Guild Wars 2

Mystic, you hit the nail on the head. It’s something me and some of my friends have been
trying to figure out for months and months.
Specially under those extreme spike conditions.

I’ve agreed multiple posts ago, that monopoly is a bit far fetched perhaps.
But again , it’s a figure of speech.

In this case I’ve got this market so far cornered, that I can work it like a monopoly.

Here’s another example.

Last week friday, I pulled out my existing sales, but letting my buy orders roll.
To let the little supply available dry up a bit, and get some more active stock
Obviously to let price rise naturally without me further investing by buying out
the little supply available.

Within 24hours, sell price went up , it took 2+ days for buy orders to start going up.
All the way to what I was selling at last friday.
This offcourse by my own hand as well, cause I kept competing on the buy order to make sure the majority of units ends in my hands.
Only to the point where I know I might crash the market on that price.
The cool thing with that, is that usually the people that were competing at that moment.
End up dumping what little they have to my buy orders to cut there losses.

This accumalated into last night everybody letting go. And me sitting on as good as the
lowest possible price buy order again.
But selling @ 27.5% higher sale value then last week. By almost doing nothing.
Current sale value is now running at 75 c/per buying @ 30 c/per. ( fictive but true ratio )
In the last 2 hours alone I’ve made 2g profit.
Sometimes the situation doesn’t change for days on end.

You guys all speak about monopoly isnt possible, but then seem to think it is possible on event items.
You will never know how many are hanging around in the game, no matter what item.
Does it really matter if it’s a very common item or a rare limited time based items?

If anything limited time items are more obvious, and everybody with the money will jump on it.
I know I will once I have enough spare gold hanging around.
It seems however, because this is a cheap item, not very special at all. That people seem
to think it’s simply not worth putting the effort into.
Even though by any standard. Less then 50g investment, being turned into 100’s of gold
in
the first few months alone, is probably the least risky investment you could probably consider.

The first thing I and some around thought when we ran into it months ago. Was OMG…
how can we be this lucky to run into a gap this big.
Lets take it and see where it goes.
Now 5 months later. Still own it, still run it. And nobody has been able to even slightly
force me out of it.
Be it because they don’t want to, or because they don’t see the long term value in it.
I don’t know, but I’m loving it.

Still looking for more answers on my questions like Daimonos made a good example.
Would love to know feedback on my sale contract idea.

Mystic I agree and it’s what I’ve been doing all this time offcourse. And I don’t plan on
letting go any time soon.
I just like playing with ideas tho.
To stay honest with myself. I’d probably consider if somebody came up to me and offered
me a good solid amount of gold. Cause it would mean a lot of liquid that I could use to try my
hand at more expensive markets.

Still I think control like this is usually very expensive, for example limited time items for instance.
Or most actively used cheap items are incredibly contested in the market.
Finding something like the item I’m working with atm, I think might be hard if not impossible.
But because it’s so unique I think justifies indeed valueing this at numbers that Daimonos gave
as example.

-Panthura

Obviously the item I’m dealing with IS small enough to control by a single person.
Or I wouldn’t be talking about market control to begin with.

And even tho it’s a cheap item, it’s 80-120% average mark up makes it incredibly valueable long term.

Thank you for the example Daimonos, I’ve been thinking that path too.
The problem arives when I try to actually realisticly calculate a years revenue for it.
I haven’t really recorded every penny. And I don’t know how far transaction history goes back.
But the thought of recording thousands of transactions over all this time doesn’t really attract me.

I do know that the example I’ve given is very minimal, cause the spikes on certain weeks
have had an incredible effect on the revenue.
Where at some point, in the free weekend for example. I was moving volume wise in a day
what I normally moved in a week, and because of a push the day before at roughly double the regular sale price.
While barely raising the buy price, it was to much volume to fast for anybody but me
to deal with out of buy orders.
So a lot of the volume of it kept getting filled at the lowest possible price.
But sales were so fast, I actually had to burn 75% of my active stock that weekend even
on top of the non-stop active buying.
At peaks that weekend, I was selling per hour what I normally sold in a day. At 4x the buy price.

Marnick, there is some undercutting sometimes, offcourse there is.
But when you own 90% of the physical existence of product, at lower price then anybody else.
I can always cut lower then anybody else while sacrificing the least profit.
That usually ends up with said trader moving out cause it’s not worth it for them.
Leaving me yet again with the long term profit.

An idea I’ve have been spinning as well, is rather then trying to value to total thing for sale.
Is uhmm ‘contract’ basis.
Give over the control of the buy orders, the sell orders. But hold on to 50% of the physical extra stock.
And then sell the right to run it to somebody else.
At a buy in of say 100g, plus 25% of profit on a monthly basis. Which would make the
buy in into it much much lower.
Lowering the risk of whoever wants to run it. in the short term.

Trust is another discussion offcourse, but even if I would sell the total package, that would be true.
Nobody but the devs could check if I’ve given up everything , or if I sit on another 10.000 units.

Ìn it’s fullest sense of the word, I agree MakersMark.

To be clear, it’s more a figure of speech then anything else. It’s simply the best word I can use for it.

Do tell me if you have any better single word to describe controlling 90% of the total flow of an item in the market. Going in and going out. I sure have none.
For around half a year or longer for that matter.

I’m not going to disclose direct information of what I’m running, for obvious reasons.
I will give some realistic examples however of my experience over the last 6 months.
Using fictional value’s but correct ratio’s.

For one, this isn’t a long term investment item, bound to any event. It’s an all day everyday item.
Which is good, cause that makes it a very consistent market.

It is an item that can be crafted, however here comes the layout :

The item in question can be crafted for say, 90 copper per unit.
Vendor value is 22 copper per unit.

You can smell what’s coming from here.
I’ve consistently owned the buyorder on the trade post on 23 copper per unit.
With about 10.000 units at that value at any given time. Owned by just me.
This is something easy to verify myself, because there’s simply no other numbers out
there besides the ones I own.
1 + 1 = 2 and all that.

On average. I have about the same amount of active stock as I have in buy orders.
So say I have around 10.000 stock, Usually most of it in the bank
Sometimes a lot of it actually supplied in the market cause i don’t feel like managing it
for a while.
And actively on a day to day basis, anywhere from 1000 to 3000 units sell, but come in
just as fast on buy orders.
Average selling price has been anywhere from 50-75 copper unit. Depending on how
far I forced it.
At unique times even selling @ 100-120 copper per unit. Above crafting costs just to see
how long it would take for the community to catch on.

However, for some reason, the small amount of units that show up in the world via random drops. Which is incredibly minimal.
Or through people crafting a few to lvl their craft.
100’s and 100’s of players end up selling those few units to the buy order.
The few that do put tiny amount of units on the market never end up influencing the market.
Cause lets face it, on 1000-3000 units of flow per day, 50-100 units aren’t going to have
an influence.

It’s an open market, nothing is ever garanteed, I know that you all know that.

So supply of this item is existing, but very limited.
That limited supply coming out of the game naturally, goes generally through my hands.
And last but not least, and offcourse I will never know the full truth of this. But I honestly think
that at this moment and for the last 4 months, 90% of the existing units in the whole game
have been going through my hands, or are in my hands as we speak.

The most interesting part is actually, that I didn’t go into it wanting do trading with it.
I simply wanted it.
And ended up after about 3 weeks noticing that I physically had 75% of the market in my
hand without even lifting a finger.
From there on bells started ringing and I’ve been running it since. By controlling the supply going back into the market.

Obviously I can be forced out, it takes only seconds to buy out a market.
But that can only happen if I let them. And is the reason 75% of my active stock
never touches the market.
You can’t buy out what’s not in the trade post.
That and you would have to outbid a buyorder, without me competing it.
For a longer period of time actually, to get any volume in your hands to start interfering.

Fact :
At any given time, I have about 15g up in buy orders. and 30g worth of stock in sale value.
On a day to day basis, I make anywhere from 1-4g profit.
Which i know to all you mongrels seems like nothing.
But that is 200-400 gold profit in the last 4 months alone. Not counting spikes.
Which have been quite extreme at times
( Thank you A.net for that 3 days free play for new players not to long ago )

And this was going into it with 1g to begin with…

We can talk about what a monopoly is or isn’t or if it’s even possible for a long time.
But that still doesn’t answer the questions I asked.
Think with me and lets just call it monopoly for ease of the word.
How would one value such a thing?
How does one put a price tag on this?

I ask this cause the active stock doesn’t hold that much value obviously.
But long term the profit is tremendous when played right.

-Panthura

This is a serious discussion, cause I’m very interested in thoughts and input from others.
Who knows maybe this is something others have tried, and are willing to share their experiences.

In this case, I would consider a monopoly ingame, when you single handedly control 90% or more
of the market volume coming in on buy orders and being sold on sell older for a longer
period of time.

Plus in most perfect condition actually owning most of the supply available in the
market to begin with, outside the day to day flow.

Obviously, this is something that will always be a guess, cause you never know how many people or sitting on what where in their bank.
But when you’ve controlled an item for a longer period, testing it to its limits how far you
can push it. You get a pretty good idea what’s hanging around.

Again I’m interested if this has been done, and in experiences if so.

Please let the scam risk disccusion outside of it. We all know the risks.
I’m interested in how to value things for example.

Personally if I would sell such a thing to begin with, there’s multiple things in play :
- Active stock on the market and in the bank.
- Active buy order and sell order control.
- And last but not least, the actual value of holding a monopoly long term.

How does one value such a thing to begin with in total package?

I’m looking forward to see what you guys have to say.

-Panthura

Thanks for your response Electro.

Can they still be crafted in the Mystic Forge.
Or have those recipes been disabled?

Figured I’d ask first rather then collecting stuff only for it to not work anymore.

Thanks in advance

-Panthura