Guild Wars 2

If I were very rich, all I would need to do is to show off the highest amount of gold I had at one time in a screenie. Unfortunately, I am not. Most of this thread seems to center around methods which can only be achieved with the use of a large amount of gold. What I would like to ask is whether there are any methods which do not require a large amount of capital to begin with and yet can be worth the user’s time.

Kid Taylor.5479:

If I were very rich, all I would need to do is to show off the highest amount of gold I had at one time in a screenie. Unfortunately, I am not. Most of this thread seems to center around methods which can only be achieved with the use of a large amount of gold. What I would like to ask is whether there are any methods which do not require a large amount of capital to begin with and yet can be worth the user’s time.

Flipping small items is a good way to make gold when you haven’t a large sum to begin with.

Sigils, Runes, lvl 60 rares, you should focus on usable items that have a good demand.
Market is fluid, so i cannot point single items.

Most of the other ways involve gambling at one point or another, so i suggest you invest only 50% of your capital maximum in these methods .

I have what I believe to be a very valid question for those new to the ways of the BLTP. I’ve been fiddling for a few days now – sigils, crafts, ingrediants, forging and so on. Iv made a little bit and lost practically nothing, though I have misplaced around 20g on taking spidy too literally and posting slow moving, high priced weapons at too high a price. While the money isn’t gone, it isn’t actually made yet and may never be due to all the undercuts. I may have to resell and make a loss… due to the substantial listing fee on 5g items. I’m not particularly put out, I’m gaining an absolute WEALTH of information – if that costs me a few G its perfectly understandable. My goal really is learning what I need to make money with minimal cost.
But enough rambling.
My question is this: How does one even begin to identify possible trends for items to increase or decrease in price? I don’t want any of your secrets and such, just a kickstart into the logic of where to start my thought process… The fact that you just dreamt up ‘Oh, well, chocolate and christmas go together… lets buy choc coz ppl will be using it!’ seems a bit odd to me. Hell I can’t speak for others but where I’m from chocolate has nothing to do with Xmas. Easter yes…. Currently I have absolutely no idea if vials of mystic goats cheese are going to go up, or down. If purple smurf berries are currently high – and set to continue upward – or shoot down.
Anyway I appreciate any advice, can PM if you like. Thanks!

AWSUMSAUCE.4372:

‘Oh, well, chocolate and christmas go together… lets buy choc coz ppl will be using it!’

It wasn’t the christmas speculation that caused chocolate to go up. One of the recent patches nerfed the drop rate on chocolate and it took a while for the major players to make their move on the chocolate market. Once people saw the trend of the chocolate (steady demand, and increasingly lower supply) it becomes an obvious target for market manipulation.

This is all observation on my part, I’m no economist.

Most of my gold comes from pent/shelter farming. I make about 1.5-2g an hour and it’s usually better if I get a group of five people. It’s really boring to farm and I’m thinking about running fractals or finding a better way to make gold.

AWSUMSAUCE.4372:

The fact that you just dreamt up ‘Oh, well, chocolate and christmas go together… lets buy choc coz ppl will be using it!’ seems a bit odd to me. Hell I can’t speak for others but where I’m from chocolate has nothing to do with Xmas.

Actually if you pay close attention to the posts in this thread it becomes very apparent how the “pump and dump” market manipulation scheme works

1. Take a low-demand, low supply item
2. Buy lots of it. Lots and lots, so the “buy instantly” price point starts to rise
3. Place tons of phony custom offers
4. Post on the forums “Hey guise did you notice the price of X going up? Its cuz anet nerfed the drop rate and everyone’s buying it because (insert whatever reason)” (Throw in some irreverent economic babble to give yourself more credibility)
5. Watch as wild speculation takes over, then once the bubble reaches an acceptable level start selling everything you have.
6. Once you’ve sold off enough, most likely crashing the bubble in the process, assure everyone that they should stop buying now. After all you want them to save their gold for your next scam. Possibly get some sock puppets or friends to post thanking you for being such a cool dude.

I hope the people following this thread can see whats going on for what it truly is. It bothers me because it’s immoral, unethical, scummy, most likely illegal in the real world and it hurts the in game economy.

Brian… you lost me dude. You post a whole bunch of nonsense that I hope very few people do, and then you say not to do it. My only concern here, and even with spidy, is information provided with intent to manipulate or ‘dupe’ us, the ill-informed consumer/trader.
@spooky ok that makes a lot of sense. I can watch a few important items, however, I’m certainly not about to troll various goods observing volumes of supply and demand and recording that data. I enjoy the market dabbling, but I’m still here to play guild wars

Brian,

I don’t deny a large part of your post but you are wrong in your assessment and overall conclusion. This was not a pump and dump and I believe I’ll be able to show that with only the posts in this thread and spidy graphs.

Brian.9125:

1. Take a low-demand, low supply item

Yes, chocolate is a low-medium demand item with a very low supply rate. Despite being low-medium demand, it is critical to leveling a particular range of cooking. I read the patch notes, so I knew that at some point it would rise in price once the supply had been worked through.

Brian.9125:

2. Buy lots of it. Lots and lots, so the “buy instantly” price point starts to rise

I did buy lots and lots, at 13c. Then I realized I could add more space than I thought I had available, and I bought lots and lots and lots again at 25c. However, I only bought instantly on three occasions, 1am on the 27th (up to 1s per), 12pm on the27th (up to 3s per), and 9pm on the 28th (up to 5s per).

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/12229

Brian.9125:

3. Place tons of phony custom offers

Absolutely, this happened on the 27th in my lead up to the purchase at 1am. I continued to add fake demand until my purchases on the 28th. My opponents are at least as observant as you in hindsight so I doubt I’m giving anything away at this point.

Brian.9125:

4. Post on the forums “Hey guise did you notice the price of X going up? Its cuz anet nerfed the drop rate and everyone’s buying it because (insert whatever reason)” (Throw in some irreverent economic babble to give yourself more credibility)

Here’s your only real deviation from the obvious time line in this thread. It is disingenuous of you but critical if you are to make a case for “pump and dump”. I say this because you can clearly see in this thread that I suggested a buy price of 13c and a sell price between 21-25c on the 23rd. In a pump and dump this happens after you’ve acquired all of your supply and moved the price as much as you can on your own, then you “pump” the stock and sell into the demand near the top.

Brian.9125:

5. Watch as wild speculation takes over, then once the bubble reaches an acceptable level start selling everything you have.

There was no wild speculation. I drove the price up from 55c to 1s, from 1s-3s, and from 1.5s to 5s. Now, spidy only shows the snapshot price of every 12-15m, so you get to see the massive jumps, but not the extremes to which I took it before it quickly dropped down to the levels you see in the graph. After the buy on the 28th, I left chocolate alone until last night.

Brian.9125:

6. Once you’ve sold off enough, most likely crashing the bubble in the process, assure everyone that they should stop buying now. After all you want them to save their gold for your next scam. Possibly get some sock puppets or friends to post thanking you for being such a cool dude.

I told people multiple times not to buy chocolate bars after the price had hit 50c. Many people PMed me when chocolate reached 25c-30c and I told them buying now would be very risky. Even more people PMed me at 50c and I told them don’t buy. I even posted in this thread and said, don’t buy now for an investment. Some people didn’t listen but still made a killing when I took it to 1s. The people who didn’t make a profit, who in fact took it in the teeth, were the ones who bought at 1-1.5s after the 28th and re-listed between 2 and 5s. Last night, I crushed the buy price of chocolate, it dropped 65c to 6c. Those who bought at 1s lost 90% of their investment if they de-listed from 3s and panic sold to me on the way to the bottom. I did this for reasons of my own, which I’m not going to elaborate on yet. But to steal a quote from a good friend of mine, “This is where the REAL PvP happens”.

I’ve got to head off to work so I won’t have time to edit this for grammar until tonight. However, there is more I’d like to elaborate one. Most of my posts recently have been on the market manipulation side of things but I’ll try and post more of the steady earning principles that I used to build my capital base.

My problem with having that much chocolate (suppose for instance its 100k+ bars)

How do you possibly unload it all and make your money back without finding a sucker willing to buy it? I mean sure you bought a lot of it at 13c, but you know you can’t unload it all at 1s? Are you counting on people who are ignorant of the price fluctuations who think that since fine mats and ectos are going up in price that chocolate is too, or that since leveling guides use a lot of it the power skillers with tons of gold who don’t care about prices are going to buy 100-200 at a time? Even so can you possibly unload all that chocolate or are you going to be constantly sitting on a position?

NoOneShotU.3479:

My problem with having that much chocolate (suppose for instance its 100k+ bars)

How do you possibly unload it all and make your money back without finding a sucker willing to buy it? I mean sure you bought a lot of it at 13c, but you know you can’t unload it all at 1s? Are you counting on people who are ignorant of the price fluctuations who think that since fine mats and ectos are going up in price that chocolate is too, or that since leveling guides use a lot of it the power skillers with tons of gold who don’t care about prices are going to buy 100-200 at a time? Even so can you possibly unload all that chocolate or are you going to be constantly sitting on a position?

I have several exit strategies in mind, both short and long term but neither of which is based off of selling to suckers. This would imply that I think chocolate is worthless, which I don’t. I don’t believe chocolate will be used in a recipe during Christmas but Valentines Day is just 2.5 months away and I do believe there is a much higher probability that it would be used then. Additionally, it is possible that more people will either buy the game or the current base will become more active. Both of which will help all basic crafting mats. The only thing that I’m really worried about is ArenaNet reaching down like the hand of God to smite me. I hope they don’t because who wants big brother jump in every time you succeed at something. Who’d what to play the TP if ArenaNet jumped in every time to fix volatility, which brings me to my next point.

Volatility

It’s like blood in the water. People are drawn to big swings. They can be terrifying if you are on the wrong side of one but exhilarating if your not. I have noticed a significant difference in the market since we all started taking about different ways to earn. It could all be due to Winter’s Day but that is still two weeks off. I’d like to think that there has been an increased interest in the Trading Post and this has lead to increased volatility. This is how it should be, because I was really getting tired of the grind. I think the TP is the saving grace of GW2. And it is the only reason I still play this game, because WoW did everything else better. (Really guys? Everyone is a healer, tank, and dps? Gear that has no significant purpose other then graphical eEpeeenES? BOORING) Didn’t you learn anything from The Incredibles?

Oh, I’m real. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I’ll give them heroics. I’ll give them the most spectacular heroics the world has ever seen! And when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can have powers. Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super…[chuckles evilly] no one will be. —-Syndrome

Sorry, tangent…No, I do not plan on unloading my chocolate yet but that doesn’t mean I won’t continue to mess around in it when and if opportunity presents them self. So, you’ve been warned, Do not enter markets when you can’t handle the risk and can’t cover the cost. And please do not blame me if you still choose to play in the chocolate market and you lose. If I haven’t been clear…and it implies to all volatile markets…

BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK

Logun.5360

I’ve seen a few gold hoarders like you in other MMO’s, players like you got nothing to do with the game and everything that it has to offer.
You feel complete no relation to anything that is going on in it, while talking about kittenes of gear, you follow the very same concept with gold.

But I’ll stop before I get moderated.

I’d like to add on topic that TP farmers exist in every game, personally I believe it is a very selfish and destructive on large scale way of making gold.
But nothing can be done about it, and most of us will just have to suck it up.
Just the other day I was thinking that after playing this game you can come out with a major in economics, which is a very sad state that this game brought us to.

I’d like to see players who show no real interest in this game to simply leave it to the casual and traditional hardcore gamers. I talk to deaf ears, but do consider finding yourself a new hobby, perhaps wallstreet stocks exchange.

Hoheristo.3607

Why is it so bad that people who have the knowledge use it for entertainment purposes? You obviously like something else GW2 has to offer, so I’d suggest you hold on to that, and let Logan and the other moguls get their value for their spent money.

To chime in on the conversation; I’ve taken a few tips from this thread and applied it in game, and I am now making steady money. However, I’d urge the top contributors in this thread to keep this going – I need to learn more!

Have a great night.

step 1: mention that you’re a power trader and move “massive volume” etc etc and make “massive cash”

step 2: mention a market niche that you’re buying into (preferably something that you’ve already bought into as cheap as it gets)

step 3: watch market demand skyrocket as the supply gets hit

step 4: meet the new demand as it spreads and use that to invest into something better

Am I doing this right?

Horheristo.3607:

Logun.5360
I’ve seen a few gold hoarders like you in other MMO’s, players like you got nothing to do with the game and everything that it has to offer.
You feel complete no relation to anything that is going on in it, while talking about kittenes of gear, you follow the very same concept with gold.

As subjective and baseless as it is, you are entitled to your opinion. So we might as well move along.

Horheristo.3607:

I’d like to add on topic that TP farmers exist in every game, personally I believe it is a very selfish and destructive on large scale way of making gold.
But nothing can be done about it, and most of us will just have to suck it up.
Just the other day I was thinking that after playing this game you can come out with a major in economics, which is a very sad state that this game brought us to.

Perhaps you do need some economics, are you aware what would happen to the value of the gold that you managed to farm if there was no TP gold sink? Rapid exponential inflation, that’s what would happen. For ever trade on the TP, 15% of the gold from the transaction is removed from the economy. Now, step out of the virtual and into the real world and consider what would happen to the price of milk if the FED continued to print more money that what is taken out of circulation. Even though you don’t understand it, you still need sinks if you expect the value of your money to remain stable. I personally think it’s sad, you see no value in learning something that has real world value. I don’t have a problem with you running around in pirates clothes eating candy canes, so why would you have a problem with trading?

Horheristo.3607:

I’d like to see players who show no real interest in this game to simply leave it to the casual and traditional hardcore gamers. I talk to deaf ears, but do consider finding yourself a new hobby, perhaps wallstreet stocks exchange.

As I said before, I would leave the game if I had no interest in it. I had extremely high exceptions when I bought this game because it had been hyped by friends that I had played WoW with since vanilla. WoW did a lot of things right, catering to casuals like you wasn’t one of them. I had some of the best times in 40 man raids learning MC and BWL. Those were long hours and hard work but it was EPIC. And the gear you could get from 40man dungeons was EPIC as well. It didn’t just look awesome, it made you awesome. I remember drooling over the 8 set piece set bonus of Tier 1 mage gear, a chance your next spell would be instant cast. That was EPIC. So was the Lighting Capacitor and the fact that you 70 talent points that you could sink into elementalist specs. PvP was fast paced and it took real skill, but they continued to dumb it down for casuals until the game became a gloried Farmville with pandas…when it used to be this…

I wasn’t always an evil capitalist, I used to PvP.

Mobile Fire Shatter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGk7EodzSEY

Mobile Arcane Shatter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYYazOg8AcA

There used to be a reason you didn’t let a mage free cast on you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrEul297UT8&list=UL

AoE Farming with gay music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndsmxEBX1M0

My friends and I came to GW2 with a large group of our core WoW guild. We formed MERC for the sole intention of WvWvWing. We have fun but Arena could improve WvWvW. They’ve done an excellent job on some parts, the graphics are beautiful, the siege system is awesome, and the over all strategic setup is fun. However, there’s not much to work towards. Sure their’s a lot of gear but aside for a very very modest stat boost, you only have the graphics to set you are part. But, at least that way its fair for every body, right?…

However, we did have some good times before the nothing to do feeling settled in. My friend shot these in the first couple of months of GW2, the Alamo stand was great, but we’d have never been able to do it without gold.

http://www.youtube.com/koawhkaine

Hellkaiser.6025:

step 1: mention that you’re a power trader and move “massive volume” etc etc and make “massive cash”

step 2: mention a market niche that you’re buying into (preferably something that you’ve already bought into as cheap as it gets)

step 3: watch market demand skyrocket as the supply gets hit

step 4: meet the new demand as it spreads and use that to invest into something better

Am I doing this right?

No, usually one reads a thread before they skip to the bottom to make their smart@ss comments, which aren’t unique, and have already been addressed on the same page. But maybe you were also one of those guys who bought chocolate at 1s.

Found a way to turn 1 skill point into 1G.

Take advantage of this crazy inflation right now while it lasts. It’s printing money for me at the moment.

I’ve read the entire thread and I have come to the conclusion that Logun is in fact some kind of very smart person who has given out many tips on how exactly to play with the market.

But one question lies unanswered. WHAT THE kitten ARE YOU PLANNING TO DO WITH THAT MUCH MONEY?

If I were you, I’d just dump it all into the gold>gem down the path just to mess with it. Or in some point in time you’d end up like Vork in “The Guild” and have a monopoly on every single item and destroy the economy.

Schnuffles.5369:

Found a way to turn 1 skill point into 1G.

Take advantage of this crazy inflation right now while it lasts. It’s printing money for me at the moment.

1G? Seems like you found something special, usually 1 SP translates into a little less than 0.5G.
What are you going to do once you ran out of SP though? You will not be able to craft a legendary item anymore

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

Schnuffles.5369:

Found a way to turn 1 skill point into 1G.

Take advantage of this crazy inflation right now while it lasts. It’s printing money for me at the moment.

1G? Seems like you found something special, usually 1 SP translates into a little less than 0.5G.
What are you going to do once you ran out of SP though? You will not be able to craft a legendary item anymore

The only way I found making money from skill points was making Mystic Weapons… costed like 2-3 gold to make and sold for 7-8 gold, but that isn’t even .5 gold profit per sp.

You should look into mat and lodestone transformation.
You are going to run out of skillpoints before getting rich though

Tallis.5607:

>> There are hundreds of power traders in the
>> game that make this rate or more.

Hundreds of people making 25g per hour. No. Not gonne happen.

I know a thing or two about game markets. I was one of the first billionaires in SWG. I hit the cap in WoW back when it was 210k.

There are no hundreds of people making 25g per hour in this game. The market simply isn’t there.

Also, there is nothing special about the silver doublon graphic on the 11th. You are simply counting on the fact that no one checks up on your statements…

Dude, in SWG it wasn’t hard to make money. I had around 10 billion to be honest. Elite mineral miners and knowing the correct material to look for and mine was the easiest way to make money. Then buying lower priced materials for 1 to 2 credits each, cranking out tons of tie interceptors, x wings, pets selling for an easy 10 mil each(while costing less than 200k in ingredients to make).

You can’t compare SWG to this because theres not a whole lot of room to profit as you are almost always profiting off of someone elses loss. In SWG you profited mainly off of paying a 300k maintenance fee for 2 days on your mineral miner and it would bring in materials worth 40 credits each multiplied by however many hundreds of thousands it mined that 2 day period. 40 * 450,000 = 18,000,000 credits – 300k = your profit. So you could place 5 elite mineral mines = an eazy 18,000,000 * 5 = easy 90 mil every 2 days ish.

GW2 you are always making money while someone either loses it, or got it as a drop and is selling it for instant sell(which means they lost money by doing that too).

SWG you could make your money more ways than that when you did stuff with the market.

Pvp.2758:

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

Schnuffles.5369:

Found a way to turn 1 skill point into 1G.

Take advantage of this crazy inflation right now while it lasts. It’s printing money for me at the moment.

1G? Seems like you found something special, usually 1 SP translates into a little less than 0.5G.
What are you going to do once you ran out of SP though? You will not be able to craft a legendary item anymore

The only way I found making money from skill points was making Mystic Weapons… costed like 2-3 gold to make and sold for 7-8 gold, but that isn’t even .5 gold profit per sp.

To the person who said Once you run out of skill points, you can get infinite skill points even when you are level 80. Everytime you fill your xp bar it gives you a skill point. No reason to save them if you can use them to make money, unless you need it for something else.

Amassing skillpoints once you cleared the map for 100% is a pain.
When you have enough to create a legendary again, you have the amount of gold you need anyways.

I’ve been getting a growing number of PMs and while I enjoy helping people, I’m starting to spend more time on the forums than in game. So, I figured I’d share a recent PM that I sent to a new trader in hopes that I can save some time by just linking to particular posts when I’m PM’d.

You need to pick a number of items that are selling within the profitable range and spread all of your money across them in bid orders. Look at the buy listing data on the graph, look at the spikes down for offers, see if you can make a profit buy placing a bid for the item at the down spike. For example, if you see an item that spikes down to 14c, calculate your break-even point to see if you can sell it within the avg. trading range. 14c/.85 = 16.47c break-even, so if you see that you can sell at 21c then, 21c-16.46c = 4.53c profit, but 4.53c looks like nothing. However, if you put in orders for 10,000 units at 14c at night (knowing that the market can churn that supply) and sell them for 21c the next day, then you’ve made 4.53g profit. It would take you 14g to buy 10,000 units but you’d get a 32% ROI. I wouldn’t advise you put your gold all on one item though (that’s spread trading overnight and it’s dangerous) , but instead, find one item, like above, and place orders for 500-1,000, then find another similar item and do the same thing, and another , and so on. With 25g, you should be able to place bids on 20-25 items of this type. This way, you are “hedging” and “diversifying” your investments. Some of your items will spike down and you’ll need to hold them a little longer (or sell them if you notice a crash, it’s ok to sell at a loss, you aren’t married to this item and you should dump it if you notice a new down trend)but overall you should be up. From this point on, you’re just growing your investment by ~10-25% every day. Every night, put all of it back in the market, then sell the stuff from the previous night. And if you are diligent and stick to the system, an interesting thing is going to happen…compound returns on your investment. And if someone asks you if you would rather one million dollars today or a one penny doubled every day for 30 days, then you’ll know how to answer, and you’ll know why you should be investing your money in real life, as early in life, as you can.

Gold at 25% ROI & A Penny Doubled

Day 1 I 25 I $0.01
Day 2 I 31 I $0.02
Day 3 I 39 I $0.04
Day 4 I 49 I $0.08
Day 5 I 61 I $0.16
Day 6 I 76 I $0.32
Day 7 I 95 I $0.64
Day 8 I 119 I $1.28
Day 9 I 149 I $2.56
Day 10 I 186 I $5.12
Day 11 I 233 I $10.24
Day 12 I 291 I $20.48
Day 13 I 364 I $40.96
Day 14 I 455 I $81.92
Day 15 I 568 I $163.84
Day 16 I 711 I $327.68
Day 17 I 888 I $655.36
Day 18 I 1,110 I $1,310.72
Day 19 I 1,388 I $2,621.44
Day 20 I 1,735 I $5,242.88
Day 21 I 2,168 I $10,485.76
Day 22 I 2,711 I $20,971.52
Day 23 I 3,388 I $41,943.04
Day 24 I 4,235 I $83,886.08
Day 25 I 5,294 I $167,772.16
Day 26 I 6,617 I $335,544.32
Day 27 I 8,272 I $671,088.64
Day 28 I 10,340 I $1,342,177.28
Day 29 I 12,925 I $2,684,354.56
Day 30 I 16,156 I $5,368,709.12

P.S. Trolls, this is an example only, ROI% will fluctuate up and down. Additionally, you will start hitting diminishing returns because of the 6 stack per 60s ArenaNet cap and the fact not all of your bids will be filled.

Regarding making money on the TP for new investors, my best suggestion is to start learning item prices and trends. You already know the general price on a lot of items and don’t really think much about it. Build your own internal watch list (gw2spidy even has an actual watch list) and start learning the values of more items.

I’m quite rich and have never had a need to try to trick others, buy out the entire supply of items or anything like that. “Buy low, sell high” is all you need. If you’re familiar with the prices of hundreds of items, you know when something is low. If you see an item that’s been going between 1.2s to 1.5s the last month and you happen to see it during a random swing where it happened to dip to 80c because less people were posting buy orders on it that particular time of day, by all means get some of the item.

Invest in many different items. Not only will you become even more familiar with more items, which means more opportunities, you also greatly reduce risk. It’s also often easier to get things that way too.

If you’re trying to fill some buy order on the cheap for 7500 of an item that only moves 20,000 a day, you’re not going to fill it. People will buy above you. In fact they’ll be more likely to when they see that big 7500 order sitting there and don’t want to wait 8 hours+ in line to get one large fang or something. Put up a buy for a few stacks perhaps, then go look elsewhere. If you’re trying to find places to invest your money it’s almost always easier buying from 10 different sources than 1-2.

Does every item you bought low end up going way back up? No, but it’s uncommon for it to not work out. Uncommon enough that if you’re investing in many different items and always buying low, I can guarantee you’ll profit.

Don’t be afraid to buy REALLY low either. Items do all sorts of little shifts during the day. Sometimes people just don’t place big investment orders in on them for a couple hours and they drop a lot in price for a short period. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen some item with buys of like 1.5s, sell prices of 2s or something…and yet I put in a buy order for 1.1s then wake up the next day and it not only has been filled but the prices are back up for me to sell at 2s to boot. Doesn’t happen with every item, but it happens plenty enough.

Biggest advice of all: Learn what “low” is. If you keep an eye on an item during the day and it didn’t happen to go below a certain point, that doesn’t mean the low part of that point is necessarily a good buy in price. Take a look at what the item did in the past. Put in buys at what you’d really like to buy it for. Worst thing that happens is it doesn’t fill. If you see people investing aggressively and feel like you’re having to fight with them to adjust your buy price to get the item, look elsewhere.

I can tell you every time that I’ve lost substantial amounts of money trading, it was because I got greedy and tried to go all in on that “golden ticket” particular item, then it didn’t work out. Can you make big money doing that sometimes? Absolutely. Think about how you’ll feel if it doesn’t work out though. It usually isn’t worth it.

Minion of Vey.4398:

snip

Thank you for that. It’s always encouraging to see people making money in ways that don’t rely on lying and manipulating other people, and makes me more confident about the general GW2 economy and the chance for I and other casual players to make money on the TP.

3g+ an hour farmin down cs, none of that ah crap, killing kitten for money, awww yehhhh.

@ Minion of Vey.4398

That actually was very insightful and I think a key idea that helped complete something I was missing.

Earlier in this thread Logun.5360 posted a video to a class room discussion about an economics class. A long video but I sat and listened it as I did some farming, dungeons, and other stuff in the game.

At the end of that video the instructor did a small experiment where he had a group of buyers and a group of sellers. Long story short the buyers and sellers without knowing all the rules and theories of economics made trades that showed the true market value of an item.

Your post Minion of Vey.4398 helped clarify that whole bit for me. Figure out the true value and then you are able to buy low and sell high without needing to do any sort of market manipulation or pump and dumps.

I have admittedly always been poor on MMOs and never been successful at any sort of in game economy, but I am finding I need to learn if I want to get anywhere in this game.

Logun.5360

I’m glad you took your time and fully responded to each part of my post.
It was, unfortunately, meaningless…
I still make far more gold than a very high % of the community per hour, and as matter of fact – it is people like you who push my gph even higher.

But I’m no hypocrite and I’d like to see the majority of the population remaining more pleased for a better thriving game, than to face with more players who will eventually decide to rage and eventually quit over the ever-so-difficult market.

By the way, I don’t need a major in anything, I’m smart enough to get around on my own, and would wildly guess that probably better than you as well.

One question you need to ask is, does a higher gold/time mean a higher value/time? I mean, ok while I’m sure gold is valuable, I merely see it as a trading tool and has no inherent value on itself. (kinda like how bills are really useless without the thing they’re backing up, gold or something else in the national treasury). Of course, without gold, it’s hard to ascertain a mathematical value for your items, and I’m sure the value of certain stuff does change/fluctuate from time to time.

Also, won’t having more people buying low and selling high might cause the actual value/price of that item to sell for much higher?

This post had alot of useful information and am glad i took the time to read it. I’ve had a fair amount of gold from the start of the game, but coming from a older game where mats weren’t something traded i was unaware of the riches to be made. I made most my money the old fashion way farming or crafting. This has really given the game a new dynamic for me. Thx for everyone’s useful input.

Horheristo.3607:

Logun.5360

I’m glad you took your time and fully responded to each part of my post.
It was, unfortunately, meaningless…
I still make far more gold than a very high % of the community per hour, and as matter of fact – it is people like you who push my gph even higher.

But I’m no hypocrite and I’d like to see the majority of the population remaining more pleased for a better thriving game, than to face with more players who will eventually decide to rage and eventually quit over the ever-so-difficult market.

By the way, I don’t need a major in anything, I’m smart enough to get around on my own, and would wildly guess that probably better than you as well.

I have no problem with farmers, they are an integral part of the economy. I’ve farmed a plenty in many other games. Part of the fun then was trying to figure out ways to do it more efficiently than everyone else, as in the AoE farming video I posted. I support your right to farm and I hope you will see the benefit of a fair market value for your goods as more people become active on the Trading Post. The GW2 market will never be as efficient as any of the US stock exchanges but I believe it will be better than any WoW server auction house, maybe better than every other MMO except EvE, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Minion of Vey.4398:

See Post Above

Excellent Post!

I would definitely recommend setting up a watch-list on spidy to anyone who wishes to make their living off the TP. For those of you who run into trouble creating an account, try using your google+ account to login. I’d recommend you add all white and blue crafting items below 1s to your watch-list. You can do this by clicking the items tab at the top of the page and selecting crafting, then filtering for while and blue items. I’d also concentrate of the raw crafting materials vs. any second generation materials. Minion is right, you will start getting a feel for the range an item trades at as well as how much you can move through the auction house on a given night. However, I can’t keep track of them all as he does, so I use a spreadsheet to record my bid amounts, if you take the time to do this, you’ll be more likely to avoid unintentionally selling at a loss.

Additionally, when you go to post your auctions, make sure that the lowest selling price is really the legit lowest selling prices. Many times people just throw 1 or 2 items up on the TP somewhere in the middle between the real bid and ask amounts. On most occasions, this is due to pure newbness but their are people who will place a sell bid right above the buy bid in hopes that you will choose to sell your item directly to them instead of selling it at the actual lowest seller bid. So, check before you match lowest seller.

When I encounter situations like the above, I purchase these items and list them right below or in the actual sell wall (depending on how big it is). However, this doesn’t apply to big ticket items, for those items, it is usually better to wait for someone else to buy it before listing your items. This leads me to my last piece of advice and a common practice that can lead to a slightly larger ROI on each trade. When you are checking for sell walls, you may notice multiple small amounts between the current lowest seller and what I call a hard sell wall (this varies by commodity but you’ll start picking it up but as a very very very rough guide, let’s say 1,000 units for blue and 25,000 units for white). This is a natural thing that happens when instant demand slips for a short time. However, if you are confident that this is the case and that it is not a new sell wall that is forming, AND you’ve done the math to make sure it is profitable, you can buy up these smaller orders and re-list them right below or in the hard sell wall. It will take time and experience before you can start doing this successfully but once you can, you’ll be able to add a few more percentage points to the profit on each trade.

CMF.5461:

@ Minion of Vey.4398

That actually was very insightful and I think a key idea that helped complete something I was missing.

Earlier in this thread Logun.5360 posted a video to a class room discussion about an economics class. A long video but I sat and listened it as I did some farming, dungeons, and other stuff in the game.

At the end of that video the instructor did a small experiment where he had a group of buyers and a group of sellers. Long story short the buyers and sellers without knowing all the rules and theories of economics made trades that showed the true market value of an item.

Your post Minion of Vey.4398 helped clarify that whole bit for me. Figure out the true value and then you are able to buy low and sell high without needing to do any sort of market manipulation or pump and dumps.

I have admittedly always been poor on MMOs and never been successful at any sort of in game economy, but I am finding I need to learn if I want to get anywhere in this game.

CMF,

I’m very impressed and delighted that you took the time to watch the lecture, as it is about an hour and a half long! I thought it was pretty funny that one girl messed it all up because should couldn’t remember her cost. I bet the professor was like, I know someone who’s not going to pass this class.

Anyway, the man talking is John Geanakoplos. He is the current James Tobin Professor of Economics at Yale and the Managing Director of the hedge fund group know as Ellington Management, which manages around $30 Billion dollars. From 2007 to 2011, they have had a total return of 59%, which is incredible. The old saying of those who can’t do, teach, definitely doesn’t apply to him. His entire Yale course for the semester is posted in 24, 1.15 minute videos. I’m really glad they were posted because I’d never have had enough money to get into a place like Yale. He does get into some mid to high level statistics at some points, but if you don’t like it or don’t understand it, you can fast forward past the mathematical stuff and just listen to his theories and principles. I particularly enjoyed and learned a lot from his lectures on the Merchant of Venice (#7), Social Security (#10 &24), and the Mutual Fund Theorem (#23). Like you, farming and trading can get dull for me and it’s nice have something that can occupy my brain and potentially gain me something other than GW2 gold.

penatbater.4710:

One question you need to ask is, does a higher gold/time mean a higher value/time? I mean, ok while I’m sure gold is valuable, I merely see it as a trading tool and has no inherent value on itself. (kinda like how bills are really useless without the thing they’re backing up, gold or something else in the national treasury). Of course, without gold, it’s hard to ascertain a mathematical value for your items, and I’m sure the value of certain stuff does change/fluctuate from time to time.

Also, won’t having more people buying low and selling high might cause the actual value/price of that item to sell for much higher?

Regarding buy low/sell high raising the value/price of an item over time, in practice it really doesn’t. Not by a continually rising amount at least.

An increasing price lowers demand. Now for the end buyer, their demand won’t really change so much whether some component they’re only buying 3 of anyway costs 1.1s or 1.2s, but for investors their demand is down. They know the value is bumped up some because some of the supply has been bought out. It had to be, that’s what raised the price in the first place. So rather than buy the item to flip, they seek out something else instead. With less people investing since the price is higher, demand is lower than supply and the price goes down again.

If you look at a gw2spidy graph on most crafting components, you won’t see them just stay right at the same price. You’ll see waves as the price goes up and down generally within the relatively same range repeatedly.

Lets say anything you bought on the trading post became account bound when you purchased it, so there was no reselling on the TP. What you’d end up seeing is the fluctuation simply be much smaller than what there is now. Instead of an item going back and forth from 1s to 1.5s, it would be more likely to just settle at 1.2-1.3s all the time, assuming the drop rate and general demand from the end buyer was the same in both examples. There wouldn’t be any reason for the price to drop much, as there wouldn’t be spurts of said item coming into the market due to people cashing out for profit. Nor would it have reason to rise much as there’d be no real reason to buy the item other than to use it.

Of course in reality it would depend on the item. Some item prices are propped up a bit by regular trading activity. However it isn’t something that just keeps scaling up causing prices to go out of control. When prices rise the item becomes less desirable to investors and they’d rather buy something else in hopes that goes up instead. If the price rises by much the difference becomes meaningful to the end buyer too. If someone’s leveling their crafting and an item costs 3x as much now, maybe they’ll try a different recipe that’s cheaper. Since the item is presumably still entering the game at the same rate it always was, the reduced demand means the price must drop once more.

In the end, it’s actually good for the economy that there is reselling. An item passing through the TP more than once means extra opportunities for the TP to take that 15% fee, which outweighs anything else I’ve discussed. The more transactions that occur, the more inflation is curbed due to coin disappearing from the game.

My gold/hour starts with a zero and sometimes needs three decimal places…when I’m playing.

All I want is enough market stability so I, as a casual player, can buy something for a fair price, but there are no guarantees with volatility, fake demand and other market manipulation.

On the gems side, I chipped away in PvE until I had a small fortune, enough to snag the 600 I need for another Bank tab; it’s getting awfully crowded in there. I’ve watched in horror as the exchange has skyrocketed over 230%. Lost Shores. Black Friday. Makeovers. Wintersday is coming and it’s highly dubious that there will be any significant drop as casuals like me enter the fray and realize how sorely indifferent the market is to our needs (quite the contrary, we are marks).

Still, I can accept that side of the market, and if gems were cheap, that’s not good for the health of the game in the long-term because there’s a real dollar value attached to them, and that’s the basis of the game’s business model.

Loot is not. Loot is the virtual economy, and while the S/D of gems and its price is important to the virtual economy, supply of game items can be regulated and the market can be controlled.

I respect what Logun and others do, they’re clearly very savvy, do their homework and earn their “pay”. I simply feel manipulation is wrong and should be looked at by ArenaNet. If these people are needed to keep the market from crashing, it shows its deep flaws.

The boom/bust periods they create also make it extremely hostile for players who are not market gurus (i.e. they’re busy playing the game) to get their items without becoming collateral damage (e.g. unknowingly buying an item that a week ago was valued magnitudes cheaper).

In other ways, manipulation will alienate players. I’ll take the example of chocolate and how shocking prices have been forced to swing. A new player that sees 10c chocolate for their cooking skills will probably have a good experience. Now consider it at 10x value. That’s some sticker shock, depressing, and I know I’ve had this encounter as I leveled my own crafting as I navigate the “bubbles”.

I know inflation is bad but neither is volatility. It promotes wild speculation, fears and the market becomes wide open for middle-men to who launder everything and reap profits. They get while the getting is good and cash out when they want to get paid. To those that really need the items, they better find themselves on the ground floor because the marketeers will get there early.

I’ll say again I have nothing but praise for those that do this intelligently and don’t go on forums dropping false speculation and lie to people, and use their skills wisely. But this is why there are regulations in the real world that would (I hope) prevent the level of exploitation as seen in this thread.

At the end of the day players will find a way, it is the developer that needs to set the rules. Swings from 6c to >1s are totally unacceptable. Create stability on our market, Anet.

Sidebar: I liked the Guild Wars economy a lot because the majority of the market was easily accessible to all players. Power trading didn’t really have an adverse effect on the average player because the big money was made on the super high-end (that casuals were out of anyway). Manipulation of this economy absolutely hurts everyone but those that do it well. It honestly feels like management is outsourced to profiteers.

So, essentially what you want is for this to be a grinders/farmers market where you make the most gold by contributing the most raw material to the tradingpost?

OrianZeta.1537:

In other ways, manipulation will alienate players. I’ll take the example of chocolate and how shocking prices have been forced to swing. A new player that sees 10c chocolate for their cooking skills will probably have a good experience. Now consider it at 10x value. That’s some sticker shock, depressing, and I know I’ve had this encounter as I leveled my own crafting as I navigate the “bubbles”.

If this was true for every single item on the market, I would probably agree on the Anet participation part, because that would drive up the total costs for the ‘normal customer’ big time.
But as of right now there are very little ingredients controlled to this extent.

To grab your example: For cooking, you need 1 chocolate bar for every single of the 16 recipes. Should you decide to discover them all, buying chocolate bars for a price of 1 silver each, that would cost you as much as using 5 way points on level 80.

If buying chocolate bars for that price gets you depressed, you should stop playing the game before you reach level 80

I can understand your frustration but the difficulties you are currently seeing are not being caused by power traders. Below is how I believe we got into our current situation and why I think prices will continue to fluctuate.

Logun.5360:

I haven’t been hit as hard as others but that is because my expenditures have been limited to buying bag space and my income has been more than sufficient cover those expenses. However, It was disheartening when the buying power of my gold in regards to the cash shop decreased by roughly 60% in a very short period of time. At that time, I had roughly 1500g which would have cost me $3,750 to purchase, had I bought my gold with real money right before the first major drop, I would have seen a loss of roughly, $2,250.

It is now much cheaper to create a guild and buy influence for bag slots, than it is to buy gems for an bag slot, bank slot, or character slot. Which to me, seems unintended.

I haven’t been playing the game outside of the TP much lately. In fact, I’m wearing the gear I made for myself when I first turned 80. But, when I consider that most people make their money farming (which gave terrible returns before the bot bans) and that they also have expenses like repair bills and way points, I would be really discouraged with the rapid raise in prices for things like pre-cursors and T6 mats.

All this being said, i think two things happened that caused the problem we see today. One, a vast supply of gold (maybe as high as 40% entire economy) was essentially converted (destroyed) with the launch of the Halloween. As I’ve stated in my other thread, I use a mutual/hedge fund strategy to make the majority of my gold, so every night I’m essentially buying and selling every raw material in the market. When the Halloween event went live, the trading post went dead (at least in everything other than candy corn). Now I’m exaggerating a bit but the decease in actively was incredibly reduced on the buying side of the market some in part by people doing other things but I believe it was mainly do to the destruction of huge portion of total GPD of GW2. Gold to Gems to Chest to…Candy Corn. The bots had yet to be banned so the supply side drove the entire market down to vendor price or near to it on many items because no one had any money…The house edge was so bad on those chest that ArenaNet had to create magic gold fountains to try and get some money back into the economy. Which leads into the second part of the problem. Magic gold fountains (crappy Halloween item conversion in the Mystic Forge) and drastically reduced supply from banned bots. These two things, plus the introduction of Ascended gear, lead to a raising market and massive price increases on T6 items. And since a large amount of gold was added back to the economy through means other than cash to gems to gold. The decreased value of gold to gems remained roughly the same, obviously by intent.

You asked me how I’d fix the system? I really don’t know, especially with knowing so little of what is going on from the ArenaNet side. However, I think ArenaNet has created a serious problem for themselves. They have built a cash shop that generates the majority of it’s money from gambling. Players don’t want to gamble, they want to know the price of an item and then they can decide if they can afford it. Even so, it’s not so bad because it’s gambling, it’s bad because it’s gambling at terrible odds. How long could a casino stay in business if the house edge on blackjack was 99/1 instead of 51/49? Players spent tons of real money gems and got candy corn, some spent hundreds of dollars trying to get a chainsaw skin and got jack. Rightly so, they got mad and complained about it on the forums and ArenaNet acknowledged it. So next time around, instead of offering direct items, they again offered the gambling chests but wait, they doubled the odds… so now instead of 99/1, you had a 98/2 chance of getting what you want (I don’t know the percentage to get a chainsaw skin, i’m just using 99/1 as an example.)

I realize ArenaNet needs to make money, I can totally respect that and I’d like to support them. I’d buy power trader potions for straight cash if that was the only way they were offered. But they are in a dangerous position in terms of driving off long term customers for short term gain. If they don’t change their system, we will potentially see great swings because an increasingly smaller and smaller group of people will need to be persuaded to gamble to generate the cash they need, and they have tied cash, directly or almost directly, to the exchange rate of gold.

OrianZeta.1537:

On the gems side, I chipped away in PvE until I had a small fortune, enough to snag the 600 I need for another Bank tab; it’s getting awfully crowded in there.

Orian,

I’d stay away from gold to gems right now. If you need bag space, turn your for character slots into bag men or create a couple of guilds. If you go the guild route, you’ll need 2500 influence to get 50 slots, which has a fixed cost of 5g if you buy it from the guild promoter. Below is the cost per slot for your storage choices listed best to worst at current gold to gem costs.

1. A free character slot, 80 slots with 4 15 slot bags (2.6g or 3.25s per slot)
2. Guild Bank, 50 slots (5g or 10s per slot)
3. Purchased character slot, 80 slots (16g or 20s per slot)
4. One Bank space, 30 slots (10g or 33s per slot)
5. One Bag space with 15 slot bag (7g35s or 49s per slot)

Tarang.7562:

So, essentially what you want is for this to be a grinders/farmers market where you make the most gold by contributing the most raw material to the tradingpost?

If by “grinders/farmers” you mean a player generally has to play to earn and market price manipulation is much less feasible and profitable, yes, I want that economy.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

If buying chocolate bars for that price gets you depressed, you should stop playing the game before you reach level 80

You missed my point. Consider not only creations it takes to level the craft but the indefinite use in food. It’s not like smithing where you really have no use for piles of low level mats; the use of chocolate starts early and stays a constant.

By the way, judgment of what is/isn’t a lot of money is entirely relative. We’re still talking about manipulating prices on orders of magnitude (1,667% by one example). Do you at least find that wrong on principle?

OrianZeta.1537:

Tarang.7562:

So, essentially what you want is for this to be a grinders/farmers market where you make the most gold by contributing the most raw material to the tradingpost?

If by “grinders/farmers” you mean a player generally has to play to earn and market price manipulation is much less feasible and profitable, yes, I want that economy.

So let me get this straight, you think forcing people to play in a certain way is a good move?

Cause I sure as hell know I hate PvE and all it entails, the mere thought of playing any more against crappy AI makes me want to throw up. But you wan’t to force that on me cause it’s so much more fun?

This is exactly the problem with the ascended gear right now, it is essentially forcing people to go through a dungeon even if they don’t want to, to get that kind of gear.

OrianZeta.1537:

By the way, judgment of what is/isn’t a lot of money is entirely relative. We’re still talking about manipulating prices on orders of magnitude (1,667% by one example). Do you at least find that wrong on principle?

If you are concerned about manipulation of prices, you need look no further than our gracious hosts and the gem market. I’d also remind you of the multiple crap into gold options that have been implemented in the last four months (i.e. butter, chocolate, tonics, logs, etc. etc. and the mystic forge.)

I agree with you about bots and gambling, undoubtedly the former has a disastrous effect on the economy, and I’ve read those pre-cursor and Halloween threads of angry and disillusioned players. These are all very serious issues, but as this isn’t so much a topic about macroeconomics but wealth-earning, I suppose it’s outside the scope of discussion. Still, valid points, and boiled down it comes back to Anet. Their game, their issues and us players have to live in their world and abide.

Logun.5360:

1. A free character slot, 80 slots with 4 15 slot bags (2.6g or 3.25s per slot)
2. Guild Bank, 50 slots (5g or 10s per slot)
3. Purchased character slot, 80 slots (16g or 20s per slot)
4. One Bank space, 30 slots (10g or 33s per slot)
5. One Bag space with 15 slot bag (7g35s or 49s per slot)

Believe me I won’t touch gems-for-gold with a longbow (spikes have been over the 2g mark per 100 gems) I’ve been making use of a mule for all I can, but soulbound items are not allowed to leave your inventory or your bank account as far as I know. Still, how do you receive #1 on your list?

If I were a player farming a lot and could sell the chocolate bar I found for more because of price manipulation, would I not be happy?

So I do not think it is necessarily a problem, would depend on the specific item and purpose, also on the price, not on the % increase.

By the way, I never talked about ‘a lot of money’, I simply put it in relation to fixed way point costs.

OrianZeta.1537:

I agree with you about bots and gambling, undoubtedly the former has a disastrous effect on the economy, and I’ve read those pre-cursor and Halloween threads of angry and disillusioned players. These are all very serious issues, but as this isn’t so much a topic about macroeconomics but wealth-earning, I suppose it’s outside the scope of discussion. Still, valid points, and boiled down it comes back to Anet. Their game, their issues and us players have to live in their world and abide.

Logun.5360:

1. A free character slot, 80 slots with 4 15 slot bags (2.6g or 3.25s per slot)
2. Guild Bank, 50 slots (5g or 10s per slot)
3. Purchased character slot, 80 slots (16g or 20s per slot)
4. One Bank space, 30 slots (10g or 33s per slot)
5. One Bag space with 15 slot bag (7g35s or 49s per slot)

Believe me I won’t touch gems-for-gold with a longbow (spikes have been over the 2g mark per 100 gems) I’ve been making use of a mule for all I can, but soulbound items are not allowed to leave your inventory or your bank account as far as I know. Still, how do you receive #1 on your list?

1. is for the other four characters besides your main, that you are allowed to make. All of your characters share the same pickup tab and bank. So whatever you put in the bank (don’t know if it works for soul bound items) your other characters can put in their bags.

Tarang.7562:

So let me get this straight, you think forcing people to play in a certain way is a good move?

Cause I sure as hell know I hate PvE and all it entails, the mere thought of playing any more against crappy AI makes me want to throw up. But you wan’t to force that on me cause it’s so much more fun?

This is exactly the problem with the ascended gear right now, it is essentially forcing people to go through a dungeon even if they don’t want to, to get that kind of gear.

I’m not sure where tightening up the market forces you to change how you play. If you have a problem with Ascended gear, then that’s a separate issue. Believe me. I’m a strong advocate for having two distinct communities and Gods above that don’t try to get us all to trade hats for our rewards.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

If I were a player farming a lot

And that already excludes me. Done the “zerg” (zzz), it’s overrated and not for casuals, and I’ve never farmed a mob. That’s for serious players, I work on my goals and grind is not worth my time. You do make a good point, high prices have benefits to those that find themselves on the right side (supply). However, if you’re on the wrong end of price swings, you hurt, and casuals don’t sit on items waiting for the market to pop one way or the other (as I’ve mentioned, I have enough space issues with only one bank tab, to say nothing of the need to invest time watching and documenting market trends).

The fact is when I need something, I want to buy it, and timing can be everything. Something like chocolate should be stable. Candy corn, that was a thing.

As you noticed yourself, the argument works both ways as there exist different styles of play.
One side is losing, one is winning. The solution would be fixed prices, but that would make the whole thing a lot less exciting.

It remains to see if Anet cares or not, and if they are willing to step in (again).

While personally I find the idea of playing the TP to be rather distasteful with regards to the effects it has on the economy, I imagine that ANet will not step in as some people are genuinely enjoying this unorthodox “playstyle”, and because ANet can correct the economy through introduction of new recipes, increasing drop rates etc. if certain materials start becoming so expensive that it’s priced out of reach for the average player.

As for me, I’m a long way away from worrying about Ascended items or Legendaries, so I’m taking a wait-and-see approach with regards to how the economy looks by the time I get there. In the meantime, I’m more than able to farm the mats and items I need through normal play, so price spikes and manipulation don’t affect me insofar as it might actually increase prices for excess mats I wish to sell.

Q: Can lodestones be sold, successfully, at lowest sale price (undercut 1c or w/e) rather than instantly to highest offer? I have a few lodestones I think 7 or 8 and I would like to sell at optimum price, but do want to have to re-post expensive items and I thnk perhaps these kinds of items work differently.