Animal Crossing: New Horizons has largely been well received, and fans are spending all their waking hours customizing their towns and inviting new villagers to live there. Now, one particular shortcut for inviting players' favorite villagers is showing up on eBay for extremely inflated prices.
Animal Crossing amiibo cards started to be released back when Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer was the most recent game in the series. Now, however, the cards are in high demand because they - and standard Animal Crossing amiibo - can be used to invite particular and rare villagers to come live on a player's island instead of simply having to hope that they would appear in a campsite or in a sold home.
Players have a tendency to grow fond of specific villager NPCs that live in their towns, and many Animal Crossing: New Leaf players have carried over this fondness to New Horizons. As a result of the demand, individual amiibo are now being sold on eBay for extremely high prices, with some individual villagers being sold for over a hundred bucks a pop.
Villagers that appear to be particularly popular include Bob, Lucky, and Ankha, which are selling for over $100 a piece. Apollo comes in at $200, and topping the list is Whitney and Marshall, selling for about $300 a pop. This even includes the Japanese variants of the cards, which sees Marshall (Jun in Japan) going for $270 by itself.
The price surge is remarkable, especially since these cards weren't particularly popular when they released. The games that initially utilized them, Happy Home Designer and Amiibo Festival, received tepid reactions from fans and the ability to utilize the cards in New Leaf didn't come until later on. At the time, some were outspoken that spending money on cards instead of full-fledged amiibo collectible figures wasn't worth it, but clearly feelings have now changed since a new mainline entry to the series has released.
Some might wonder if anyone would really spend such absurd sums on amiibo cards. However, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has also seen bells and Nook Miles tickets going for high prices on eBay, so it's not out of the question.
While fans scramble to find their favorite NPCs, New Horizons itself has been dropping some hints that some old favorites may return soon, like Brewster, the coffee-peddling pigeon. Time will tell if Animal Crossing: New Horizons receives DLC or if more characters and shops will be unlocked after playing the game for a set amount of time.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Destructoid