Guild Wars 2

I was working within my regular flipping markets a few minutes ago when I noticed the difference between the price on Icing Dye and the buy orders for it. As usual, the buy orders were somewhere around 1g for a dye, however the sell listings were a whoppingg 4g 26s (if you’ve ever observed the market for this dye, I can guarantee you that this is considered “whopping”). Looking at the GW2Spidy, I noticed that the price had even hit 4g 95s 4 hours beforehand, although it has since dropped steeply by about 70s. Still, I’m confused as to how this happened. Most likely, somebody bought out the lower-priced orders on the dyes (as there are only 10 dyes under 5g, and 30 dyes total on the market apparently) and then dramatically increased the price on them, given that that person essentially had a monopoly on the dyes.

Assuming this is the case- which, I think, it must be- I think ANet needs to be able to ensure that nobody owns such a monopoly on dyes in the market. I think that the economists here already know about the economic disadvantages to having a monopoly in place in this game, like this.

And how, pray tell, do you suggest that Anet prevents monopolies from occuring?

Well what if there was a limit on the amount of items a player could own. For example you couldn’t own more than 1000 iron or 100 iron ingots at the same time. you couldn’t own more than 10 of the same dye. Therefore if you had 10 X dye on market you could not store 1 x dye in your inventory. There would still be work around around this I could think of a few loop holes right now, but it would be a lot of hassle for what it was worth.

Just limit what people can have. That would prevent a monopoly right there. I’m sure a lot of people hate this idea already cause they own like 20,000 iron ore something. =P well I hate the fact you have a kittened amount of gold and I’m stuck with 30 silver so chew on that.

Esplen.3940:

And how, pray tell, do you suggest that Anet prevents monopolies from occuring?

There are a variety of methods. Controlling the amount of the market a single person can buy up. Streaming in resources when the difference between the buy listing and sell listing exceeds a certain threshold. There are just a ton of ways, and I’m sure that you can produce many of them if you use at least the tiniest fraction of your imagination.

There can’t be a monopoly on (non FF) dyes since they drop constantly from unid dyes. If this is their new market price (which I doubt) then it is what it is. Nobody can control this market for more than a day or two, if that.

Jabberwock.9014:

There can’t be a monopoly on (non FF) dyes since they drop constantly from unid dyes. If this is their new market price (which I doubt) then it is what it is. Nobody can control this market for more than a day or two, if that.

But the drop rate is insignificant- the dye sells and disappears quickly. It’s one of the more uncommon rare dyes. If the dyes don’t drop quickly enough, then people can’t undercut one another in the market to the point where the buy and sell listings are significantly lower.

[THERE IS NO MONOPOLY: Read On]

All the White dyes suddenly just spiked in price. (Celestial is sitting at 24g currently, White at 17g and Icing at 2.8g currently.)

Before the Celestial Gloves were released, the prices of these dyes were: 16g, 8g, and 1g.

Suddenly everyone who did not have Celestial, White or Icing dyes before the 3,000 AP Reward Chest, realized they needed a color to match their new gloves and panicked.

Thus, the price of the dye colors skyrocketed, and is now slowly crashing again.

Ashadow.6874:

[THERE IS NO MONOPOLY: Read On]

All the White dyes suddenly just spiked in price. (Celestial is sitting at 24g currently, White at 17g and Icing at 2.8g currently.)

Before the Celestial Gloves were released, the prices of these dyes were: 16g, 8g, and 1g.

Suddenly everyone who did not have Celestial, White or Icing dyes before the 3,000 AP Reward Chest, realized they needed a color to match their new gloves and panicked.

Thus, the price of the dye colors skyrocketed, and is now slowly crashing again.

That doesn’t make sense. An entire group of people don’t quadruple the price of sell listings with absolutely no effect on buy listings only to drag down the price just as quickly as it went up, unless, of course, every single one of those people was an irrational, pea-brained idiot.

Ashadow was alluding to the introduction of radiant armor, which everyone and their mother just received today.
En mass, they wanna color-match their very shiny very white gloves with the rest of their armor. Don’t worry, prices will subside in a month or so, once all the other radiant armor pieces have been handed out.

This market swing was easy to predict. I invested in white, silver and red dyes on the news of the new skins.

Jayw.1045:

Well what if there was a limit on the amount of items a player could own. For example you couldn’t own more than 1000 iron or 100 iron ingots at the same time. you couldn’t own more than 10 of the same dye. Therefore if you had 10 X dye on market you could not store 1 x dye in your inventory. There would still be work around around this I could think of a few loop holes right now, but it would be a lot of hassle for what it was worth.

Just limit what people can have. That would prevent a monopoly right there. I’m sure a lot of people hate this idea already cause they own like 20,000 iron ore something. =P well I hate the fact you have a kittened amount of gold and I’m stuck with 30 silver so chew on that.

Ignoring the difficulties programming such a feature would provde, and the obvious loopholes that people could use to get around it…

this is not a monopoly. Nothing in this game is a monopoly.

Vol.5241:

Jayw.1045:

Well what if there was a limit on the amount of items a player could own. For example you couldn’t own more than 1000 iron or 100 iron ingots at the same time. you couldn’t own more than 10 of the same dye. Therefore if you had 10 X dye on market you could not store 1 x dye in your inventory. There would still be work around around this I could think of a few loop holes right now, but it would be a lot of hassle for what it was worth.

Just limit what people can have. That would prevent a monopoly right there. I’m sure a lot of people hate this idea already cause they own like 20,000 iron ore something. =P well I hate the fact you have a kittened amount of gold and I’m stuck with 30 silver so chew on that.

Ignoring the difficulties programming such a feature would provde, and the obvious loopholes that people could use to get around it…

this is not a monopoly. Nothing in this game is a monopoly.

It is at best a monopsony if a single player buys out all of the dyes but doesn’t sell them. If he/she chooses to sell them, then that player essentially gets monopoly status as there are no competitors in the market for that player, and the difficulty to enter the market (and then how quickly a player leaves the market) makes any barriers to entry fairly high for the given market. Furthermore, as all higher sell offers become practically irrelevant, the monopolist basically gets to choose the price that he or she wants to sell at. All of these things are characteristics that we’ve seen in this market, which is why I’m arguing that it was a monopoly, albeit not a very long-lasting one, but it still had negative effects on the market.

Arganthium.5638:

Vol.5241:

Jayw.1045:

Well what if there was a limit on the amount of items a player could own. For example you couldn’t own more than 1000 iron or 100 iron ingots at the same time. you couldn’t own more than 10 of the same dye. Therefore if you had 10 X dye on market you could not store 1 x dye in your inventory. There would still be work around around this I could think of a few loop holes right now, but it would be a lot of hassle for what it was worth.

Just limit what people can have. That would prevent a monopoly right there. I’m sure a lot of people hate this idea already cause they own like 20,000 iron ore something. =P well I hate the fact you have a kittened amount of gold and I’m stuck with 30 silver so chew on that.

Ignoring the difficulties programming such a feature would provde, and the obvious loopholes that people could use to get around it…

this is not a monopoly. Nothing in this game is a monopoly.

It is at best a monopsony if a single player buys out all of the dyes but doesn’t sell them. If he/she chooses to sell them, then that player essentially gets monopoly status as there are no competitors in the market for that player, and the difficulty to enter the market (and then how quickly a player leaves the market) makes any barriers to entry fairly high for the given market. Furthermore, as all higher sell offers become practically irrelevant, the monopolist basically gets to choose the price that he or she wants to sell at. All of these things are characteristics that we’ve seen in this market, which is why I’m arguing that it was a monopoly, albeit not a very long-lasting one, but it still had negative effects on the market.

The barrier to entry isn’t fairly high. All you have to do is buy a bunch of unid dyes and open them!

But then I bet you’d say “but that costs a lot of gold!” Well if the person bought all the specific dyes on the market, they’d be at a pretty high price, making the investment in unid dye worth it.

And furthermore, if the price is too high, no one will buy it at that price point.

If the price of this dye before the hoarding was around 1G, and after being ‘monopolized’ and being sold at 20g, then the market will correct itself.

If no one sees 20g as an appropriate price point then it will go down. If people end up wanting to pay 15g for it, then the price for this dye has been undervalued for the longest time and it was due for a correction up to 15g.

Arganthium.5638:

Ashadow.6874:

[THERE IS NO MONOPOLY: Read On]

All the White dyes suddenly just spiked in price. (Celestial is sitting at 24g currently, White at 17g and Icing at 2.8g currently.)

Before the Celestial Gloves were released, the prices of these dyes were: 16g, 8g, and 1g.

Suddenly everyone who did not have Celestial, White or Icing dyes before the 3,000 AP Reward Chest, realized they needed a color to match their new gloves and panicked.

Thus, the price of the dye colors skyrocketed, and is now slowly crashing again.

That doesn’t make sense. An entire group of people don’t quadruple the price of sell listings with absolutely no effect on buy listings only to drag down the price just as quickly as it went up, unless, of course, every single one of those people was an irrational, pea-brained idiot.

But that’s what people are like. I usually place buy orders for things I wish to purchase from the TP but I wanted a whitish coloured dye the other day to play around with a concept I had for my character. My play time was limited that evening, I’m reasonably solvent, and so I just bought from the lowest sell offer for the convenience.

Luckily, I bought my Icing dye two days before this spike happened, but the fact remains that people are largely irrational.

ANet doesn’t need to prevent any monopoly. Remember TP is not Server based, it is worldwide.
If you buy these 5 dyes, most probably 5 minutes later you will see 10 more dyes inside the tp.
Market Manipulation doesn’t exist on large scales…yet..

If “people” can buy 8 million (yes, million!) leather squares in the span of an hour, they can also buy a few thousand dyes in the span of a day. Other than that, it is incredibly easy to generate new dyes through the laurel system, as laurels are literally being thrown at players these days through the chest reward system.

Next time, when you see the prices of dyes skyrocketing, I would advise you to not go into “market-manipulation” mode, but to think quickly how you can turn this knowledge into your favor. Had you immediately converted some laurels to unidentified dyes, you’d have been certain to get at least one nice dye in the gray spectrum which would have sold for crazy prices.

The new armor skins happened. One of the most favourite are the white glowing gloves. People want white dyes to match them. Since most people do not watch market progression, they don’t know that prices spiked and keep buying. That`s all. They will fall again when it levels out.

Meluna.1764:

The new armor skins happened. One of the most favourite are the white glowing gloves. People want white dyes to match them. Since most people do not watch market progression, they don’t know that prices spiked and keep buying. That`s all. They will fall again when it levels out.

Correct , and I thank the RNG gods that I found white dye a day or so before the release of the radiant gloves. Now I can create my white knight in shining Armor….. I just need those 250 thingies to get the helm with the icy blue coloured crystal from the weapon specialist

The lowest sell order went up because people bought up all the lower sell orders before they could naturally be replaced. This is due to increased demand (from radiant vambrace users). Simple.

Curo.2483:

The lowest sell order went up because people bought up all the lower sell orders before they could naturally be replaced. This is due to increased demand (from radiant vambrace users). Simple.

Which is why the highest buy offer only went up a few silver while the lowest sell offer went up nearly five fold.

Seems legit.

It’s a completely legitimate explanation. If you’re an experienced flipper, you may have seen similar patterns with other markets (just not to the same degree). I’d guess that the main reason why buy orders didn’t shifts upwards as much as you might expect with other markets is that I suspect most flippers avoid the dye markets due to a lower volume of transactions.

That is, there’s a run on white dyes as everyone receives their first radiant skin, but due to a lower number of traders flipping dyes (in comparison to other markets), there isn’t a corresponding rush of traders bidding up the buy price in an attempt to capitalize on the changing market. I’m not 100% sure that this is what happened, but it’s a plausible explanation.

Astraea.6075:

It’s a completely legitimate explanation. If you’re an experienced flipper, you may have seen similar patterns with other markets (just not to the same degree). I’d guess that the main reason why buy orders didn’t shifts upwards as much as you might expect with other markets is that I suspect most flippers avoid the dye markets due to a lower volume of transactions.

That is, there’s a run on white dyes as everyone receives their first radiant skin, but due to a lower number of traders flipping dyes (in comparison to other markets), there isn’t a corresponding rush of traders bidding up the buy price in an attempt to capitalize on the changing market. I’m not 100% sure that this is what happened, but it’s a plausible explanation.

This is completely and horrendously wrong.

It’s funny you mentioned flipping in the dye markets- ironically, that’s the exact market in which I flip. It’s also the reason why I saw that the price of Icing Dye had skyrocketed. But anyways, flippers don’t shift market prices up- in fact, they shift them down. The idea behind flipping is to overcut and then undercut- buy something slightly higher than the highest bidder, and sell it slightly lower than the lowest seller. Except that when people undercut one another, the people above them realize that they’re not going to make any profits once their sell order is buried under 5000 more, so they take their items off the market and put them back on at a lower price. This slowly lowers the price of an item to where it should be with taxes, while raising the buy orders in a similar fashion. What this does not do is raise both the selling price and the buying price.

Furthermore, prices don’t just magically rise while demand stays the same, but that’s what apparently happened here. Now, it’s possible that, via some statistical fluke, the number of Icing Dyes being dropped suddenly fell to such a degree that the price was much higher, but the Law of Large Numbers basically ensures that that isn’t what happened. This is why your explanation is implausible. It requires prices to rise by a significant amount while demand stays the same. Looking at any set of microeconomic graphs displaying this market, the only likely explanation would be that the demand went from being highly elastic on average to being highly inelastic on average, which would happen if the number of sellers in the market dropped significantly, or if one seller controlled so much of the market that he/she essentially became an outlier that dragged the average up significantly.

I think none of you are getting the point here. According to the numbers, demand hardly changed whatsoever. It did go up, certainly, given the higher value on buy offers, but only by a few silver. On the other hand, sell orders went up nearly fivefold. Somehow, in all of the rocks that you guys call brains, what happened is that demand went up significantly because of the new armor, and then went down after a few hours. And yet, the fact of the matter is that buy offers went up by so little, that this explanation is not only ridiculous, but it reflects an absolute abyss in place of what could have been even the slightest amount of economic knowledge. It’s getting hilarious, really. Somehow, in all of your minds, you are convinced that it could not have possibly been one person buying up the majority of the dyes; that’s just absolutely impossible. And yet, somehow, it’s as if all of the sellers were controlled by some kind of Hivemind that told them all to increase prices significantly while the buyers’ offers hardly went up, in some sort of massive unconscious cartel agreement.

It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense whatsoever.

Arganthium.5638:

I think none of you are getting the point here. According to the numbers, demand hardly changed whatsoever. It did go up, certainly, given the higher value on buy offers, but only by a few silver. On the other hand, sell orders went up nearly fivefold. Somehow, in all of the rocks that you guys call brains, what happened is that demand went up significantly because of the new armor, and then went down after a few hours. And yet, the fact of the matter is that buy offers went up by so little, that this explanation is not only ridiculous, but it reflects an absolute abyss in place of what could have been even the slightest amount of economic knowledge. It’s getting hilarious, really. Somehow, in all of your minds, you are convinced that it could not have possibly been one person buying up the majority of the dyes; that’s just absolutely impossible. And yet, somehow, it’s as if all of the sellers were controlled by some kind of Hivemind that told them all to increase prices significantly while the buyers’ offers hardly went up, in some sort of massive unconscious cartel agreement.

It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense whatsoever.

Hypothetically, if a large number of users went to look at a particular dye and lazily clicked ‘buy now’ because they all suddenly had a reason to instantly want that dye, what do you think would happen to:

a) The buy offer price
b) The sell offer price
c) The number of buy orders

I put it to you that you’d see a) and c) remain completely unchanged and b) would go up, which is the exact situation you described.

Whether or not that is what actually happened only Mr Smith can know, but it’s up to you which explanation you think is simplest.

Personally I think that a super-popular un-dyeable skin being released is a great explanation for lots of people buying similar dyes on the same day, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a large amount of those people hit ‘buy now’ rather than putting in buy orders that would struggle to be fulfilled due to the sudden spike in demand.

In fact it would be shocking to me if that hadn’t happened.

Up to you what you choose to believe though, like I said only Anet can know for sure.

Point is moot now. The invisible hand, I mean “hivemind” brought the price back down.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/20364

@Arganthium: I’m posting from my phone, so I can’t really go into a long response, but I think the key thing you’re forgetting is that buy orders don’t equal demand (despite the fact that we often use them as a proxy measure of demand).

My argument is essentially that the increase in demand for white dye shades was not reflected in the buy orders due to the smaller number of traders working dyes, and the likelihood that most people who didn’t plan ahead to obtain a dye before receiving the radiant brackets are also unlikely to place buy orders when they decide to obtain one.

Arganthium.5638:

Curo.2483:

The lowest sell order went up because people bought up all the lower sell orders before they could naturally be replaced. This is due to increased demand (from radiant vambrace users). Simple.

Which is why the highest buy offer only went up a few silver while the lowest sell offer went up nearly five fold.

Seems legit.

Because when people know an item is going up in price rapidly, they are unlikely to have a buy order filled, and buy instantly instead. Also, a lot of sell orders are removed by their owners because they know they can make more money if they sell later. These two factors I believe cause lots of sell orders to disappear fast, while there are just a few people placing buy orders, outbidding each other by one copper.

When you see the sell price shoot up quickly without a similar change in the buy orders it’s usually because one (or a very small number) of people bought up a ton of stock at once; if a bunch of people were involved you’d see spikes on both the sell orders and buy orders.

The long tail of the price working its way back to where it was before the spike is similarly evidence that whoever did this proceeded to lose a lot of money. This is a speculator blowing himself up, nothing new here.

Ensign.2189:

When you see the sell price shoot up quickly without a similar change in the buy orders it’s usually because one (or a very small number) of people bought up a ton of stock at once; if a bunch of people were involved you’d see spikes on both the sell orders and buy orders.

The long tail of the price working its way back to where it was before the spike is similarly evidence that whoever did this proceeded to lose a lot of money. This is a speculator blowing himself up, nothing new here.

This is more what I was leaning towards. Of course, in this scenario, I’m sure whoever bought all of the dyes did lose quite a bit of money (mostly by overpricing the dyes even at monopolistic/oligopolistic levels), and that the monopoly/oligopoly couldn’t gather enough information about its consumers to find a more accurate pricing before the price of the dyes fell again due to newcomers entering the market after having seen the large potential profits within it.

Still, it concerns me that it is so easy to cause such a spike in price.

If they truly wanted to make an impact on this dyes price, they would have had to have increased the floor buy price by putting in a large amount of buy orders at a large price, like 2g, so that other people willing to buy this item would have to spend at least 2g on it just to match the price. The downside would be that they would also get a lot of Icing dyes, but if they play their cards right (and have enough gold) they could force the item to change it’s price, if not just for a little while (until they pull out).

The correct answer is icing dye is the poor mans celestial or white dye.