The Raven State Issue ranks as one of the rarest ships in New Eden. Only four of these ships were ever created, handed out in 2006 as the first prize during the third Alliance Tournament. The State Raven’s main features include two more missile hardpoints, additional CPU and Powergrid compared to a standard Raven, and a larger drone bay and more bandwidth as well as increased shield, armour, and hull hitpoints when compared to both the base and Navy Ravens. It is generally considered that if it were to be used, the RSI would be classed as one of the best ships in the game, across both PvE and solo/small-scale PvP.
Such a rare ship is hard to put a price on, too. In October 2018, one owner asked for 2.8 trillion ISK to sell their ship. But now, thanks to the new Hypernet Relay launching on December 10, if you have the cash, you can earn a piece of history for the potential price of only seven billion ISK.
Following the release of the Relay, a raffle for the Raven State Issue presently owned by bluemelon will be created, with 512 tickets on offer for approximately 7B ISK each. This raffle is being run by ProGodLegend and the new SOMER Club, and will be streamed via PGL’s twitch channel. If you care to tune in, the stream will go live at 1900 EVE time with officer mods, T2 BPOs and other rare items listed, with the RSI set to be raffed at 1930 EVE. If all the tickets are sold, a total of 3.5T isk would have been raised before fees. It is, however, a big gamble.
The gamble exists in this sale because sellers must use Hypercores as their part in giving CCP a cut. These Hypercores are a non-refundable ‘deposit’, purchased with PLEX via the New Eden Store. The number of cores required for any given raffle on the Relay is one core per every ~6.5 million ISK of the total cost of all tickets. In the case of Hypernet raffles not selling all tickets over the 72 hours available for raffles, the item is returned to the seller, no ISK changes hands in-game, and CCP takes the Hypercores as their base fee. At the projected cost of Hypercores for the Raven State raffle being 200 billion ISK, the SOMER Club is making a big bet in the hopes that they will get a multi-trillion ISK return.
If you want in on the SOMER Club action, you can find some more information at ProGodLegend’s announcement reddit post here, and a link to the SOMER Club’s discord server here. Rest assured that this raffle is only the start of the Club’s planned activities, with regular Relay streams and other games of skill and chance available to Club members.
I for one can’t wait to see the action start on the evening of December 10. Chime in with your comments – do you think a player will win the raffle, or will the raffle fail, letting CCP clean house with the free rake?
