I think it's safe to say that it's an "accellerated sense of time". It certainly isn't "ease", as getting a hold of a rare item in an MMO can take some great effort and a good amount of luck. (or, parallel to that, a ton of money to the players willing to take on that effort). In the case of SWG, the accellerated sense of time comes from a couple of major shifts in game design that suddenly made certain objects either 1: obsolete (and therefore soon to disappear and a novelty), or 2: Impossible to recreate, but still useful, making the items intensely valuable. The second case is not an infrequent occurrence in MMO's where some items are deemed "overpowered" and must be sacrificed for the sake of balanced gameplay, but no so overpowered as to warrant their immediate removal from the game entirely.

This is an interesting observation connecting the development of museums in virtual worlds and the development of real world museums. Many museums are hesitant to collect objects from the recent past because “we” are not sure if they are “important.” Some museums go so far as to have actual time constraints written in their collection policies. (object must be older than 50 years, etc.). It sounds as though the player-driven economy of SWG is more responsive to collecting the rare & outdated than a curator driven economy? People collect to make a connection to the past. It is amazing that the techno early adopters in SL or SWG find the need to collect. Is this based on an accelerated sense of time, need to record change, or simply collecting and preserving because it is easy?