The Central Bank
As I stated in my original post, the intent is to prevent runaway inflation from ruining the economy. This is accomplished by providing a way for money to be exchanged to bring junked cards back into circulation - specifically, auctions in an auction house. However, after considering the original idea for a bit, I discovered there might be a better, simpler way to accomplish the same goal. Hence I am making this suggestion.
Rather than depending on the creation of an auction mechanic, I am focusing on re-imagining the junk mechanic in a bit of a different way. The idea is that there is a central bank which issues the money we use to trade cards, and the junk mechanic is simply the way the bank obtains assets (junked cards) in exchange for money. In essence, the bank has classified every card (with rarity) and accordingly has assigned it a value that it will always buy the card for. So junking cards, in essence, sells them to the bank's collection.
To be fair, the idea of this being a central bank is primarily a metaphor for illustrating my idea. In practice all I'm saying is "junked cards still exist, and can go back into the economy". Now that I have explained how the junked cards can conceptually still exist, I will move on to explaining how and when they can re-enter the economy.
The so-called "central bank" will have its own set of rules it will follow to determine its sale of cards. Again, in practice, this is simply a set of conditions that will allow junked cards to come back to market. If all of the following conditions are met, the bank may accept a player's offer to buy a junked card:
- The offer must be at least a week old.
- The offer must be the highest offer, and it must exceed the highest sale within the past month.
- The bank may not accept offers which fall below the junk price for the card. The goal is for the bank to remove cash from the economy, not add to it.
- The bank must wait 14 days between sales of the same card.
- The bank burns junked cards two months after receiving them.
The point is that, if someone with a lot of money wants a card, but no one will sell it to them, and sales of the card are generally infrequent, they can use this mechanic to obtain it. At the same time, the last rule (#5) ensures it is possible for the supply of a card to be depleted to the point of either being extremely scarce or completely fading out of existence.
