I think the sale of ryes is ok.
The rye ears are being sold just in case a world overall doesn't have enough quest items although I doubt that. Since they are now auctionable, everyone that wants to should be able to complet the quest without having to buy rye ears.
From what I can tell, the wheat ears (so from last year) are more then worth.
I haven't heard from a single person, who didn't get more bonds worth then what they invested. Mainly because you have a decend chance to drop Reskill potions. If you consider their worth to be their sale price in the store, then wheat ears are definatly worth the 30 bonds.
I spent about 2340 bonds and got 3 Skill reset and 2 Attribute reskill potions (total worth 3000 bonds) in addition to some nice buffs such as mate tea.
Most people I know got 1-2 potion of new beginning as well.
Drop
And the weapon sets are nice to help newer players (a weapon set that gives 20% increase money is decend for a lev 80) although that may only apply to the new world, idk how many new players there are on older worlds^^.