Charter Account Value?

Yes you can transfer it through LL, it doesn't mean you need to charge the new owner an amount to make that happen, what is dead Aunty Dora going to do with US$100 to transfer the land bequeathed to you in her will anyway?
If she wants to sell/give it to you while she's still alive, you can just give her the cash rather than being necessary to send the US100 through LL.

Since the original owner paid $500 for the account I would put the actual dollar value at $500. Does that mean I would pay $500 for it? In a word, no. How much would I personally value it at? I'm afraid $0 would be my answer. Like others here I'm in "month to month" mode and have been for quite some time. Since I believe LL is attempting to disney-fy SL, and have believed that since they first started their "adult verification" rant (further evidenced by the appointment of Kingdon in my mind), I don't think of my participation in SL beyond the immediate future. Since I wouldn’t be willing to spend more than a 3 month premium account with 2048sq m of land would cost.... since that would only be $67.50 I doubt someone would sell such an account for that amount... I wouldn’t even “bid” on it. I do think there are people out there that would pay high dollar just for the prestige of owning such an account though. If I owned such an account, and had permission to sell it, I’d auction it on E-bay and put a low acceptance bid at say $250. But I’d have to have permission from LL to actually sell it and not just to transfer it. In my mind there is a huge difference between the two. Just my 2 cents worth.

Yes, I know. However, the ToS is what it is....... it's got a few holes in it. As I read the ToS (and evidently as the OP reads it) selling the account to a total stranger for profit is not excluded. I don't think LL thought of anyone selling the account when they allowed account transfers in the ToS..........but, we all know LL doesn't think too deeply in such matters. Be that as it may, it's alllowed.

And, since it is allowed, there is an opportunity for someone who can benefit from such a legal sale. Like I said earlier, I'd jump all over it if I had the RL funds.........pending the terms and conditions agreed upon (which, by the way, cannot be arrived at without a serious offer to the seller). As long as it's legal, the OP is entitled to whatever a buyer might be willing to give. I stated what I thought would be a minimum and maximum bid. That is what the OP asked for.

Judging motives is not the topic......which is what most are doing.

If I were inclined to buy, I wouldn't pay more than US$250 flat. Currently I have no interest in owning mainland though. I would rather continue to rent estate than live on a mainland plot because of the lack of control over what goes on in the rest of the sim in terms of builds, landscaping and use of sim resources. If the dynamics of land ownership were to ever change so I could contribute the tier to my current estate manager in lieu of payment of rent then I probably wouldn't hesitate to pay $250. I would never pay the original face value of $500. I would have to have faith that SL would still be enjoyable enough to continue to spend time in it and own land in it for at least 2-3 years and I just don't have that much faith in it to front the extra money.

If the inventory is transferred wouldn't that allow disclosure of real life information about others that could be stored in the inventory?

If group membership and status are transferred, the value would depend on what groups the account is in and what role the account holds in the group.

Is there a place to see a list of charter members on the web?

What charter member accounts have been sold, and who to, if known?


Anyone gonna make any guesses about who it is?

Are you not one of that elite group yourself? Want to give any clues?

I'm joking............the name of the account is private and should remain that way.

She's got a Starax wand, tho.. (er.. I think I heard she did)

/me wonders how much one of those would fetch.. More or less than a charter account?

Unbfortunately, considering a few of functions no longer work, better functions have been added to LSL since to create other cooler effects, and there's never going to be any updates, and 90% of the population have never heard of one, possibly not as much as it was worth a couple of years ago. Another 10 years ant it will be worth only what it looks like in art value.

I had about a week when I started to take the charter membership deal.

I made the wrong decision by not taking advantage of the offer.

4096 is just big enough to have enough room to breathe in, but not so big as to make you feel pressured trying to come up with clever, interesting, novel, useful things not seen elsewhere.

Charter membership would have been perfect for me.

One of the many, many stupid mistakes I've made and continue to make.

The value of such an account is dirctly linked to the value of LL word. Unfortunatly, they have broken promises just a bit too often to let me believe their word can be considered valuable.

If the account comes with a written garuantee, it might be worth a lot. If not: LL's current reliability and the speed in which they come back on previous made promises, I'd say the value cannot be more than the equivilant of 6 months of it's benefits.

Blue: I just want to make sure you understand that it is LL's reliability that damages the value on your account.

in these unsurten times, where it is anybody's guess what path LL will walk, I'd say hang on to your account and rent out the benefits.

just my 2 cents.

US$ 200 I would pay. Of course if LL agrees with it, but that is simple to verify. If someone else pays more, I am out

My alt has a Starax... she was rezzed Nov 04 (was 17K for that thing in early 05 btw)


~Brie

Well, the ToS says:


I have always taken this to mean that it is for people who want to leave their account to a friend or relative if they die, but I suppose "valid written will" could have a wider meaning.

If that's the case, though, why isn't everybody doing it? If LL is in the habit of giving the OK to account transfers for profit, why isn't there a thriving industry of people setting up "starter avatars" with well-chosen names, decent hair, skin, wardrobe and animations etc. and then selling them on to those who want to skip straight past the newbie phase?

If it's not normal practice for them to say OK to a transfer like this, I am left wondering what is special about this account that entitles it to special treatment. Is it just that it's worth a lot of money? That doesn't seem very fair to me.

Okay, here's the way to end the debate on the value. Everyone who is interested just PM Blue with your offers. Then if your offer is rejected, just post to the thread saying.. I offered xxx and it was rejected. When we see the highest rejected offer, we can assume that the account went for.. oh.. say $25 higher.

This way whoever bought it doesn't have to give up their privacy.. unless they want to jump up and down and shout "woohoo! In your face forum bunnies!"

wonder why the op stopped responding... still waiting for a response to my last post

is the OP the seller, or not....

contradicting statements cause confusion

I LOVE that story!! And admire people who have heard of it. I often say that if I were kidnapped in SL, I'd be akin to the little boy in that story.

Why would you and/or the seller really care?

Why doesn't the owner of the charter account come to the forum as you did and speak for themselves?

Charter / Lifetime? At least $1000 USD.

I know that a ~regular~ (non-lifetime/charter) 2003 account sold for $600 USD + 120k Linden in items the purchaser of the account made in SL.


These things are sold and traded for reasons other than just the value of stipend and the 4096m2 tier of land (IF it is a charter/lifer).

I personally would never sell a Lifetime/Charter account.

Also,

I know someone hunting for a 2002 account.

They are offering $2000 USD.

Things like this happining alot means the value of a charter account drops as the risk grows /327/0d/341205/1.html

Maybe.. I'd still pay more for an account that had one of them than I would for a charter account, though.. It still works enough for me.

You forgot to mention whether this avatar actually owns 4096 sq.m. of land, or is merely entitled to own 4096 but doesn't.

At current depressed mainland prices, 4096 sq.m. would be worth a minimum of 1.8 * 4096 / 269 = about 27 US dollars. However, if this account acquired land early in its life, it could be in the historic sims around Da Boom and would be worth considerably more.

Transferable inventory items would probably only be worth a pittance, unless there are Starax items in there. Actually, even Starax items don't have much monetary value anymore, since exploits were used to make indistinguishable copies (with correctly faked timestamps).

* L$500/week stipend vs L$300/week would be worth (500-300) / 269 * 52 = 39 US dollars / year
* 4096 sq.m. of mainland (assuming no restrictions on how it can be used) would be worth maybe 20 US dollars / month in rental value, or about 240 US dollars / year
* If charter members don't have to pay premium fees, that's worth 72 US dollars / year

If the transfer was really LL-approved, and LL itself handled the transfer (like they do for private island sales), I'd pay a year's worth of revenue, or about 350 US dollars. But unless there was valuable land involved, it would be more convenient to simply transfer the "charterness" to an existing alt of mine rather than actually take over the avatar and its inventory and history and the psychological baggage of weirded-out former friends and acquaintances.

What's interesting to me about this thread is that it seems to bring up one of the real problems with SL...

Nothing in SL holds any real long term value.

I missed having the opportunity to purchase a charter by this much >< and I've lamented that missed opportunity for years now. In my mind, and possibly only because I have been shuffling around this platform for so long, a charter account should be one of the most vaulable commodities of SL. Hell, I consider every one of my pre-06/06/06 accounts as commdoities simple because they are self-paying (meaning that their stipends pay for their premium memberships completely at this point) and the free tier they get means I no longer have to pay anything to keep my toes in SL, even if my head is floating off elsewhere.

It surprises me to see so few find any value to that. It's true that not everyone offered the chance of having a charter account in 2003 found any value in it then either, but you'd think that almost 6 years after the fact it would be apparent that of course it has value.

To me, it seems like a failure of LL as a company to have not added any value to their premier account product.

What amuses me in a sort of depressing way is that if you could somehow take this thread back in time to Sept of 2003 and have the people of the time see how vauleless people today consider a Charter Account, it's quite possible that a lot of them would have re-thought that inital cash investment, not bothered to buy one, and left LL without the revenue they so desperately needed at the time to continue this platform.

There weren't all these educational and governmental and large corporate backers in 2003, there was just LL begging the people that used this platform to please support it financially. It's probably a good thing that none of the people who apparently fell for that plea knew that in 5 years the majority of the residents of this platform would find their investment in a charter account worthless...

... or you might not have a platform at all.

I think part of the reason Pie, is that right now LL has set it so you can pretty much enjoy SL without paying for a premuim as a basic member. A heck of a lot of us are, either make enough inworld to rent, or buying Lindens or aren't interested in land at all, or in my case have the generosity of friends to be thankful for. You are right. They do have to make premium worth more than it is. Personally I see no reason to ever become Premium again as it stands now.

Maybe LL just needs to market it differently. Kill off the term "premium membership" (and open up mainland land ownership to anyone). Instead, call it a Linden dollar subscription.

The pitch could go something like this: Do you find yourself purchasing Linden dollars frequently to buy the things you want? Tired of purchasing them individually every time? Now you can get a steady supply of Linden dollars delivered directly to you on a regular basis, automatically! Choose the amount you want: L$ 100 per week, L$ 1000 per week, or any other amount. If you choose a subscription in the amount of L$500 per week or more, we'll throw in a discount on your mainland tier!

Xstreet would be a logical place to sell such subscriptions, right on the front page.