Do you know how much SOE’s Station Exchange made in its first year of trading? Well, you should, becuase there’s this great story up on Gamasutra talking all about it. This is some crazy, crazy stuff. Millions of dollars flowed through the system as a whole, a single plat averaged about seven bucks in the first year the service was live, and individuals made upwards of $35,000 just from sales on the Exchange. Some people are making their livelihood from hiding in SOE’s skirts. Cray-zee.

My favorite section of info was the breakdown of money by character race/class:

Character auctions fetched as high as $2,000 for a single character, and none of the top 20 character auctions went for less than $1,000. All of the most valuable characters were one form of elf or another, the most-played set of races in the game. Character class did not apparently figure as much into sale price, though the most popular class (the Berserker) drew considerably more money over the course of the year than some other classes. 

Some good stuff here, go check it out.