[Xenephex]

One thing I had completely forgotten (perhaps others did too) is that originally vendors did not show how many of any item they had for sale. That was that way at least through Velious and maybe later.

I can remember players occasionally communicating in game or posting on message boards that 'vendor so and so' had unlimited supplies of some item, and then having to be told that they didn't - they just had more than that person had bought. I can also very clearly remember one morning doing my daily vendor mining, finding HQ bear pelts on one of the Everfrost ramp vendors, hitting Shift-buy and realizing that there were still more pelts in her inventory, which meant she had more than a stack; it was a happy day.

Early on, there was no way to know what a vendor had in unlimited supply unless you were the first person to get to the vendor after a patch, or you just bought, bought, bought until you could be certain they had unlimited amounts. And there were not as many places available to share that information (and probably a greater tendency to NOT share when that info provided a significant edge).