Guild Wars 2

I’m new to the GW world. I loved it!!! But, the Trading Post baffles me – I just can’t work out how it works. I’ve played other MMOs and traded happily but this one…. I can sell stuff yep, I can buy stuff, aha, but I cannot work out how it works -I seem to sell things for a higher price by listing them lower?? And they sell straight away so am I kinda selling stuff to the TP rather than direct to another player?
Some helpful, simple advice on how it works would be greatly appreciated.

You are indeed buying from and selling to other players. How fast the transaction occurs depends on several things. First and easiest is sell to the highest buy order. Which means you get the coin for the item the instant you click the button because you are accepting the offer someone made for the item. Their coin for the offer is held by the TP from the point in time they made the offer. The next fastest is to undercut the lowest sell listing. How fast depends on the rate the item sells. So items of high demand will sell fast and may seem like you are getting the coin instantly like selling to the highest buy offer. But the coin you got was from someone who purchased the item rather than making a buy offer.

Now in the case of a high demand item like that it makes little sense to undercut unless there is a very large quantity at the current lowest sell price. For example lets say copper ore lowest sell is 12c each and there is 500,000 listed at that price. And you have 250 copper ore you want to sell. You can list it at 12c each but will have to wait for the 500,000 sell first not counting any new listings added that undercut the 12c each price. So using this example you likely will have your proceeds in a few hours or more at the rate copper sells.

So to determine how you price something is a matter of judging supply and demand and if the current highest buyer and lowest seller are within range of what the item sells for. If demand exceeds supply and people are willing to pay more then listing for higher than others will likely sell. If demand is low and supply is higher then listing lower than everyone else is probably the smarter move. This is not set in store though.

For example I felt that a lot of stuff I made with crafting was worth double the vender price. So I listed them that way even though they were pegged at vender price +1c by at least several dozen listings at that price. Weeks later the price rose to my price point and the items I listed sold. That was a big gamble and I began to think I made a mistake but I kept them listed anyways since I could think of no good reason not to. The gamble paid off and perhaps may be an indication of just how long it will take for massive over supply to dwindle to the point where supply and demand are of a more normalized level.

The key difference between the GW2 trading post and most other MMO trading systems is buy orders. This is where a player says that they will a number of the item for a price they specify. Players wanting to sell stuff can then either sell instantly to an existing buy order, or they can list their items for a higher price and wait for them to sell.

The interface has its problems though. For instance, the predicted profit number you see when selling only takes the 10% sales tax (paid from the proceeds of your sale) into account. Not the 5% listing fee which you pay when you list the items for sale.

The other problem with the interface is that the sell screen only shows the highest buy order and lowest sell order. Not all the buy and sell orders. See this thread where I compared the market details window of Eve Online* with the GW2 trading post, by blanking out the detail that the trading post doesn’t show.

*The GW2 trading post is basically the Eve Online market with location information removed, no maximum duration on orders, the interface made worse, and many more players using it.

Thank you both for your answers. Very helpful indeed!!!

I forgot to include to search for the item as if you were going to buy it to check the buy and sell offers for all the listings to help a bit to judge what you decide to sell the item at.

Jia Shen.4217:

I forgot to include to search for the item as if you were going to buy it to check the buy and sell offers for all the listings to help a bit to judge what you decide to sell the item at.

Right, this is important because sometimes there may be dozens of something for sale at 10 silver and up, say, and one person put one up at 8 silver just to get rid of it fast. You only see the 8 silver sale listing going from your sale screen, but if you could see all the listings you might want to post it closer to the 10 silver it is “mainly” going at. Of course you risk that the price may be in the middle of racheting down to a new equilibrium.