I didn't, but the Neopets HTML guide got me into writing my first code when I was around 10. Having a cool user lookup was a nice incentive, and IIRC there were a few mystery plots that involved picking around in webpage source code.

I wasted a lot of time on that site as a kid, but I did pick up some fun things.

Hey Neopets team:

You probably fixed this now, but on the off chance you have not, confession time!

I played Neopets with my kids. We all really enjoyed it, and the fun little economy taught my kids a lot, so thanks for the good times.

On a "who can get more points in a week" run, I found myself way out classed! The kids had way more time and I was struggling to keep up. Don't ask why. I just got sucked in. No way was I going to get beat.

With a family bet in play, I decided to explore what might be possible for quick hacks to get points. I noticed there was consistent activity in the shops related to the lottery scratch tickets.

Buy one for 600, sell it for north of 1000 points, and the ticket could pay 1500 to whoever scratched it. This was a fun little market. The scarcity of the tickets would increase demand. Considerably at times. Players really liked scratching them for points!

So, I listed a ticket under market at the time and it was gone in seconds! Did that a few more times, all gone quick. Other players were snapping them up like crazy, but there always was an upper bound. Those would almost never sell.

I wondered how closely they were looking and listed a more expensive one at face value. That one never sold. But when I changed it to a few points below market, it sold rapidly, which gave me an idea...

List it for 5 to 10 percent points below market, then quickly add zeros to the sale price! Maybe eager players would not look.

Did it work?

Amazingly well. I did a handful of these expecting something to happen, but it never did.

So I upped it again, from 5 figures to 6. Still nothing, except one player messaged me. They were pissed, site bug, I played along. No worries, stay safe out there, you get the drill.

(Yeah, I know, pure evil)

Nobody knows you are an asshole Dad on Neopets, it seems.

That run got me totally caught up to the kids, who were all 6 figure players at this point. But I wanted more! Wanted to crush them, not just squeak a win out. I was not fucking around on this and there had been a lot of trash talk to smack back too.

Around this time, we had been talking about using the Neopets bank and the danger of walking around with all ones points in their pocket. And about interest. Make your points work for you.

What could go wrong? (Me)

Well, I went for it. Found out I can get bigger wins with the more rare and expensive tickets. So I bought one of those, and added the zeros to start fishing. Toggle back and forth, good price, rip off, good price, rip off...

BAM!

Over a million neopoints! It hit! Some poor soul moving too quick just got taken to the cleaners!

Then I got a message from the rightfully angry player: "I am gonna tell."

I replied, "that is what you get for carrying so many points around."

They said, "I am still gonna tell."

And then I felt really bad, and logged off. :( Did not give the points back though.

I found people did not notice going from 3 digit to 4 digit pricing. Even 5 would hit regularly.

But, when the price is 5 digits, going higher appears hard to see quickly. That's basically how I sold a lottery ticket for north of a million Neopoints.

I did show the kids the massive score, and honestly?

After telling them how it happened, they all began using the bank, and playing differently. Nobody said how to win. Remember that kiddies!

Good lesson in there for them, major league shitty modeling in there from me, and I still, surprisingly, feel a little bad. Neopets, at that early time, was a really fun, kid safe (mostly but for clowns like me) site.

A million points is real work!

Then the innocence faded, and we all moved on to bigger and better things.

And somewhere out there is a little one, older now, probably wiser, who may still be bitter about that quick, brutal trip to the school of hard knocks.

At that time, Neopets would process a shop transaction at the sale price no matter what the buyer actually saw. The price shown to the buyer did lag by a considerable amount of time. It would refresh, after some seconds. Buyers could refresh too, and that is why I toggled the pricing. Amazingly, it appears they would refresh a time or two and buy when the price was right. Or just move on.

One could just toggle the price back and forth, fishing essentially. A player moving quick, packing a lot of points was an easy catch.