Guild Wars 2

You don’t think that the new dye packs are gong to have any effect on the market? I find your timing for a thread about making money on the dye market interesting, even with the post script.

If it does – I’m not positive one way or the other – the most it will do is change prices, not margins, and margins are the only particularly interesting thing about the market.

Dyes are different because they are permanent unlocks for a character, they can have a large aesthetic impact for not a lot of money, there’s a huge number of colors, there’s lots of variation of how the look on different parts of different armor, multiple colors can be applied to one outfit, and there’s a lot of variation in what different folks think looks cool.

All of this explains why demand for dyes exists. It doesn’t explain the large margins.

Demand for dyes is not the same as say demand for a stack of ore or a weapon. You can collect all the different colors without needing more inventory space, and you can apply them without out any additional cost (like a transmutation stone). And you can toss the cheap ones in the forge and gamble on getting something better.

Again, more talking about demand than margin. It does, however, help to explain why people would be buying large numbers of dyes without any desire to flip them – I always seem to forget use of the Mystic Forge when it comes to theorizing and whatnot.

Thank you very much for breaking this way of income for dozens of people.
Very well done, Sir!

Because it’s just so hard to find another market in which to flip items…

To be serious, though, if a single post is going to ruin the margins for the entire market than I have my answer – people were just being lazy about exploiting a particular market.

On the other hand, I really doubt that’s the case, and am rather convinced there’s something fundamental that is different – and, therefore, interesting – about the properties of this market.

Low turnover discourages flipping so the margins are better?

This is one of several reasons I was considering, but I’m not convinced.

There are a handful of dyes that have an average turnover considerably less than one day, and at least two of these are in the top ten percent when it comes to wide margins.

To be fair, that particular data is only from about the past month or so, as that’s when I started tracking, but it seems as though that answer is not a complete one.

For the past few weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time flipping dyes and I’ve realized something interesting that, as far as I know, isn’t true for any other large market – nearly every dye with a price between 20 silver and 1 gold has a margin that can be used to create money.

I have some of my own ideas as to why, but I’m sure there’s something I’m missing here that’s driving the large difference…

So, what does everyone else think is the reason?

P.S. ~ Flipping dyes is actually not a terribly great method of making money because of low turnover, outside of a handful of specific ones. Just as a warning to anyone who reads this and decides that it’s time to get into the dye market.

Biggest problem is that you have to compare Banners to Shouts, since they fill more or less the same role.

Currently Banners are only good in comparison when you’re in the same spot for a very long period of time – something that only really happens in PvE and some very specific WvW and PvP situations.

I’m thinking picking up Banners on the fly and being able toss them a short distance rather than simply planting them at your location would work quite well without making it too easy to keep your banners with you all the time. Added damage from Powerful Banners would help make that Trait slightly more useful/interesting, as well.

Alternatively, have Powerful Banners increase the damage on Banner skills and reduce the cooldowns. Would make moving the Banners around more beneficial, essentially achieving the same thing as above, although you’d still probably have to make picking the Banner up instant.