I use the Item exchance sometimes when I want something, have something similar, and don't really want to involve money. And everytime I do, I browse through to see if anything interesting has come up for trade and to get an idea of what things people want, and what things are worth. But I see a lot of wierd offers all the time, like people asking one ruby for a spirit in a jar or a few wood for hundreds of liquid deviance.

Does anyone know why these offers exist? They seem heavily unbalanced in a way that I can't see them ever being accepted, so the fact that there are so many surprises me. Do these actually work to any degree?

A lot of them are trades from players made years ago and there's no way that item trades expire, so they just stay up there since those players have long left the game without cancelling. 

I'm not sure if they work as temporary storage units (I know Item Auction does, hence the 900x items for 2481627360238765 silver that nobody in their right mind would or could buy.)