Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,
Just as the thread title says, since I have some spare gold I was wondering what items would be suitable for investing in, not for profits, just to maintain the value of the money until this period of strong inflation ends. I was thinking about T6 crafting materials, but most of them don’t seem to have gone up in price as much as the gold to gem ratio, probably because the increased supply balances it out. Since I don’t really use the TP for earning money, I’m not sure what would be a good investment. Any ideas?

DCM.3654:

I want to maintain the value of my gold compared to something that is stable in value, such as gems or real money. Buying gems would be a significant loss if I wanted to resell, so that is not a very good option though.
So say if there was an item that had constant supply and demand (despite the world events) that I could buy now and sell later when the farming based events have ended or new gold sinks have been introduced, I could get the same amount of gems with the gold I get back, as when I invested it.

If farming events end and gold sinks are introduced, your prices would drop. There would be a period of disinflation, and depending on how far we go, deflation. You would lose money.

e.g. Before the last Living Story, ectos were 18s. Then inflation occurred and they are around 24s (last I checked).

Ectos are possibly the best item to hold since they always have value and are constantly traded. But if you were to invest in them now, they would lose value. Disinflation would slowly occur as we scale back to the old price of 18s.

Then depending on what what happens to the economy, it could deflate below 18s.

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Now I think what you are truly asking for is an item that is currently underpriced and you wish to speculate in the future. There are several of those in game but they are very risky rather than holding on a commodity that would increase in value due to inflation.

Why would you want to invest now when inflation is at a high? You will lose money when it goes down.

You should only invest now if you think inflation will continue to happen (which I doubt it will)

That being said, there are items right now that are currently underpriced due to the Pavillion. I’m not going to point them out here because I’m currently processing thousands of buy orders.

Don’t forget that the Trading Post is going to take 15% of your item’s sale price when you try to convert it back to gold so in order to maintain the value you have to actually increase in value by 15% to offset the fee.

Umm… forgive me if I’m wrong or misreading this… but if you just want to maintain your gold’s value… wouldn’t you just keep all your money in your wallet? It won’t ever change there. Or if you’re looking to invest it into items so you don’t spend it then maybe create a guild and research a guild bank and stakitten there?

I want to maintain the value of my gold compared to something that is stable in value, such as gems or real money. Buying gems would be a significant loss if I wanted to resell, so that is not a very good option though.
So say if there was an item that had constant supply and demand (despite the world events) that I could buy now and sell later when the farming based events have ended or new gold sinks have been introduced, I could get the same amount of gems with the gold I get back, as when I invested it.

I see. So what you’re saying is that basically the inflation of prices won’t continue as long that it would be worth investing into items that have constant value, expecting to get more gold back from them by selling at the peak?

Also thinking about it you might actually be right about what I’m really asking, since my plan would be to resell the items at the end of the inflation period, when the prices are the highest.

Yes, we have pretty much reached the peak of inflation (or maybe the peak was when anchorage/deadeye was nerfed).

So if you are holding a commodity, now would be the time to sell.

As for speculation, there are countless items that are underpriced due to gauntlet farming.

You should take a look at the T5 mats that are below 80c, for example. Pre patch they were 1.1-1.3s.

Personally I have invested in over 100 Crystal Lodestones as speculation. But that is more of a long-term investment.

im invested into the celestial orichalcum inscriptions since there at vendor prices, seems i wont lose out on much if they dont go up in price in the next 3-4 months.

I want to maintain the value of my gold compared to something that is stable in value, such as gems or real money. Buying gems would be a significant loss if I wanted to resell, so that is not a very good option though.

The game has been deliberately constructed to thwart this desire, unfortunately. If you try to hold gold, you’ll lose value over time because of the new “printing presses” that are continually being introduced (the most recent of which comes from achievement chests). And if you try to avoid this by holding a physical asset of some type, such as a good weapon, you run the continual risk that the game designers will run the “item printing press” and introduce new items people will like better than the one(s) you’re holding, driving the value of your asset(s) into the ground.

You may not like the commissions/taxes associated with buying gems, but if you’re expecting huge “print runs” that will erode everything’s value over the long term, gems will at least put a ceiling on your losses. Alternatively, you can listen to one of numerous voices on the boards who believe they have deduced earlier than the rest of us which particular items are going to be good investments over the long term. That’s probably the only way to stay ahead of the game (so to speak), but you have to be really good at sorting wheat from chaff to be successful at it.

Gems or Miniatures (collection 1&2) seem to be a save longterm bet because they are tied to real money.

Gems are like bonds or mutual funds, you know you’ll make money out of them at some point, but it will take a long time.

If you keep half of your net worth in a distribution of goods (ectos, T6, lodestones, etc) you’ll be insulated from significant losses due to changes in the price level. If prices surge you’ll be able to sell your assets to buy what you want; if prices crash you’ll be able to get what you want with currency.

EDIT: Strictly speaking you should put all your money into a wide range of goods if all you care about is avoiding inflation. However you should keep a good amount of cash on hand to hedge for deflation.

Unlike the real world, where downward nominal rigidities from a wide web of contracts make deflation unlikely, and a paranoid rentier class vastly overstates the risks of inflation, there aren’t constraints keeping price changes pointing in the same direction in GW2. The only reasons for expecting inflation over deflation are guesses about what the developers are going to change in the future.