Battered Hilt

I did the Icecrown 5-man dungeons so often and with so many of my characters, and never saw a single Battered Hilt drop. Then finally yesterday I see it dropping for the first time with my paladin. Everybody rolls need, somebody else wins. Well, that was to be expected, everybody rolls need on that one. We continue and ON THE VERY NEXT MOB PACK there is another Battered Hilt drop. And this time I win it! Woot! Randomness creates strange events.

Now the most rational thing would be to sell the hilt. It still easily sells for 8k gold or more, and I already have iLevel 232 weapons on my pally. With the upcoming gear reset, the utility I'd get from the iLevel 251 weapon reward for the hilt will be small. I have over 12k gold on that server, and I would never have bought a Battered Hilt, which to an economist means that I value 8k gold more than I value a Battered Hilt.

But people aren't entirely rational. There is something called the endowment effect, which means that you value something you have more than something you don't. And while buying a Battered Hilt would have gotten me from a comfortable 12k gold to a meagre 4k, selling the Battered Hilt I found would get me from the comfortable 12k gold to equally comfortable 20k gold, a chance I would barely notice.

So I decided to use the Battered Hilt instead of selling it, and started the quest line which I would otherwise never see. Even if the final reward sword ends up as a souvenir collecting dust in my bank after only a few months of use, I think that is worth it.