So, basically, lots of people are asking how to make gold via the TP. Obviously there is direct flipping, which is quite hard and risky and requires keeping your markets secret, but there is also INVESTING, which is a long-term gold maker and isn’t risky at all.
There are TONS of 9-15 copper items on the market, some are basically just above the merchant price, so are consider “zero-risk” because they can’t really lose value over time.
Here’s an example:
Name: Pile of Shimmering Dust
Current Price: 11c
History&Comprehension: This dust is mainly used to convert T1 material (tiny fangs, venom) to T2 material. Obviously no one needs these materials right now, so the price of dust is low. However is you look on GW2 Spidy, this item had a huge peak up to 1s90c over the past 10 months because T2 materials were in good demand. If this was to happen again, people would pay a good price to get those materials, so why not stock on?
Like in this example, it is always important to understand the context of the item and the price before investing in. Some items are more likely to be desired than others, and some items have obviously no purpose so people aren’t buying them.
Crafting material are a good investment because the developpers are constantly releasing new recipes, event sinks or making existing recipes more desired via new ones. It is however still a complex market which requires thinking before buying.
Some other examples:
Tier 1 materials:
Tiny Claw – 26c
Tiny Fang – 11c
Tiny Scale – 55c
Tiny Totem – 36c
Tiny Venom Sac – 10c
Bone Chip – 19c
Vial of Weak Blood – 30c
So I’ve put all T1 prices on this list to show you that some are actually cheaper than others. From their history, their prices seem to vary anywhere between 10 copper and 1 silver. As I said with shimmering dust, they can be converted into T2 materials easily, which are sometimes more wanted and less supplied. Two of these items are currently at their bottom price: Tiny Venom Sac & Tiny Fangs roughtly at 10c. They could go back to 30-40c easily, for a 3x profit.
Food ingredients:
Slab of Red Meat – 13c
Head of Lettuce – 9c
Cinnamon Stick – 3c
Beet – 13c
These 4 items are cheap cooking material (these are only examples, there are more like this). The cooking market is quite easy to understand : players want food to buff their stats, the food requires ingredients, the ingredients have a price based on demand and supply. Except those items are currently oversupplied because there is no huge demand for it, because they are not involved in any recipe that produces food with interesting stats for the top players. HOWEVER, other ingredients were sitting at the same price (3-15c) and became expensive because new recipes were introduced. Carrots for example went from 10c to 1s, because they became useful.
As a real example, some time ago I invested a few hundred gold in Rawhide Leather Sections (3-4c) and Thick Leather Section (8c). Then came the current event, Festival of the Four Winds, which created a new demand putting Rawhide leather at 80c. Unfortunately most of my stocks were Thick Leather, which only reached 30c, so in the end I only received 1500g (could have been 15k gold if I had focused Rawhide).
However what you need to understand is:
- There’s always a risk that the price of an item NEVER rises and stocking things takes a lot of room that you could use for other items. Some items have never been useful since release (Slab of Red Meat and its flat curve…) and could not rise for another 2 years. Or they could receive a new recipe and become the most demanded item. Investing is a bet.
- Massive investing requires organization, especially when it comes to stocking items. You could use a second account (not sure if approved by ArenaNet) or simply have more characters and equip them with 18 slot-bags. You can also buy more bank space or create one guild per character and open guild banks. The trading post has also a potentially unlimited pickup space, so if you buy items massively and let them in the pickup tab, they won’t consume any of your space. However if you do that you’ll realise that it is very inconvenient because you won’t be able to get any more items or gold from the TP until you pickup everything you have ordered. Well, the morale is, once you get profit, it’s a good thing to reinvest a part of the gold into more space, because more space == more stacks == more profit.
(edited by Malar.8693)