Guild Wars 2

Seems with the market settling down in recent weeks and large price falls it is difficult to make money from flipping due to a narrowing of buy/sell spreads.

The profit margin has completely gone from the likes of sesame seeds, coriander seeds, yam, bolts of gossamer and snow truffles. So I was wondering what other people were turning their flipping trades to.

Insignias and dyes seem fairly profitable but they are slow to sell unlike crafting mats.

I highly doubt anyone would tell you publicly here, unless they also want to shoot themselves in their feet.

Personally, dusk. I hope letting everyone know my secret doesnt crash my market.

Yeah right, a high barrier of entry is in itself the first measure against future flippers. Plus, there is a crazy undercutting going on in that bracket, and there’s no way to know for sure whether those dusks that disappeared from the listing is either due to someone re-listing them or is it legitimately sold to someone.

Lol I only have 7 gold – I just can’t make any money !

Lemons. /15char

Ephiny.9831:

Lol I only have 7 gold – I just can’t make any money !

I started flipping goods on the TP eight days ago when I only had 1g 58s to my name. I’m sure haven’t made the sort of profits some people are capable of, but I’m up to almost 2g of net profit.

I’ll give you a quick tip about how I determine what to buy. I take the price I’ll be listing at and divide it by the price I’ll be buying at. If the result is more than 1.33, then I’ll start placing orders for that item (e.g. sell @ 1s36c/buy @ 95c = 1.43). This gives me scope to relist later at a lower price if I need to and still make a profit after deducting listing fees.

There are still items that you can double your money on, but the market is lethargic and there’s always the risk of getting stuck with stock that won’t move.

Farming/gathering is probably the better way to go these days.

If you want to tell people you’re a TP mogul just put 10 copper ore up for sale at 10g apiece – then you can tell people you have 100g “invested”.

Salvages and dyes are pretty much all that is left stable
For most other items even daily fluctuations won’t cover 15% cut

I flip items all the time and can make 3-4 gold a day. I usually stick with items that get me at least double my investment.

Armor and weapons

Not going to say which markets, just in 3 months ive made 462g so far. Though i pretty much only log in for 4 hours each day to play the TP setup buy/sell orders etc.

Alot of it to do with buying out 10-20 cheapish bits of the armor/weapons and reselling all pieces for small profit + combining that with buy orders for lower price for even higher profit margin at the end of it.

Joshmans.8937:

Armor and weapons

Not going to say which markets, just in 3 months ive made 462g so far. Though i pretty much only log in for 4 hours each day to play the TP setup buy/sell orders etc.

Alot of it to do with buying out 10-20 cheapish bits of the armor/weapons and reselling all pieces for small profit + combining that with buy orders for lower price for even higher profit margin at the end of it.

Oh. I’ll take a guess. Don’t look at lvl 70+ because no-one buys anything with 80 in sight and once you hit 80 the market is glutted. The sweet spots are level 35/50/65, I’d guess. The trick is having enough gold to control the market, buying up anyone under-cutting you and controlling the selling price.

Four hours a day for 3 months = approx 350 hours. I actually understand that because I was addicted to the TP when the game launched but I prefer farming now. Though I only play maybe an hour a day now. In Orr you’ll make 1.5 gold an hour (some will claim much more) with the right gear. Do the math.

Hm, 300 hours of Orr farming or 300 hours of staring at TP…which mental death do I prefer? :P

Hint: WvW and I can QQ about how poor I am

Oh. I’ll take a guess. Don’t look at lvl 70+ because no-one buys anything with 80 in sight and once you hit 80 the market is glutted. The sweet spots are level 35/50/65, I’d guess. The trick is having enough gold to control the market, buying up anyone under-cutting you and controlling the selling price.

Four hours a day for 3 months = approx 350 hours. I actually understand that because I was addicted to the TP when the game launched but I prefer farming now. Though I only play maybe an hour a day now. In Orr you’ll make 1.5 gold an hour (some will claim much more) with the right gear. Do the math.

What math? Im to lazy yo. Some days i dont even log in, just treating the game as a market simulator untill the new Hitman is out Plus dota2 take up alot of reserved gaming time.

You’re close btw.

tooslow.7801 The trick is having enough gold to control the market, buying up anyone under-cutting you and controlling the selling price.
Four hours a day for 3 months = approx 350 hours. I actually understand that because I was addicted to the TP when the game launched but I prefer farming now. Though I only play maybe an hour a day now. In Orr you’ll make 1.5 gold an hour (some will claim much more) with the right gear. Do the math.

Heh, I did the same calculation you did; he is averaging 1.3 gold/hour, roughly what I hear you can do via farming in Orr (no 80s yet to check). Interestingly, that supports my theory that the devs don’t want any income stream, be it farming critters, using the TP or crafting to be able to average too much higher then this once the game is at steady state, though I’m sure there are outliers on the TP/crafting front in particular.

I found a few things on the TP where I can average more than this per hour invested, but less than a gold a day, so still not anything where I can race to vast wealth, which is ok, I don’t expect to need vast wealth any time soon in this game.

And regarding buying out anything cheap and controlling the market, I suspect the only markets where that is reliably possible given the huge amount of competition from crafters are (1) very low demand, which means you risk sitting on a lot of tied up inventory for weeks waiting for it to sell, and/or (2) very hard to make, such as precursors or legendaries, or impossible to make because they are drop-only, which runs some of the same risk as above. Therefore it is not a risk-free strategy in general.

I flip garden gnomes. They never see me coming!

I am just slightly into flipping and have found a nice little niche (which I am not stupid enough to advertise, lol) but I’m certainly not making the kind of coin some -claim- to be making. Of course, I log in to actually play the content in the game not spend 4 plus hours with my pixelated behind at the trading post. :P

Unless you’re a level 80, or you are lucky in in TP, making money is NOT as easy as everyone likes to brag about it being. THis is why I’m glad the prices of things on the TP are so low. No one but 80’s could afford them for their lower level toons otherwise and that gets incredibly old incredibly fast when you’re trying to level a toon in a gear centric game.

I’m tempted to say flipping burgers. Oops I said it.

But seriously who would give out their secrets?

Yes there is money to be made but it takes work, patience and a big bank balance to start with. I’m tempted to just buy some gems with RL$ and buy gold to start my bank, or forget trading altogether and just buy the stuff I want.

I just realized this might be a good thread to report an item where you want the spread to be closed, ie: where the item is being manipulated to increase the price artificially and you simply want to buy the item at a reasonable price.

Eggs.

Seriously, I looked at the sugar pumkin rush and thought, hmmmm, come Christmas, Eggnog! Further down the line, Easter, hmmm! Yes I like to think ahead.

I dont enjoy flipping but I’ve tried it and there is a lot of money to be made. I’d advise to look at margins and demand over a day on a range of goods and you’ll find theres a hell of a lot that can be flipped although there is always a risk involved since so many people are flipping now. All it takes is one person with an aggressive sell attitude to tank a line (e.g. the major rune market). Alternatively theres always the low/high daily flip although I’ve found that selling at the market high to be quite a struggle since again theres too many people flipping.

P.S. I should also add the market is going through some SERIOUS depreciation – rares have lost about 20%, exotics are crashing in price and I HIGHLY expect precursors to lose about 25% in the next few days. VERY bad time to try and enter the market and there are funner ways to make money.

@morph yep the funny thing is that in their desire to keep inflation in check, Anet actually created such a huge money sink that almost everything but the most valuable have dropped in price and most are at vendor price. Massive deinflation.

That’s because worthless is worthless. You need an item sink to keep prices up with the money sink. That item sink is currently the vendor. Just look at a lot of cooked food that nobody wants. 300k listed for 1c because people can’t vendor the items.

To get those items out of the system you need some way to turn them into something useful. Other than the Precursor grind right now that isn’t happening.

Why don’t we get more silver for Dynamic Events that we complete. We could make some decent coin. Lvl 80 could get a max of 1s 86c for gold and that’s too low. at least 5-10 silver per event would be a great way to make some of the poor and bit less poor.

Why don’t we get more silver for Dynamic Events that we complete. We could make some decent coin. Lvl 80 could get a max of 1s 86c for gold and that’s too low. at least 5-10 silver per event would be a great way to make some of the poor and bit less poor.

Wat… If everyone made more money, prices would adjust accordingly and you would still be poor. It is all relative. The only control Anet has over the economy is by setting the frequency that items are distributed. Pricing is completely left up to the players. If events awarded 5 silver per event (250% increase) then prices on the TP would simply increase by 250%. Welcome to 1k gold precursors.

What Icey said basically. Also you can’t be running plinx on cursed. You get that much from drops just vendor anything not yellow if its yellow sell on tp if it costs more than a ecto.

Right. You may be poor but the economy isn’t. Imagine all those bots making 5-10s an event.

This is the minimum wage delima all over again.

I’m building a massive spreadsheet. I’m filling in prices for everything I can craft. I flip whatever I stumble across that has a minimum spread of 115%. It’s actually working out pretty well, just grazing along like that.

I wonder how many University economics majors are using this game as the basis for a paper? :P

I only just started ‘flipping’ today but am terrible at math and at any basic form of monetary management. I predict I will be broke in a week That being said is there some sort of guide or what-have-you that can explain the TP to someone like me… sort of an “Idiots guide to trading”. Please and thank you.

use this to calculate your possible profit/loss when you’re flipping items:

http://tpcalc.com/

You can’t just name a few things to flip, and expect everyone will be able to make money on them. The very act of telling more people about an opportunity makes the opportunity disappear.

The only reliable way to find out what things to flip is to do the research yourself.

I think someone in the crafting forum said it best.

The first 2 weeks you TP you’ll likely lose money or gain very little. You’d be better off farming in Orr.

The second 2 weeks you’ll identify some markets but getting a feel for their movements will make you very little, you’ll make the same or slightly less than farming on Orr. An over-commitment or big mistake can set you back huge.

After that you should have a feel for at least a few markets and be able to make some money assuming you have capital to speculate with.

Why would someone share their item with you? What does the person get from that? NOTHING. except of his niche being ruined.

If you want an example, Ectos. Over the past week they’ve been going down to 11s and up to a high 14s. They get undercut a lot, even though they sell at whatever price they’re at. You don’t make a lot, well I guess you could if you attempted to control it after a month of buying hundreds/thousands at 11, but it’s pretty easy.

[flips table]
on a serious note. I’m not flipping anything. I’ve learned from other games I’m terrible in playing markets. I either stock up on items that never sell again. Stock up on items of which the price lowers to never get back up again. And well. That sort of thing x’D

I do it all, The BLTP is not what it once was where you could make crazy money of fast selling items, people who are palying are a little more sensible now and mroe epopela re learning to be aptient and not jsut sell now on the TP.

I do both TP and ORR and Forst gorge and WvWvW and make 2-3 gold daily form 1-2 hours of play, making mroe money as I have more capital. 2 weeksa go I had four gold now I have 24.

Also remember to buy up large on thursday and hold onto it for 24 ohurs and resell voer the wekeend, as prices spike over weekends, as the more casual (self controlled) gamers logg on and cause higher demand.