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Michael <NOSPAM_Lin_mukai@comcast.net> writes:
> Pricing things: for the most part if you want to move your stuff quickly
> you need your items to be at the lowest price in the bazaar. Otherwise
> people are of course going to buy whatever is lowest and not your stuff.
A couple corrections to this. First, amazing though it sounds,
people may buy things from you even if your price isn't the lowest
available. Darned if I know why, but I've seen it happen many
times. Sometimes it's a volume thing: if you have 100 bone chips
at 1 plat each, and someone wants them all, they'll come to you
rather than go to the six other people who have 10-30 each at
3-8 gold apiece. But sometimes I sell a lore item even though
another trader has it up at a lower price. I think some buyers
just don't bother to sort by price, and the /bazaar window by
default comes up sorted by item name (including the quantity
part), with ties broken by listing first whoever most recently
went into trader mode. So they'll ask for "rallic pack" and then
go buy the first one listed.
The other correction is that there are two ways to make your stuff
be the lowest prices in the bazaar. You can check the other prices
and make yours lower, or (if not lore items) you can buy up all the
cheaper stock and add it to yours. Now, you have to be careful if
you do this, because other traders might keep showing up with more
of the same stuff priced lower than yours. But over time you can
learn what the "going rate" is on many items. E.g., for a while
the going rate for Blue Diamonds on my server was about 400pp, so
I sold mine at 390 and would buy up any I found at 370 or less.
(Making at least a 5% profit seems like a good rule of thumb.) I'd
also have my non-trader characters check NPC merchants, especially
at LDON camps and other popular spots, and buy BDs at 262pp; for
each three I found I'd sell two and keep one for my own use, so I
was sort of getting mine "for free". But you have to watch out,
because prices can change over time. Either the demand goes away
(due to server population dropping, or new recipes coming out so
the old ones aren't as interesting), or the supply goes up (SOE
increased the drop rate of Blue Diamonds some months ago, and the
typical bazaar price these days is much closer to the NPC price).
Probably the best situation is when you're willing to use something
yourself. Recently I've begun stockpiling ingredients to practice
high-level Tailoring. If I see Flawless Rockhopper Hides at 200 I
buy them, because I'm willing to pay that price to save myself the
trouble of hunting for them. But until I actually get around to
using them, I leave them on my trader priced in the 350-400 range,
because I'm happy to take the profit if they happen to sell (which
they sometimes do).
Note: Some traders deliberately put low prices on tradeskill items
because they want to encourage tradeskillers, believing tradeskillers
make the game better for everyone. They're probably right, so I too
try not to gouge the tradeskillers, and that's also why I prefer to
buy tradeskill items that I'd be willing to use myself if I got
"stuck" with them.
-- Don.
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