Guild Wars 2

There is absolutely no indication that there is a tax on gems. Its really hight too, like 25 percent. I spent all my money, 200g, on gems trying to make some cash during the christmas event so i could have enough for my precursor, to only find out if i were to sell it now i would lose 60-70g because the conversion price differs. They “tax” it. Just a warning to everybody, apparently quite a few in my guild have fell into this trap as well.

the gold to gem and gem to gold rates are always different in case u don’t know….

I know now, after i invested.

Keep the gems, prices will go up naturally, and spike on Wintersday anyways.
Will go out without losing money 100% if you are patient.

I hope so :/ i just wanted to post this as a warning that there is a tax or something.

If you want to raise better awareness of the situation, I suggest a title change, as the current one is a bit misleading.

You didn’t lose 70g. There is no “tax”. You converted all of your money into gems, unaware of the differing conversion rates. For all you know, gems could raise to more than 50% of their current value in the next day, and you would have gained something overnight.

sahand.9138:

There is absolutely no indication that there is a tax on gems.

If you want to call it a “tax”, I won’t argue that with you – I’d refer to it more as a spread on buy/sell prices.

But, effectively, you’re really saying that you didn’t research your purchase, and are now upset about it? Because the information on buy/sell spread is right there, in the game, one mouse click away from the button you clicked to make your original purchase, so saying this information is not available is absolutley not true.

This is normal and has been stated by developers on release that gems to gold is a much lesser payout, probably around 70%.

Why click the sell button when you have no gems to sell? doesnt make sense.

To check prices, obviously.

It’s well known – and has been well documented – that there’s a difference in the gold→gem and gem→gold transfer rates. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t stumble on any of the previous threads on this topic, but it’s…old news. :/

sahand.9138:

Why click the sell button when you have no gems to sell? doesnt make sense.

Because only fools invest into markets they haven’t verified.

The rates need to be different.

You’ve learned an important lesson today; always know what you’re investing in and the conditions of your expected returns.

Parthis.2091:

sahand.9138:

Why click the sell button when you have no gems to sell? doesnt make sense.

Because only fools invest into markets they haven’t verified.

The rates need to be different.

You’ve learned an important lesson today; always know what you’re investing in and the conditions of your expected returns.

This. If you make an investment in the range you did and didn’t even bother to check the markets potential, development etc. than you can only blame yourself.

If you’re following the trends, gold is losing value every day. It’s better to own anything other than gold right now.

I thought its common knowledge that there is a 30% spread on buying / selling gems.

Keep the gems. Thank me next year.

Parthis.2091:

sahand.9138:

Why click the sell button when you have no gems to sell? doesnt make sense.

Because only fools invest into markets they haven’t verified.

The rates need to be different.

You’ve learned an important lesson today; always know what you’re investing in and the conditions of your expected returns.

This. Lol

Don’t complain because you didn’t check your investment before making it.

The idea behind gems is fairly similar to how gold and other metal investments work in real life. Not to be mean but at least this is a step in learning dynamic economic fundamentals that you can apply to other situations in your future.

1. rule of investing…if something seems to good to be true, it probably is.

There’s a reason why Arenanet keeps a 30% spread on the conversion prices. It’s too limit your opportunity to quickly flip gems and gold back and forth to generate a profit.

It’s like when you exchange dollars for euros for example there’s always a catch. =d Otherwise everyone would just play stock exchange with gems.

This thread’s title should, instead, be “How I invested 200g in a few seconds”.

The extremely high tax on gem/gold conversion is very reasonable. This conversion is for people who don’t want/cant spend real cash on gems, or for people that have too much real cash and want some in-game money.

Its NOT meant to support power trading and its not meant to be a gold mine. Therefore 25% is pretty much on spot, I’d make it even 40%.

So what you’re telling me is you didnt even bother to test it with 1g and buy the gems, then see if you would ATLEAST get your money back or even remotely close to it. Just instead you decided to throw 200g in there. My friend you should have done your research and noticed that the conversion rate of gold to gems has gone down, down, down, down, down, down, and down over the past few months. At the rate it is now i’m not sure if you will ever be able to gain a profit using the conversion rate.

Assuming ANet can keep people playing and also not completely disillusion people with the value of the gem store market, prices should continue to go up over time. The ~30% spread just means it has to be a long term investment. No quick flipping to make a profit on the gem to gold exchange! There is always the risk, though, that something will stop the inflationary pressure on the exchange rates, so even if you invest long term, it’s not with out risk.

Rates have more than doubled in under two months, if I recall correctly, but that doesn’t guarantee that prices will double again in the next few months. The buy/sell gap is large enough to ensure that this will always be a high risk area for investment.