(The last diamond shard suggestion in forums was made 7 months ago)

Hello, im here suggesting to reconsider the idea of a diamond shards recipe, for a better control on selling items in shops.

The recipe:

1 diamond = 3 diamond shards

Why 3 shards?

A problem with the original 9 shards conversion is that some important items, like enchantment books (one of the most sold items), can be undercut a lot, down to 1/9 of a diamond, even though they are sold at 1d at the current system. Having a lower division should be be able to lesser that problem (even tho 1/3 is still quite undercut)
Other numbers work, like 2 shards or 4 shards per diamond)

Now, why shards?

Shops are a wonderful tool that everyone has available, and they are used a lot less than they could be used. Why is that? Players don't feel like items are worth the price of 1d, offered in a lot of items. And that's because they are actually not worth the price. These include a lot of farmable items (gunpowder, totems, rockets, sugar cane, bone blocks, most dyes, a big etc.), and a huge number of blocks (most colors of glass and concrete, sand, dirt, all the stones, leaves, pumpkins/melons, ice, and many other). All of these items often have low sales, and are very common through the shops (and when they sell, it's often in bulks, which allow them to be sold at a price closer to their real value). Players prefer to collect the items themselves in almost every case, or build a farm for permanent production of an item. These are all other ways to get items, but having lower prices in shops will give players an option (should I build a flower farm/travel 1000 blocks for some sand, or am I fine buying it for 1/3 of a diamond?). Then, there's a lower need to build farms if you don't like that playstyle, which allows to focus on other things. 

Money in an economy is meant to be an intermediary for trade, and for a lot of items, currently, this doesn't work, for the high prices of common items. Is a wither skull, or half a stack of EoTs, worth the same as 64 glass? Glass is a lot easier to get than the other two, but under the current system, they are worth the same. Players may be willing to trade a wither skull for half a stack of EoTs, which is possible now, but another equal trade, as 1 stack of cobblestone for 1 stack of stone, cannot be done using diamonds. If you buy cobblestone for 1 diamond and sell stone for 1 diamond, it's a fair trade. However, why would you be buying stone? You could use the diamond to instead buy a quite more valuable stack of logs. And why would anyone buy your cobblestone for diamonds? They might aswell also buy stacks of logs. And then, we get to why stone and cobblestone cannot really be sold, even though they are highly used items. And same thing goes for anything that is worth quite less than a diamond, unless the effort to get one in the first place and it's usefullness is worth the price (see: enchanted books) 

Why players don't use other less valuable currencies, then?

1. It's hard to convert to the main currency. Players won't really buy your gold, and you can't really find a shop where all your iron blocks will be bought for diamonds. Unless the currency you use is valuable to you, or you have another plan with your shop, there is not really a point on selling on other currencies.

2. Players expect prices in diamonds, and often don't carry your currency. If a player has diamonds, and you sell for gold, the player often doesn't bother to go back to their base, go grab some gold, go back to your shop, and buy the item. More often than not, they will just go to the next shop, unless you have a really good offer, or they are planning to buy a lot of items (Which for low price items, it often isn't the case).

3. Any other items are farmable. Gold, iron, emeralds, are items that you can farm easily (even AFK). And this defeats the point of trading. Players won't be trying to trade using other resources, theyll simply go to a gold/iron farm, AFK a bit, and then wipe your shop chest.

Conclusion

Players use the shops more when a good trade is offered, but a good trade cannot be done on low value items where both the seller is getting diamonds and the buyer is happy with the trade. Personal experience, by selling farmable items for sand, players buy a lot more from my shop than from other shops (I often see their 1 diamond->64 items chests are almost fully stocked, with 3-4 items replaced with 1 dia). People are willing to buy easily farmable, low value items if the right trade is offered, and the most clear solution to allow better trades, is to create a lower value currency, the diamond shards.

Sorry if this is a bit messy but my english is kinda bad, specially with paragraphs. Hoping everything is easy to read and understand.

I have a chest in my shop selling gold, a stack for one diamond. Some of the other chests sell things for gold ingots. For instance, you can buy a stack of bone blocks for six gold ingots. That's a pretty good deal, as some people sell a stack of bone blocks for 1d.

Sometimes people come to my shop and buy gold from the chest for diamonds and then buy items for gold blocks. Sometimes they just buy items for gold. For a while I took in too much gold.

I had to adjust the prices. Before I knew about the afk gold farm on Maple, I was selling gold at 32 for one d, and nobody bought it. I started selling it for a full stack of 64 ingots for one d. People bought more from my chest. I had to reprice things in the other chests a couple of times, but then I could sell thing for, essentially, a diamond shard. I gave up trying to sell glowstone for gold and price it in diamonds instead.

Someone gave me access to their piglin barter station to help take care of my excess gold problem. I used their station to grind other stuff I sell in my store, like crying obsidian. Also, I zombified my clerics. If I can't find anything else to do with the gold, I can now trade it for one emerald per ingot. Those emeralds, by the way, are used to buy other things I sell in my store, like my OK tools and weapons.

A few times recently someone has bought up all my gold. This always gets me lots of diamonds, but it presents a problem if I have to go sit at the gold farm in Maple for hours to replace it. I always chat the people who buy that much gold and make sure they know about the gold farm in Maple so they can get their own.

But recently people have started telling me that they know about the gold farm and they're buying gold from me because they're lazy. The economy is different towards the end of the season. People have a lot of diamonds. Diamonds aren't worth that much. What are they using all the gold for? I have no idea. Maybe as a building material.

I'm probably about to start selling more things for gold to balance things out. Maybe I should try selling glowstone for diamonds again. And maybe quartz. I used to have a hard time keeping up with the demand for quartz, but I seem to have saturated the market for now.

The only things stopping me from expanding this experiment to cover more items are the small size of my shop, and the fact that it's hard to get data about sales out of Minecraft. You can only do /shoplog. I keep hoping WC will put the shop log up on the web site for me to access, or find a way to email me a CSV of the data. It's not too likely, but you never know.

I'm not saying that you should do what I'm doing. I enjoy this (please don't make fun of me). I'm just saying that maybe we could look more at how we, as users, can solve problems using the tools we already have. I made a currency exchange. I hope the experiment speads.

I loved your post. I have a shop too and go through the same tribulations as you do. I like to sell spruce and I don't like it when the whole chest is sold at once because I have to cut every block of wood myself. I have not figured out a self producing farm. But every season I say to myself I will learn this time. My hope is the next season I will be more proactive on that. On the prices of gold I decided everything I sell in my shop would be 1d so I don't deal with gold or other exchanges . I only have an exception, I started selling elytra which I sell for diamond blocks. I finally overcame the fear of the end and improved my flying skills enough to explore their cities yay!

Like you I will end the season with a great wealth of diamonds that are good for nothing, but that's the game. What I do at the end of the season is to start building cute houses full time, because I don't have to worry about running out of food or supplies.

Hey Yaramy,

We really liked your idea and will be considering it for the future, but at the moment before moving forward with any shop changes we would like to see the impact that reselling being allowed (A recent change) will have on the server's economy. I wonder what diamond shards could look like!

Thanks for the suggestion,

Community Team