Beta AH prices tell you almost nothing, can someone check this against live data

Claim: auction prices you see in the beta are noise, not signal, for anything about live balance or farming value. Reasoning: beta populations are small, gold supply is skewed by testers who do not care about economy, and listings like the Cloth Request item or a Weighted Throwing Axe show up priced however someone felt like that day, not what a stable market would set.

I watched prices swing on things like the Rough Weightstone and the Coarse Weightstone across a short window, no consistent curve at all. That is consistent with my claim only if the sample size stayed small the whole time. If someone has actual listing counts or sell-through data from the beta auction house, that would tell me whether this is a real pattern or just me watching a thin market for a few days.

Where I could be wrong: if population numbers were actually comparable to a live server, or if there is a stabilization period after which prices settle, my claim falls apart. I have no numbers on beta population size, so I am not asserting one. Anyone sitting on auction house logs, even partial, I would like to compare notes before saying anything stronger about this translating to live.

The bit about watching prices swing with no consistent curve on basic crafting mats, that matches what I half-noticed too, except I was leveling an alt at the time and only glanced at the auction house between quest turn-ins, so I never kept anything like a log. I honestly don't have numbers, listing counts, sell-through data, any of that, and I wouldn't trust myself to read them right even if someone handed them to me.

What I can say is just from questing around, the beta felt emptier than a live zone at a similar level range, fewer other players running the same chains, fewer people fighting over the same gathering nodes. Whether that translates into the kind of population gap that actually explains the price noise, I genuinely don't know, that's outside what I can speak to.

Does anyone remember if there was a point in the beta where prices on basic crafting mats seemed to calm down, like after a patch or a population bump? I'm curious whether a stabilization period showed up at all, even anecdotally.