received them. The good time they had in a contest, for example. Players should be able to do with these items what they would like to do with them, and Tibia is known to have an open trade system. Tibians should be able to send these to another character. We would not want these items to be restricted. And now especially with the option to trade characters, fansite items would then change hands, just because a character is auctioned.
Then, we must consider what should happen to fansite items that are already in game. Who should they be “assigned” to? And – if no further tradable fansite items would ever become available ingame, can you imagine the value that the already existing old fansite items would gain if they remained tradable? All these points did actually convince me that making fansite items soulbound would bring other problems that have the potential to make things rather worse than better.
Over the years there have been several approaches of tackling the problem of overvalued fansite items, and that will most likely be a topic for the future, too. For example, adding souvenirs from the museum in Thais was an approach, to try to prevent that prizes shoot through the roof once a fansite has left the programme. The earlier mentioned fansite item lottery was another approach. Who knows what the next approach will be.