Christmas cracker

A Christmas cracker is a holiday item that was dropped during the 2001 Christmas event on 25 December 2001, the first RuneScape Christmas event, and is arguably the rarest, and is currently the most expensive/valuable item in RuneScape. Although it is the most expensive/rarest item in RuneScape, the blue partyhat has a higher grand exchange price; this is because the Christmas cracker is traded so infrequently in the grand exchange as it is valued at a much higher price on the street than the grand exchange can handle. They are instead traded for cash and/or items because of their value being greater than the maximum amount of coins.

Pulling
Held within the cracker is a partyhat and one other item or a stack of items, such as some coins, runes, or rune armour. To open it, it must be used with another player. Upon opening, the player who had the cracker and the player it was used on each have a 50/50 chance to receive a randomly coloured party hat, while the other player gets the other item. While the free trade limit was removed, however, Mod Ash had confirmed that this was changed to the player with the cracker always gets the hat to prevent a possible method of real world trading. However, when free trade was redone, this was changed back to 50/50.


 * The chances below are calculated using a sample size of 2218 crackers


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This means that the average profit for pulling a Christmas cracker is.


 * The chances below are calculated using a sample size of 1337 crackers


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The immense value of crackers and partyhats on the street has posed a problem; the maximum gold stack is 2.147b, and the street price of the cracker is between 4.5b and 5b, meaning items like H'ween masks, Santa hats, and other Partyhats must be traded to offset the gold limit. Oftentimes crackers are traded via shards and cash as well. Thus, it is extremely difficult to obtain both the money and the items to purchase a Christmas cracker; very few players have the wealth.

An update now causes the player using the cracker on another player to receive a warning message, asking them if they are sure they wish to do so. However, players are still strongly advised to keep Christmas crackers in noted form to prevent the unlikely accident of pulling them.

Rarity
Few Christmas crackers remain due to the fact that many were pulled immediately after the drop. The vast majority of players opened them for the rune items that could be obtained from doing so. Note that at the time of the drop, party hats were virtually worthless, while certain rune items such as the rune kiteshield were hundreds of thousands of gp, which, at the time, was an incredible amount. It wasn't expected that Christmas crackers would one day be worth so much.

Over time, many Christmas crackers have been lost as players with older accounts have quit, have been permanently banned or have opened their Christmas crackers for fun. Their importance to the RuneScape economy (which was so crucial for years starting a few years after their release) has long diminished. Other discontinued items such as party hats, halloween masks, and santa hats are far more commonly traded.

Because their numbers are so low, and are traded only a few times per year, many expect the Christmas cracker to become the first extinct RuneScape item. When the last player either drops, pulls, quits runescape or is banned with their cracker, the item will cease to be traded on the Grand Exchange or off the street.

Price Update History
Christmas crackers hardly ever update in price in the Grand Exchange. Since the release of the Grand Exchange, the price has only updated seven times suggesting that it is rarely sold via the Grand Exchange.

Since the free trade updates on 1 February 2011, the item has suddenly risen by 200 million coins. Jagex has stated that this was due to a miscalculation in prices for items that do not get traded in Grand Exchange often. The miscalculation was fixed two days later and the prices of most items affected were manually lowered by Jagex.

Trivia

 * When these crackers were dropped, the original colour was red, and has since changed to white.
 * Christmas crackers remain the rarest tradeable item in RuneScape.