Items need a wipe but the economy wasn’t the issue. An argument could be made that you don’t pay for items to have them forever in Garry’s Mod. Similar to when you buy VIP on a new DarkRP server and then it shuts down forever, you aren’t getting that VIP back on a different server. However, when confronting the owner and saying you want your money back, he will tell you that you paid for the experience, and you got time played with that rank, therefore you got your money’s worth.
To everyone who dumped their in-game money into items and their inventory, do you really think you still want to keep it? You’ve had those items for so long, it’s time to let them go. You gave sufficient money to hold onto them for a time, and now that time has passed. You paid for a service, not to keep them forever, which is a tall order in of itself.
Think of a painter with a painting. Once a painter has finished his painting, does he continue to look at it daily, trying to constantly fix minute errors in his art? No, he puts his painting away, sells it, and moves on to the next art piece. Inventories are no different; They are the paintings of the players and we’ve been holding on to them for far too long. It’s time to let go. If da Vinci just held on to the Mona Lisa for his entire life and didn’t get rid of it, he wouldn’t be as renown as he is now.
That being said, there should be a system in place to get customs back. For example, if I own a custom legendary, I can retrieve it by giving up a legendary crystal I own and 5 million credits. It’s a simple solution, keeps the economy going, and also sets a high floor to ensure few customs make it into the game, but allows everyone equal opportunity to get their customs back.