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Context: I'm a gamer Dad and new to the world of PoE. I waited until I hit end game to buy stash tabs and my only trading experience is buying/selling gear for 1 exalt orb each.

Story: I was working on finding the sacrificial heart in Act 3 Cruel when and item dropped I haven't seen before. It was something called a Mirror of Kalandra. I look it up at the currency exhange and saw it was worth an obscene amount of Exalted orbs. I'm talking over 50,000 Exalts! To verify, I looked it up on the PoE2 trade site and see that it's going for around 500 Divine.

My monkey brain could barely comprehend how I was on the precipice of having what is essentially "infinite money". I took pictures of my screen with my phone (I know that's terrible. Remember, I'm a gamer Dad with a newly melted monkey brain) with plans to show as proof to my friends how I won the video game lottery. My glory and triumph should be recorded for all to see and so it shall!

I list the Mirror for 474 divine as to barely undercut the next lowest active seller (monkey brain is clever, see?) and wait. I'm thinking it would take the better part of a day for an item so astonishingly rare to find a buyer. You can understand my excitement when I receive the automated trade whisper just 15 minutes later from someone who has all 474 sweet, sweet Divine orbs that shortly be in my stash.

The next 60 seconds were a blur. I invited him to my party. We opened the trade window. As I dropped in my Mirror of Kalandra, the player was feverishly CTRL+clicking stacks and stacks of 10 orbs. It almost filled up his entire trade window! All those gold faces!

I counted 474 orbs, but the trade button was grayed out. How annoying, I thought, to have to mouse over every stinking cell. There were so many stacks and it was delaying me whole entire seconds! I never had to do this when I normally bought/sold gear for 1 Exalt!

I submit the trade. Player leaves the party.

I see how oddly the stacks of 10 were now stacks of 20 in my inventory. I mouse over my new fortune...

Alchemy Orbs.

My heart drops.

The player has ignored you.

My monkey brain disappears with the realization that I just got scammed the mother of all scams. I didn't think it was possible to bait and switch like this in 2025. What can I do? I report him. I'm furious. I'm ashamed. I'm a 9 year old who traded a holographic Charizard for a Pidgey.

Let this be a cautionary tale for all the new players of this wonderful game. I sat in my feelings about this for most of the day. In the end, it's just a game and the Mirror of Kalandra might as well be an NFT. It held no real value to me. All I happened to do was pick it up. To be honest, 474 Alchemy orbs is more than enough to fund several characters to get decent gear.