Fireblade, I think it's a feature => you can trade with nearly every guard - and as trader stock was boosted up due to demands of the community, you have a lot of loot dropping now. And it was introduced since 1.4
Hmm, yeah, that would make sense. One crazy thing, though: one of the guards dropped 83 "Valuable Earth Arrow of Surprize". They sell for about 1900 coins apiece, heh. That was an easy 150K...
