In World of Warcraft a rare pet now commands huge sums. “Tyrael’s Hilt” was available 13 years ago at an event – today, you pay more than €3,000 for the pet on the black market in WoW.
What kind of pet is this? The pet is called Tyrael’s Hilt. It is a mini-Tyrael, the Archangel from the Diablo game series.
In WoW, you can already tell that the pet is something special:
- Those who have the pet unlock a special achievement, a “Heroic Feat”.
- You can ask Tyrael to dance in WoW. If you dance with him, he will dance with you.
- You get the item that unlocks the pet only if you give a special code to Edward Cairn in Undercity or Ian Drake in Stormwind.
How much does the pet cost? Currently, the pet is offered online for $3,800 by a site that specifically sells WoW pets. That’s about €3,140. On eBay, you pay even more: €3,650 plus €75 shipping.
Although “Tyrael’s Hilt” is also available on eBay for €60, that’s just the card without the code. That doesn’t help anyone.
The pet was only available 8,000 times and that was 13 years ago
Why is this card so expensive? This special pet exists only 8,000 times. A card with the code for the mini-Tyrael was given to attendees of the “World Wide Invitational 2008” tournament. This was a series of events that took place 4 times: three times in Korea and once in France (via wowhead).
People received a card with codes that they could scratch off to redeem the pet in World of Warcraft.
The pet cannot be obtained through other means. Instead, you have to steal it from someone who was at this tournament 13 years ago or who has somehow obtained this card.
The problem is also: The pet is tied to a specific item that can be used only once. Once the item has been used, the pet is bound to the account of the user and can then no longer be traded.
This means: Of the “8,000” Tyrael’s that are in WoW, probably only a fraction will even be freely tradeable. Once you have taken the mini-Tyrael out of the box and played with it, it is no longer tradeable.
On YouTube, there’s a video of a WoW player acquiring the pet “under the table” in Orgrimmar for 24 million gold and celebrating the bargain (via youtube).
What is this about “pets” in WoW? These are companions that serve purely cosmetic uses.
Pets hardly played a role in WoW’s first years. This changed in 2012 with the expansion “Mists of Pandaria”: Blizzard introduced a pet-battle system. Back then, it was somewhat mocked as “Pokémon in Azeroth.” Blizzard has significantly expanded the pet system in this way. There was a nice collecting feature in the game, a collection, a bunch of achievements, and indeed the battle system.
Today, pets are coveted collectibles for some players in WoW. Particularly valuable are those pets that do not actually exist in the game but come from other sources. Many of the pets that are used as “trading goods” come from the Blizzard Trading Card Game.
Similar to mounts, such items are often advertised and traded through “Direct Trades” in the game. Sometimes real money is actually involved, which is frowned upon and not encouraged by Blizzard.
In this type of trade, many fraudsters are also active, luring players in the trade chat with particularly attractive mounts and pets, but are only out to trick the player into somehow taking away their gold.
Is mini-Tyrael the rarest pet in WoW? No, it is not. According to the page WarcraftPets, there are some pets that are even rarer than mini-Tyrael.
These are often pets that were available only for very specific events or achievements and cannot be traded, but bind to the account immediately upon pickup.
A valuable pet that can be traded is
