Guild Wars 2

Every so often when I’m selling off junk items I’ll see buy orders that go into the hundreds for items which would appear to have no value (in particular, many armors that have the Cabalist label). So for example the Berserker’s Cabalist Boots of Infiltration has a demand of 286 at a buy price of 3s89c (as of the time of this writing). I’m sure if I went and looked at the TP, this demand would mostly be split between a small handful of people. Are they just looking for cheap items to send into the forge, or gambling on getting mats from salvage that will be resold for profit later?

Because of what they salvage into…. cloth That’s basically it.

Hmmmm… but the price between the silk scraps and these items are so close that it doesn’t seem worth it, especially when you add in the per-salvage cost form the kits. If you had a guarantee of 2 scraps per salvage maybe you save something, otherwise it seems like you are bound to lose money in the long run.

Of course, I’m clearly wrong, or people wouldn’t be doing it.

coats savage into 3 materials (on average), the others salvage into 2 (average). so, yes, you do get 2 scraps per salvage on average.
salvaging fine and masterwork items is the cheapest way to max your luck. by ‘cheapest’, I mean you can make a ~1s profit per item. so you make a profit while making luck. but it does take days. I can vouch for that time. I don’t mean it takes a while for buy orders to come in – it does – I mean it takes 200+ hours to just salvage all those items. 4 million luck to max mf. that’s 400,000 blue items. at 1 second per salvage, that would take 111 hours. and that’s not even counting the time to collect items from TP, time to refine luck essence, time to deposit materials (of which you will fill your bank 13 times over: 400,000 items * 3 mats / 250 = 4800 stacks of mats / 30 stacks per bank space / 12 bank spaces = 13.3 banks)

Eggman.1405:

Every so often when I’m selling off junk items I’ll see buy orders that go into the hundreds for items which would appear to have no value (in particular, many armors that have the Cabalist label). So for example the Berserker’s Cabalist Boots of Infiltration has a demand of 286 at a buy price of 3s89c (as of the time of this writing). I’m sure if I went and looked at the TP, this demand would mostly be split between a small handful of people. Are they just looking for cheap items to send into the forge, or gambling on getting mats from salvage that will be resold for profit later?

That’s for armor (which the actual OP cites as an example). For the subject line: weapons – if in the low/mid 50’s to low 60’s range, likely to salvage into platinum. If in the high 50’s to 80 range, likely to flush in the mystic toilet for rares. Compare the price to 2 plat ores – if lower than that cost, it’s most likely plat – compare the price to going rate for rares (then divide the latter by 4) – if cheaper than that cost, likely for rare salvaging (for ectos).