Guild Wars 2

I just started this experiment yesterday and opened a topic in the BLTC Forum, which is now closed and locked due to forum reorganisation.
The closed topic with some discussion can be found here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/bltc/I-gonna-manipulate-a-market/first#post4613131
As the topic hasnt been transfered here automatically, i will copy the OP here:
Market Manipulation is an often and hotly discussed topic here.
I think its so because many people have alot of different definitions of what market manipulation really is.
Manipulation in general is seen as something negative. For me, MM in GW2 is a sceme in which someone gains gold profit in an unintended or unallowed way, for example via a crafting, salvage, forge or duplicate exploit or using a third party program like a bot.
Many people also often use MM in connection with using alot of gold to buy out certain limited items in order to raise the price and sell with a profit.
While my stance (and I think Arenanet agrees with this) is that this is perfectly fine and working as intended, i can understand that some people might look at this as unethical.
Well, today until the end of the year I will do just that and will try to update and document all my transactions on a daily basis right here. In upcoming posts i will describe some more details and my personal opinion on certain aspects like supply, demand, price, background to the items involved and my personal trade history.
The Item, whose price i I will be manipulating is:
https://www.gw2tp.com/item/41576-recipe-plate-of-frostgorge-clams?full=1
Status Quo:
Highest bid: 55.15s
Demand: 1176
Own bids: 0
Lowest listing: 78.98s
Supply: 130
Own supply: 73
Own Listings: 0
Overall Value of Supply on TP: 129g45s61c
Spread: 11.98s
Own Stock Value when selling directly: 19g95s56c
Own Stock Value when undercutting the lowest listing by 1c: 57g64s81c
I just bought out all remaining supplies of the recipe and relisted 44 of them at the following prices:
1@78s
10@1g
10@2g
10@3g
10@4g
1@5g
1@10g
1@20g
After trade:
Highest bid: 55.15s
Demand: 1176
Own bids: 0
Lowest listing: 99s99s
Supply: 44
Own supply: 159
Own Listings: 43
Overall Value of Supply on TP: 135g
Spread: 29.84s
Own Stock Value when selling directly: 21g88s88c
Own Stock Value when undercutting the lowest listing by 1c: 159g
Fair trade, fellas!

/popcorn

Interested to see how this plays out in the new general discussion as opposed to BLTC… it’s like two experiments in one.

I’ve gotten burned so badly doing this xD Good luck.

This is why Anet should never have one time items. Gl with it though…

How it plays out? Wanze succeeds in his undertaking and soon after 2355465767868 new Wanzes will follow his path.

What’s the website where you got your picture?

Step 1, buy all of an item with a limited quantity.
Step 2, relist all of said item for 800x the price you bought them for.
Step 3, ruin it for everyone.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Step 1, buy all of an item with a limited quantity.
Step 2, relist all of said item for 800x the price you bought them for.

Step 3, more of that item is listed within 30 minutes, forcing you to eat massive losses in order to unload your product.

The majority of supply is not on the TP, but in banks. When people see the price jump they will quickly swarm the market with undercuts and you will lose your investment.

mtpelion.4562:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Step 1, buy all of an item with a limited quantity.
Step 2, relist all of said item for 800x the price you bought them for.

Step 3, more of that item is listed within 30 minutes, forcing you to eat massive losses in order to unload your product.

The majority of supply is not on the TP, but in banks. When people see the price jump they will quickly swarm the market with undercuts and you will lose your investment.

Haha yep, and it’s an expensive lesson. Plus, the large buy/sell gap will attract flippers that just see a huge per-item profit, not realizing how slowly the market moves on certain items…

Like I said earlier. Good luck OP :-P

The only way you can successfully profit off of a buy/relist scheme is if it is an incredibly low volume/high speed/low cost market.

You need to be able to recoup your buyout costs on the first few sales before anyone undercuts you, which isn’t possible in nearly all markets.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

/popcorn

Interested to see how this plays out in the new general discussion as opposed to BLTC… it’s like two experiments in one.

As you can see, in the BLTC forum, people were discussing the findings with this experiment, since it’s basically a test to check the waters of the TP.

In the general forum, people are already whining about “controlling the market”. Maybe not realizing that this is an experiment lol.

Aaaahh, I missed that part where it’s an experiment.

I just checked the listing and it’s working out surprisingly well. I’d have thought it’d be a bad idea to dump them all at those higher prices, though. Better to only list a few and see if it settles at a higher price. But I suck at playing the TP, though, so I’m probably missing something.

Yeah, if you look at my replies back in the old BLTC forum (RIP…), while I don’t agree with market manipulation or attempting to corner segments of the market in general, I’m very interested to see the results of whether this experiment succeeds. Many people, including John Smith himself, believe that such attempts invariably fail because either:

1. There is a lot of hidden supply in the game, with items remaining off the TP and in player’s banks and inventories. As soon as they see the rising prices, they rush to sell and undercut the person attempting to manipulate the prices, forcing them to either buy up the new supply, or risk making a huge loss.

2. The item in question is so slow moving or has such a low demand that while they successfully corner the market, income from it is so slow that it’s honestly not worth it to sink all that money into the attempt when you could be investing it elsewhere.

So the primary reason why I’m interested in seeing this play out is to see which camp is correct. Is it possible to make huge bank on manipulation/cornering, or will market forces ultimately prevail and force the price back to its old equilibrium in the end?

Zenith.6403:

What’s the website where you got your picture?

Its gw2tp.com

I like it more than spidy because the graphs look cleaner and because it lists ALL values and amounts of buy orders and sell listing in the little scroll down windows on the top right. The bulk of the buy orders for this item, lies at vendor value, actually. If I was to sell my whole stock of 159 recipes to the highest buy orders now, the lowest buy order i would fill would be 2.35s, while selling 15 recipes to myself actually, because i just posted a buy offer of 15 at 1g.
It also refreshes faster than spidy.

Spidy has still its use, if you are looking for profitable recipes for any material, as gw2tp doesnt offer that feature.

24 hours into this and from my 130g initial investment, i already recouped 33.78g while selling 22 of the 130 i bought.
Most of the sales came right after i posted this topic in the bltc Forum and I am pretty sure they were sold to some people who read it here.
Since then its been pretty quiet, which is generally a good thing. Even though not much recipes were bought up, only a handful single purchases, undercuts have been scarce as well. I only have seen 2 other recipes listed apart from mine.
If you check the supply curve from the last 6 months, you will see that supply went down in a steady curve (which indicates sales to costumers, who consume the recipe) at a rate of about 100 per month, so I hope to at least sell half of the recipes i bought up until the end of the year and breaking even. The difference will be, that i will end up with more recipes than i originally had, giving me additional income in a couple of months selling them to consumers, once the market died down again.

DeWolfe.2174:

This is why Anet should never have one time items. Gl with it though…

this recipe already got re-released during the Escape/Battle for LA releases.

Meh, re-releases don’t work for me as much as having every item in game farmable at all times. Even if it’s a rare drop, at least have it out in the world.

DeWolfe.2174:

Meh, re-releases don’t work for me as much as having every item in game farmable at all times. Even if it’s a rare drop, at least have it out in the world.

Well, since season 2, Anet is doing exactly that. I cant think of any tradeable goods that got newly introduced and dont drop anymore. Even Trick or Treat Bags can still be generated though maize balm.
The only exceptions i can think of are the refined nougats/fangs/skulls because Sonder the Seller doesnt trade in the normal versions anymore. I still think that is an oversight though, as he still trades candy corn for cobs.
And maybe discontinued BL weapon skins also fall under that category.

Having every item farmable all year round also isnt neccesarily a fool-proof counter mechanic to market manipulation like this. I will give you an example that you can easily compare with the Frostgorge Clam Recipe:

https://www.gw2tp.com/item/66494-recipe-ambrite-orichalcum-earring

That recipe was introduced in July with the Entaglement release as a drop from Buried Locked Chests in dry top. If you check the link or the picture i attached you will see that during the initial release it was available for a fistful of silver on the tp, just like the clam recipe during its first release (and during its re-release).
When season 2 went on a break in september/october, during the feature patch and halloween, price went up a little because supply didnt come in anymore because the mayority of players wasnt in dry top anymore farming chests but working on their collections or playing halloween.

After that, Season 2 resumed and players flocked to Silverwastes. During that time, buy orders actually bottomed out to a couple of copper. My guess is that people started cleaning out their banks to make space for the new items from SW. Small investors, that bought up supply during Sep/Oct, dumped their recipes in November.
Since then, 2 “buy-outs” happened, one quite recently, pushing the lowest listing to 1g and the highest bid to kitten , pushing it to about the same value that the clam recipe needed 16 months to achieve.
So over the course of 1 month, the value of the lowest listing was raised by 2500% and the one of the highest bid by a whopping 15000%.

And the earring recipe is still farmable, while the clam recipe only got rereleased for 2 -4 weeks after 1 year.

So what happened? The general player base decided to farm something else so not alot new supply is coming in and consumers rather buy it now than go farming it themselves, so demand is higher.

Its a good arguement that price changes are in fact, most of the time related to supply and demand from the general player base and not to market manipulation of a few traders.

Some movement going on since yesterday. My remaining 9 listings got undercut a couple of times by 1 copper each and someone listed 35 recipes at 2.9997g (raising the tp suppy by about 150%).
Whoever posted those made a mistake in my opinion because its far too many. Personally, i wont wait until those sold before tr4ying to sell some more of mine. I was ok with 1 or 2 listings under mine but 35 is definately too much. If those 35 represent the whole stock of another trader, i will have 1 less competitor who cant undercut my listings anymore. I listed 3 more recipes undercutting him by 1 copper, 1 of those listings already sold. Personally, i dont expect the lowest listing going over 2.9997g again until the end of the year and this experiment, unless the seller pulls them or another investor buys them up in bulk.
I also raised the lowest bid to 1g for now, placing 15 orders. I havent been overbid yet but i havent got an order filled either.
Overall, even if I knew that it was a slow moving market (one reason why i chose this item), it has been slower than expected. I estimated at least a couple or tens of thousands of those recipes still in possession of players but I think its safe to say, that alot of accounts that still have supply of these are inactive or arent aware of my buy out for now. I wouldnt be surprised if the overall supply on the tp will be higher than before my buy out at the end of december.

Could you post a weekly or monthly wrapup with kitten of the item from the site to keep us updated on the graphs? I find this fascinating.

eithinan.9841:

Could you post a weekly or monthly wrapup with kitten of the item from the site to keep us updated on the graphs? I find this fascinating.

I dont wrap up kittens, sry.

First I planned to do this every day but its been so slow that i found it easier to document any changes (and my opinion about it) in text.
I will definately do one on friday and on sunday.

I dont remember exactly what i wrote but I know i didnt use foul language. maybe i used link, or graph. or SS.

edit: any of which would bring a visual component focusing on the time you are focusing on. Obviously in the OP you kindly provided a link for all the information needed. I am currently looking at different markets with low supply low drop to see if I notice anyone following in your footsteps with other items.

No way there are tens of thousands of that recipe still in players hands.

That recipe only dropped from one living story instance 20 months ago. The dungeon reward was once per day per character and took almost an hour (this dungeon was split into two entire fractals, with the lengthy unskippable escort part removed).

The recipe was a booby prize for players who didnt get the mini, monocle, or tonic recipe. Most players who got one used it as a consumable.

The food wasn’t desirable, and usually isnt especially profitable to craft. The expensive ingredients in the food can be crafted into more demanded foods, which is the only reason this food keeps any value.

Plus, you jacked up the price. The sales should come in at a slow trickle. But the fact that barely anybody jumped in to undercut you is evidence that you picked a good market to manipulate.

eithinan.9841:

I am currently looking at different markets with low supply low drop to see if I notice anyone following in your footsteps with other items.

I already noticed more activity on all other recipes from that dungeon.

and in 23 hour this is shuffled to page 4…

new forums = fail

maybe ill go use the search func….oh wait….

Anet please bring back the TP forum.

eithinan.9841:

and in 23 hour this is shuffled to page 4…

new forums = fail

maybe ill go use the search func….oh wait….

Must be thread inflation.

Not much happened on friday, sold one more and listed 1 more, holding highest bid as well for most of the day but no purchases.

Status Quo and variation to start of experiment:
Highest bid: 100,02s +45s
Demand: 1223 +47
Own bids: 1 +1
Lowest listing: 299.94s +221s
Supply on TP: 65 -65
Own supply: 152 +79
Own Listings: 27 +27
Own Listings Value: 117g +117g
Overall Value of Supply on TP: 230g +100g
Spread: 155s +143s
Own Supply Value when selling directly: 48g +36g
Own Supply Value when undercutting the lowest listing by 1c: kitten .98g +398g
Items sold: 24 +24
Value of sales: 39.78g +39.78g

Attachment graphs show prices, supply and demand since the beginning of this week, shortly before my buyout.

In another game I played long ago there was a group that wanted to corner the dye market and set and control the prices of dyes, especially the rarer ones. Dyes in that game were all crafted and to get the materials for the rare ones was a tedious process. A handful of us “crafters” did not want to join the cartel and so we would make up as many of the rare dyes as possible even spending hours on end gathering the mats and then undercut the cartel. They would be forced to buy us out and we would use the profits to make up more. It was not long before they gave up trying to dictate the market and the handful of us were rather well off.

Theftwind.8976:

In another game I played long ago there was a group that wanted to corner the dye market and set and control the prices of dyes, especially the rarer ones. Dyes in that game were all crafted and to get the materials for the rare ones was a tedious process. A handful of us “crafters” did not want to join the cartel and so we would make up as many of the rare dyes as possible even spending hours on end gathering the mats and then undercut the cartel. They would be forced to buy us out and we would use the profits to make up more. It was not long before they gave up trying to dictate the market and the handful of us were rather well off.

Without being able to control supply, it isnt possible to monopolize a market.
For this recipe, new supply cant be generated unless Anet rereleases (which I expect to happen around April). But I still have to worry about supply in other peoples banks, which is the hardest part when doing stuff like this. Fortunately, I have seen very few undercuts until now and those that came, mostly came in big chunks, which is good for me.

@Thirdeye:

1. I already talked about that point in prior posts here.
2.If I even profit (and after how much time) remains to be seen. Until now, all I did, was spread my wealth to other players because i bought out every single recipe and paid for some listings that have been on the tp for 12-18 months. So i made more people happy than I influenced in a bad way, for now.
3. For the past 6 months, supply steadily went down at a rate of ~3/day. It would have been only a matter of time, until supply would eventually run out on the tp and prices would rise without me manipulating it.
4. It remains to be proven that prices for “good” skins (whatever you mean by that) are, in fact, being manipulated. All data and posts that John Smith published until now on that matter seem to point towards that not being the case.

Third Eye.6718:

Yep fair enough Wanze, I wish you well in your experiment : ).

In regards to good (i.e. desirable) skins price manipulation, flipping items whereby prices become inflated or simply buying out all stock is what I deem a form of manipulation. Likewise, Anet limiting availability or methods of attainment is another way…

These are just a given to me (no John Smith confirmation required) and what I’m pointing to in that when implemented in imbalanced ways can create negative roll on effects both in game and for the people playing. Cheers.

Flipping items doesnt push the average price upwards and that buy outs have any significant impact on prices has to be proven, feel free to try.

In my opinion, a buy out scheme can only be succesful, if there is more demand than supply for the item, otherwise the manipulator will have a hard time to sell his supply over time and will constantly be undercut. In that case, he will most of the time, lose gold and those that are profiting from it are the ones that owned the listings that were bought out.
I think with most buy out schemes, you can be happy, if you break even within a month because you wont be able to sell all your stock via listings. Your real gain would be that you will have more of the items that you manipulated than before the buy out.

If we take precursors as an example, everybody moans about the incredibly rare droprate but i expect the overall droprate of each precursor among the whole player base from loot drops to be extremely stable because it cant really be influenced by players (except with magic find) because nearly all content drops precursors, you cant really famr them. But forging a precursor is farmable.

In October, the Lab at halloween gave a huge influx of t5 fine mats, which make up most of the costs to craft lvl 80 rares to throw into the forge.
During those 2 weeks, prices for t5 mats fell by about 1/3 sparking a huge forging frenzy for pres (mithril doubled in price during halloween). The next update was SW and the initial Amber farm, which kept t5 fine mats coming and also injected alot of mithril again. At that point, you could forge a pre for 66% of the gold that you had to pay a month before (on average). Most precursors took a dip in value during that time (and ever since), even though not as big as 33%. That is propably mostly due to the fact that most farmers still got a good amount of gold from selling all their farmed mats from Lab/SW because even though prices for those were surpressed, the average amount was still higher than regular farms and they made up for it in volume. The farmer just sees how often he gets a drop but most of the time doesnt consider that he only gets 66% of the value for it than a month before. The real winners in that scenario are the forgers who had to pay 33% less for their mats and only had to deal with a minimal loss of value for pres during that time because even though they added more supply than usual, demand went up as well because lots of farmers actually accumulated enough gold to buy one.

Getting back on topic: If somebody did a buyout scheme right before halloween on precursors, he will have an even harder time to minimize his losses because he simply cant control supply.

Third Eye.6718:

Yep fair enough Wanze, I wish you well in your experiment : ).

In regards to good (i.e. desirable) skins price manipulation, flipping items whereby prices become inflated or simply buying out all stock is what I deem a form of manipulation. Likewise, Anet limiting availability or methods of attainment is another way…

These are just a given to me (no John Smith confirmation required) and what I’m pointing to in that when implemented in imbalanced ways can create negative roll on effects both in game and for the people playing. Cheers.

This sort of thing doesn’t actually happen. It has been demonstrated (by JS) that even the highest demanded items like precursors are produced and sold too quickly for an individual or small group to control the market. The only items that even could be manipulated are those that are no longer produced at all, such as the first Halloween themed weapons, and there are enough of those still in players’ banks that any attempt to manipulate the market will quickly be overwhelmed as other speculators undercut the manipulator. If they don’t, Anet can easily step in and stop the manipulation by reintroducing the items, since they control the means of production.

As for Anet deliberately manipulating the markets, it only happens in the interest of the player base as a whole, and to improve the game experience overall. In-game wealth is meaningless to the devs, and no one in his right mind is going to risk his job by setting up a situation where some players have a great advantage or disadvantage compared to other players. Those who are stupid enough to try won’t be around long.

What happens is that there are many different kinds of players and Anet tries to put some content into the game for everyone. There are items that can be bought on the TP that probably shouldn’t be, and items that can’t be bought but should be, but overall the complaints come from those who want an item that was not intended for their playstyle.

5 more sold in the last 24 hours. Attached a breakdown of my sales so far:

I was kinda busy yesterday with sorting my trading guild banks, personal bank and bags, getting ready for wintersday, placing buy orders etc.
So i wasnt able to post.

I sold 6 recipes over the weekend, which is a decent turnout. I got undercut a couple of times (and 1 or 2 recipes were sold by someone else) but i had the lowest listing most of the time.
I also decided yesterday to pull most of my buy orders (which were around 1g and 2g). During the first week, I also had the highest bid for most of the time but no recipe was sold to me. So the highest bid is back to 1g2c, which is also my bid.
Funny enough, 1 got 1 recipe this morning sold to me for 1g2c.

So after the first week, i sold 32 recipes, earning back 63g of the initial 130g i spent.

A large buy out just happened, all 80 recipes listed at 3g and below got bought out.

The culprit who did this actually posted here but since then removed his post, so i wont reveal his identity.
I only sold 22 recipes in this batch, as there were 2 bulk listings from other players, 18 and 36 recipes each, iirc.

some updated estimated numbers after 1 week:
131 recipes bought out spending 131g.
54 recipes sold for 129g (without fees and taxes), so i nearly got back my initial investment.
I have 13 listings left on the tp (no other listings online except mine) worth 75g.
i have 64 recipes left in my bank from the initial buy out plus ~75 from an earlier purchase.

Just a note about my initial stock:
I am not entirely sure, if i bought them during the initial release 18 months agoor during the rerelease during the final of Season 1 this spring and for which price but i would guess that i paid less than 10s for those on average.
I tried filtering my purchase history for the recipe and clicking on “load more results” but after 100 clicks i actually gave up. Not sure, if the new TP UI will actually enable us to load our full history since launch, if we click long enough, and if each click reloads a certain amount of transactions or all transactions for a certain time period.

Not much movement during the last day, which was expected with wintersday going live.
I dont expect much movement through the week as well and as I am making good profits with wintersday atm, i gonna let this rest a little until the end of the week.
Still trying to have lowest listing and highest bid.

I pulled my listings at 4 and 5g, then started relisting (and undercutting the undercutters) at 10g.

Until now, i sold 57 recipes for a total of 148g, 126g profit after taxes.
So i basically only need to sell 1 more recipe to break even, with only half of the recipes sold that I bought out.

So essentially, it seems that Theory 2 of my first post in this thread was correct. While there is profit to be made here (in the sense that you now own a lot more “goods” that could potentially be resold down the line), the movement is so slow and demand so low that honestly most players would be better served trying to invest elsewhere. (Of course, 12 days is not much of an investment period. In 6 – 12 months down the line, this could indeed pay big dividends. However, I expect to most players that’s far too long for their purposes.)

As a side note, Wintersday has been quite a profitable experience for me so far too, as I’ve been selling any Gifts that I get instead of opening them. It was especially delightful during the initial 24 hours.

I’ve been selling any Gifts that I get instead of opening them

… but, think of the shinies inside! ;P With recycling, I’ve been continuously buying/forging gifts, opening, and repeating, and haven’t lost any gold in the process. I still haven’t seen a Lyssa recipe yet though (looted 3x breathers before seeing a Grenth… ), so… I shall continue to chase the carrot.

EDIT: Err.. oops. Dwayna*, not Lyssa.

Uh, I don’t think the Lyssa recipes drop from the Wintersday Gifts at all. They were only from Gauntlet chances during the Crown Pavilion.

Zaxares.5419:

So essentially, it seems that Theory 2 of my first post in this thread was correct. While there is profit to be made here (in the sense that you now own a lot more “goods” that could potentially be resold down the line), the movement is so slow and demand so low that honestly most players would be better served trying to invest elsewhere. (Of course, 12 days is not much of an investment period. In 6 – 12 months down the line, this could indeed pay big dividends. However, I expect to most players that’s far too long for their purposes.)

As a side note, Wintersday has been quite a profitable experience for me so far too, as I’ve been selling any Gifts that I get instead of opening them. It was especially delightful during the initial 24 hours.

Yeah, that was my theory as well. break even after 3 weeks and end up with more assets than before to sell. I am positive though that they will be rereleased in spring again, so i have to hurry up.
I propably make a 1-2 hundred more gold profit with them until then but thats it.
The good thing about recipes is that they stack and dont take up much space in your bank.

This week was very profitable for me. First off using all my stock of ugly clothing i had to exchange for gifts, opening them and selling them in the first 2 days, then i went on to regular flipping, which had better profits than i expected mainly due to the fact that Anet introduced new mf recipes every day and changed the loot tables of the gifts.
This weekend i have been crafting givers greatswords for other fools to throw down the forge.

Just sold the next recipe, which means i should have broken even right about now.

Any new updates? You broke even, so how is the profit going?

I already sold some more recipes, will post some updated stats later.

Already looking for the next target.

OK, here are my final numbers with variation to the start of the experiment:

Status Quo and variation to start of experiment:
Highest bid: 310s +255s
This is of course a substancial raise. However, there are only 6 bids higher than the initial highest bids of 55 silver, so selling to buy orders now isnt really a valid option to ged rid of bulk stock.

Demand: 1184 +8
Not much to see here. The bulk of those with over 1000 was at 3 copper or lower anyways.

Own bids: 0 +/- 0
I usually put own bids in to check how much gets sold to buy orders. I had the highest bid for the most part of the first 10 days. I got 3 additional recipes through buy orders at 80s, 100s and 200 silver. After 2 weeks, i stopped bothering putting in bids.

Lowest listing: 550s +471s
Again a substancial raise. Mission accomplished.

Supply on TP: 130 +/-0
Now this is a curious fact. We ended up with exactly the same supply as before on the tp (though at higher prices). But im not surprised because usually buy outs draw attention to the item from other suppliers, who usually have some of them listed already. When they get sold during the initial buy out, they see it in their transactions tab and start listing some of their additional stock. So we could say that buy outs my deplete supply on the tp initially but tend to draw more supply out of players personal stock over time.

Own supply: 116 +43
Right now i have 116 recipes in my inventory, 43 more than the initial 73 i owned before the buy out. As I already broke even in terms of gold, those 43 new recipes should be considered “profit”.

Own Listings: 22 +22
From the 130 listings, 22 are mine. I tried to always have the lowest listing. Usually, 0-3 recipes sell per day, unless another investor buys up in bulk (which happened frequently during the first 2 weeks). From the 68 recipes i sold, 32 single recipes sold, the other 34 sold in batches of 2 or more.

Own Listings Value: 198g
My 22 listed recipes would give me another 198g, if they would sell. Sounds nice but for 150g worth of my recipes to be sold, over 90 recipes from other sellers have to be sold first. And i am still undercutting as well at current prices.

Overall Value of Supply on TP: 963g +833g
While the average recipe cost 1g before my buy out, its now more than 7g.

Own Supply Value when selling directly: 31g +19g
There still isnt much substancial demand in form of buy orders, so selling directly in order to cash in is not an option.
Own Supply Value when undercutting the lowest listing by 1c: 637g +550g
Thats a huge amount considering my initial costs 130 gold plus 3.8g in later buy orders.
However, it will take a long time to sell all these and there is a risk of being undercut.
My next aim is to sell recipes worth around 100g per month until they get re released.

Items sold: 68
I sold a bit more than half of my recipes i bought (130 initially 3 through buy order)

Value of sales: 214g
Deducting fees and taxes, i got 182g, deducting investment costs of 134 gold, i got 48 gold profit. Within a month, thats an average return. I would propably have made more profit with flipping, crafting greatswords etc. but those usually take some more time per day. I basically only had to check up on listings once or twice per day.

The attachment shows the graphs of highest bid and lowest listing in the upper graph and supply in the lower graph since shortly before i bought out. I disabled the demand graph because it barely moved and with 1000 insignifacant buy orders below 3 copper, you wouldnt see the changes in supply that good.

Thanks Wanze for making an item much more expensive than before. Totally unneeded.

Malediktus.9250:

Thanks Wanze for making an item much more expensive than before. Totally unneeded.

If you wanted one, you could have bought one for less than 1g for 18 months.

What about all those people that had a recipe listed and i finally gave them the amount they asked for during the initial buy out? Lots of happy chaps.

And what makes you think that regular demand wouldnt have depleted the initial supply on the tp by now?

Hm, so what we can take from this is that if there is a limited supply of something, yes, it can be manipulated as long as you have the cash to do so from the start.

Now, while this recipe is basically limited, trying to apply this to something that can still be generated today, but perhaps at a greatly reduced rate, could also be possible, couldn’kitten For easy numbers sake, say there are 1000 of one item on the tp, with one added to the game a day. Thus, if someone(s) control those thousand, then that one won’t affect them much, thus allowing manipulation to continue.

Wanze.8410:

Malediktus.9250:

Thanks Wanze for making an item much more expensive than before. Totally unneeded.

If you wanted one, you could have bought one for less than 1g for 18 months.

What about all those people that had a recipe listed and i finally gave them the amount they asked for during the initial buy out? Lots of happy chaps.

And what makes you think that regular demand wouldnt have depleted the initial supply on the tp by now?

I dont want one otherwise I would have bought it long ago. But there are new people joining the game every day. And some of them might be interested in collecting all recipes for whatever reason. They must now pay over 5g instead of like 75s.

Also who cares about the people who finally sold their stuff (for an overpriced amount)? They were to greedy with their asked price to begin with if it did not sell for months without your help.