Discontinued rare items

Discontinued items are items in-game that can no longer be obtained. However, many of them are still owned by players who obtained them before they were discontinued, and some of them can still be obtained through trading with other players. Most of these items are now relatively few in number and are very expensive. Most of these items are holiday drops that were released years ago and prizes from Squeal of Fortune and Treasure Hunter, but there are a few exceptions.

These rares are a very important part of RuneScape 's economy, many players work hard with skills to achieve a long-term goal of owning a rare and discontinued holiday item. For the most part rares either hold their value or grow, like that of a stock. In some special occasions, such as the "Unbalanced Trade Removal" update the price of rares will drop, but players can be certain that if they hold a rare long enough it will eventually be worth it because no more rares will ever enter the economy. Items such as Seismic wands and Ascension crossbows have high prices compared to other non-discontinued items, however it is possible to get more of them. In the case of tradeable holiday items, this is not a possible reason for the price to decrease, beside a change in the Grand Exchange supply and demand.

It was suggested in a live video by Mod Mark that if a player with a large number of rares was banned, consideration would be given to reintroducing them into the game, possibly via the GE.

History
Most discontinued items came from Holiday drops; distributions of unique tradeable items on certain holidays, such as Christmas or Easter. These items are also few in number and have become very expensive over the years. Holiday drops that are wieldable are often worn by players to either show their wealth, fashion, or to show how long they've played.

The original holiday drops
While most modern-day holiday items are untradeable and awarded from participating in events, they previously worked differently. On Easter, Hallowe'en, and Christmas, Jagex would drop a certain item. For example, in December 2001 during Christmas, Jagex dropped 'Christmas Crackers'. These Christmas crackers could only be obtained during a certain day during December. When a player walked around RuneScape, they may have seen a Christmas cracker pop up out of nowhere on the ground nearby.

After players began to notice that these items could not be obtained anymore except via trading, they started buying them and holding on to them just for the purpose of selling them higher later. Additionally, some players complained that they missed the drops, and ask for Jagex to redo them. Jagex decided to make the next few drops untradeable. However, this only enraged players even more. Jagex then decided to stop holiday drops, as players were becoming too greedy. On 22 December 2003, Jagex put an announcement on RuneScape's main page, saying that they were ceasing holiday drops. From then on, tradeable items were no longer dropped on holidays.

A year passed and no holiday drop was made. However, on 21 December 2004, Jagex changed that. Santa Claus was placed in the game and gave a Yo-yo to players who talked to him (They were untradeable). After the Yo-yo, Jagex introduced tasks players had to complete to obtain the holiday item, starting with the Rubber chicken. For more information, see Holiday Rewards.

The return of holiday rares
In 2012, for the first time since 2002, Jagex released a new tradeable rare item into the game obtainable through the Squeal of Fortune, the Fish Mask. This was released in large quantities and is consequently one of the cheapest tradeable rares. Since then, several items have been introduced as tradeable holiday rares. While the Fish Mask, the Christmas Tree Hat, and the Crown and Cloak of Seasons could all be obtained on the Squeal of Fortune and were criticized as being "RWT Rares", the Black Santa Hat was released through a semi-novel mechanism which was not influenced by the spending of real-world money.

The Black Santa Hat was released in minimal quantities through a new version of the Christmas Cracker - the Festive Cracker (which was removed from the game at the end of the 2013 Christmas season). The cracker was obtained through the completion of daily tasks, the Festive Cryptic Clue Fest, and a few forum contests. The crackers were relatively easy to obtain but the chance of receiving the hat from a cracker was incredibly low and the total number of Black Santa Hats which were released into the game is believed to be extremely small, so much so that it is now worth more than the original red Santa Hat and is by far the most valuable of the new generation of tradeable rares.

Tradeable discontinued holiday items
This list only includes tradeable holiday items. For a list including non-tradeable items, see Holiday rewards.

Other discontinued items
In addition to holiday rares released by Jagex, there are other tradeable rare items that Jagex has left in the game after removing the methods to obtain them.