Guild Wars 2

Hello,

my question is: What is the reasoning behind the phenomena that many guys come around the TP and make their sale offer only 1 copper above the highest buy offer? Are they simply braindead or am I not getting something here?

I’ve come up with some possible explanations, and I’d like to get your take on them:

1. They are plain stupid, and that’s their only way to ensure no1 undercuts them (as going 1 copper lower would already mean selling it with the ‘meet highest buyer’ option). I can more or less accept this if the unit’s price is already low, because in that case that 1 copper difference could mean a 5-10% additional income compared to selling it with ‘meet highest buyer’ option. But when it comes to more expensive stuff like gear or something, then… 5g or 5,0001g??? They take the 15% cut if they sell it, and that 1 copper probably gets lost because of rounding-up/down. (The game uses only whole coppers as far as I know.) So all in all: if pricing your sale offers properly is rocket science for some1, then why dont they just sell it to the highest buy offerer?

2. This is trolling, and some guys just enjoy messing up the TP – even if that costs them some money. (In WoW there were a lot of guys like this. Well, at least on the server I played on…)

3. This is actually a wise thing to do, because if you not only push down the sale price, but you are also the highest buy offerer, than this makes your buy offer look prettier. Because others will think ‘The lowest sale offer is only 1 copper more than the highest buy offer, so I may as well just sell it to that guy, as I dont really care about that 1 copper.’ While if that guys sees that the lowest sale offer is 50%+ higher, then he may want to try his luck. So one logical explanation would be boosting your buy order’s popularity.

4. Its a move to simply jack down the price. Then go ‘hoarding mode’, wait till it climbs back up, and then sell.

The problem with 3 and 4 is that – according to my experience – they dont work. On high volume markets they get bought out in seconds/minutes. On low volume markets they drive down the price for weeks or even months. So this leads me to believe that 1 or 2 must be the explanation.

And finally… what do you do against it? Do you wait till its gone, do you buy them out?

Not a world-shaking problem, still I’m curious…

Thx for any1 who takes the trouble to read this.

Side effect of the TP.

Lets say you have 100 whatzits and you choose to sell it to the highest buy order for 50c each. Seems straight forward enough but lets say the player with that 50c buy order only wanted 50.

So what happens is the TP first creates a sell order for all 100 at 50c each. It then looks to see if some or all of that order can be filled. It sees the 50 at 50c buy order, assigns half of them to the buyer. Now you are left with a 50 at 50c sell order and buy orders under 50c with a reasonably high likelihood that the next buy order is at 49c.

Voila, a sell order 1c above the highest buy order.

It’s an illusion that you are selling your stuff to a particular buyer because all you really are doing is placing a sell order at that price.

Some people want to "guarantee’ they will sell their items fast but not to the point to sell to the highest buying, so they just undercut the lowest selling by 1c and then getting in front of the line in the selling order.

Belzebu.3912:

Some people want to "guarantee’ they will sell their items fast but not to the point to sell to the highest buying, so they just undercut the lowest selling by 1c and then getting in front of the line in the selling order.

This is why I do it.

I’m not remotely interested in ‘playing’ the Trading Post. I don’t want to waste my time tracking market fluctuations and trying to predict future prices for a bit of extra profit, I just want to convert whatever random items I’ve got into cash and carry on playing. But I also want to get a good price if I can.

And that’s where this system comes in. If the highest current buy order is better than the merchant value (after taxes) then I’ll sell it directly. If not (and if there are buy orders to show there’s some interest in the item) I’ll click ‘match lowest seller’ and remove 1c from the price.

It means I’m getting the going rate (minus 1c which as you said is negligible) but I’ve also ‘jumped’ to the front of the queue. Next time someone buys that item directly it’s my copy they’ll buy, which means there’s far less chance of the item just sitting on the TP indefinitely. (I’ll wait 14 days for them to sell before giving up and taking them down. I list dozens of items a week and remove maybe 1 a month.)

In summary I wouldn’t say people who do this are stupid, you’re just over estimating how much time, effort and thought other people want to put into the Trading Post. Like me they’re probably aware there are ways of making more of a profit, but they’re not interesting in learning them when this system is quick and easy and works well enough.

What the OP is talking about is not undercutting by 1 copper, but putting a sell offer at 1 copper above the highest buy offer. Like having Dawn drop, seeing that there is a buy offer for 700 gold and putting a sell offer in at 700 gold and 1 copper.

To answer OP’s question, the only time I have seen sell offers at 1c above it has been for high volume items where people just haven’t bothered to look at what the buy offer is and have just gone with the lowest bid or else have enough of the item that getting an extra copper 100 times is worth it.

There are always sellers who get an expensive item and immediately turn around and sell it to whoever is the highest buyer. I’ve gotten many, many things for 1c above the higher buyer, ranging from fast-moving commodities like mats to expensive skins. If you’re willing to be patient and keep over-bidding by 1c, you’ll eventually get what you want.

Again, the OP isn’t talking about 1c upping bids or 1c undercutting of sales. He’s asking about when lowest sale price is 1c above highest bid. Those sawtooth downward spikes in price histories we see all the time and inevitably it’s because a seller is selling more than the current highest bid wants and the leftovers are priced at the old highest bid while the next highest bid was only 1c less.

Ohhh… Sorry, I misunderstood what the OP was asking. Carry on then.

Behellagh.1468:

Again, the OP isn’t talking about 1c upping bids or 1c undercutting of sales. He’s asking about when lowest sale price is 1c above highest bid. Those sawtooth downward spikes in price histories we see all the time and inevitably it’s because a seller is selling more than the current highest bid wants and the leftovers are priced at the old highest bid while the next highest bid was only 1c less.

Yep, this is the explanation that fits the situation the most. You’re right. And from understanding it comes the conclusion that probably the best strategy against this is to wait till its gone. Like a storm or something…

ty

For example I wanna buy an item for a large amount at 39c, but the lowest selling price is 55c, then if i place 1 of that item at 40c on TP, all the sellers will find that selling 39c is better then they will sell their item at 39c to my highest buying price very quick.

Crossaber.8934:

For example I wanna buy an item for a large amount at 39c, but the lowest selling price is 55c, then if i place 1 of that item at 40c on TP, all the sellers will find that selling 39c is better then they will sell their item at 39c to my highest buying price very quick.

Yep, I thought about this as you can see it in my OP. This probably works for a short while, but then some1 buys your listing and its gone. If you are lucky you’ll get more items than you sell within the given time frame, but if you are unlucky (hardly any1 sells stuff to you, but buy out all your low listings) you will only waste a lot of stuff (selling it for too low price) while your buy orders dont get filled. Therefore I find this too risky, especially on high volume markets like ores or scraps.

my guess for this was always that ppl just had full inventories with more items waiting for them on the ground so they sold whatever for its lowest possible sell price rather than throwing it away, still not a good idea but that was my guess.

I call it the eBay shill effect…….