Here’s a scenario I expect we’d see a fair bit. I’m not sure whether it’s good or bad, but I expect this would be a frequent outcome:
Big spender Susan has her heart set on obtaining Kageburado from the Atlantis portal. 300 pulls later, she finally gets him. Huzzah! Along the way she got six Evelyns.
Allies of Susan, Chris and Bo, haven’t been luck enough to pull Evelyn with their accumulated epic hero tokens, but they do have a few spare 5* from their TC20s; Chris has an Obakan, Bo has a Thorne.
If Susan trades an Evelyn to Chris for Obakan, and another Evelyn to Bo for Thorne, then everyone’s happy: Chris and Bo now have a great HotM, Susan has the same number of 5*s for food as before and will also have two stronger allies in wars and against titans.
The loser in this scenario is SGG. Chris and Bo no longer feel as strong a need to buy some gems to try to get Evelyn.
Tangentially, it becomes very advantageous to belong to an alliance that happens to have some big spenders, who can dole out their cast-offs.
A similar scenario plays out with ascension items. Based on conversations with allies, I believe that most of us have plenty of 3* and 4* mats in aggregate, but that we’re missing certain key ones. I’ve got perfectly balanced D blade and Tome of Ts, but an ally has 15 ToTs but no blades. I have extra darts and rings, but could really use ten more tonics. If everyone in my alliance could put all our 4* mats into a pool and pull out the same number, choosing what we need, I’m sure we could greatly improve our position.
Who loses? SGG. Am I going to buy a tonic when it comes up on the calendar this month? You bet. If I could have traded out of my short position in tonics, would I still? Perhaps, but I’d have less appetite for it. It would benefit high-end alliances with a lot of depth.
PS: @Hazard just said in 40 words what I said in 200. This is about creating/relaxing scarcity. Lower scarcity = lower value = lower income.