Hey,
I brought up this issue before but it seemed that commenters were more keen about being the smartest guy in the thread (and show it to everyone who comes around) rather than looking at the facts. But just before I start I have to mention that I may be biased as well, but for other reasons.
I’ve been around for quite a while. Well before HoT ever came out. And after like the 1st month of me playing gw2, I got into the ‘TP-stuff’… well because I wanted to make money. What a surprise! And through all this time I’v seen big fluctuations of prices and volume across the board. And nothing like the current situation has ever emerged before HoT. Not once! But some like to make it look like it all OK, fine and dandy. What am I talking about exactly? The same issue as in the previous topic: market flooding. There are some guys in this game who found out a way to get extreme quantities of goods for no or ignorable cost and they regularly dump it at the TP. Period. Some like to get ‘smart’ at this point and come up with alternative explanations (probably those who actually do it but dont want others to find it out) like: ‘they farmed it themselves and not being AFK’ or ‘running this dungeaon or that world event gets you even more’…
But if we look at the bare facts the situation looks way different (however I’m still open to hear other rational explanations for the situation than mine):
with rare interruptions – bolts of different cloths and squares of different leathers are used to flood the market continuously. Take rugged leather squares for example: the otherwise usual price would be between 11s and 13s50c or so (only seen it going higher once before HoT) and even to this day it actually does go back to this level when these big sellers occasionally run out of mats. But the next morning its hammered down to 9-10s again with large stacks of mats. And its the same with almost all bolts and squares. Take a look how these big sellers dumped their stuff again when the latest patch came out:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19740
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19742
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19744
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19733
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19736
They all go downhill around 13rd-14th of Dec. Except maybe rugged leather squares (probably they are a bit harder to come by because they are the items who tend to jump back to their normal prices more often than others). And supply shoots up at the same time. And sellers put up huge amounts of mats like 25-120 stacks. These just cant come from leagal sources I suspect. But if anyone can tell me how you can farm stuff to be able to put 12000 rugged leather squares at the TP for 9s30c and not get bankrupt I’m all open to that… but as long as some1 can enlighten me about this I remain firm about the idea that these sellers get their mats from illeagal sources thats why price really does not matter to them, because there is no investment or effort involved in getting them. So even selling them for 1c is worth it to them.
So… if its leagal then I’d like to know how its done? But if its not then I’d like to know why Anet does not do kitten about this for more than a year now?
p.s.: If nothing else convinces you: the gap between sell and buy price is virtually nonexistent now. There used to be a good 12-30% price gap between the sell and buy price of certain bolts and squares but now this gap has shrunk to 0-5%. Wanna make sure no1 undercuts you? List your stuff just 1c above the buy order preice so when competition rears its ugly head they cant undercut you because undercutting you only by 1c puts them on the lvl of the highest buy order. You see this a lot as well…