Once upon a time, Caer Sidi was camped 24/7, much like each realm's main Dragon, being farmed repeatedly. This brought ridiculous amounts of gold to the evil gold-farmers, but it also absolutely flooded the market with these items, bringing their costs to all-time lows as farmers and players competed to sell goods in the marketplace.

While this is good for the casual player, its not so good for those of you who are looking to spend your precious time farming to make some extra plat. In fact, the gold farmers aren't even farming anymore, but they are still taking a huge chunk of your profits!

Let me explain.
You spend your precious time to farm souls/scales, or other items, and try to sell them in the marketplace. You take a peek at the current values there, and set your prices accordingly. However, there is little loophole YOU are not aware of that is making you lose money hand over fist - in many cases, you're losing 200% or more of your rightful profit!

You see, Sidi can't be camped like it used to. And dragon loot is not that valuable anymore (some exceptions). So the farmers in many cases, have left these two areas of loot to rot - literally! What do I mean by rot? And why does it matter to you? Keep reading...

If you want a sidi BP, or a jewelry item from the dragon, you can either buy the souls/scales or the actual item in housing. But how much you pay is determined by what the seller sets the price at. Normally, typical supply/demand mechanics are in place, with competition always driving the price down.

But what if you could artificially force prices to remain low? Great for the buyer, but what about the seller? For example, you have an item you want to sell, and based on its popular usage (demand) you figure you could get 10-15p for it. But when you get to housing, you discover there is one other seller, and he has priced these items at 5p. Ouch!

You either keep the item, try to sell it outside of housing, or you just want to move it, you list it for 4.9p, am I right? My friend, you just gave away your perfect, shiny freshly picked and ripe apple for the same price as the rotten, smashed apples lying on the ground.

Remember when I said there is rotten loot in housing? That's because there is. It may not look rotten, but you can't eat it, and more importantly, you can't buy it! That's right! YOU, or anyone else, can't buy it because their merchant is already full! But it fooled you into pricing your items far below their worth!

That little loophole I mentioned...Well, its a loophole that makes it so your house, as long as it has cash on the CM, will never, ever be repossessed. So if their CM is full, and their home can never be repossessed, their listings continue to influence the market price! These homes will not see repossession for about 10 more years at current rent prices.

These items will NEVER sell! The prices will never change. But in the meantime, you've been tricked into selling your dragon loot, scales, sidi BPs, and souls for depressed prices when the true demand would price these items two and three times as much!

It takes time - precious time - to farm souls and scales. They are worth their fair market value. But if everyone who farms these items continue to buy into the illusion of low prices, you'll never get what they're worth. Trust me, you're leaving tons of plats on the table - for people like me, who can come in and buy out the entire market for an item, and resell it for 2-3 times its value.

Just trying to help a guy out!

 

-----signature-----

I hope you are not serious.

 

-----signature-----

I make between 50-75p within a few days after I swoop in and restructure the marketplace on an item. So why would I suggest more people spend a few extra minutes to price their items better? Because Im sitting on a large pile of these items myself, and they're not worth selling at farmers prices, when the demand indicates they can be sold for 3x the value.

Case in point.

Defiled Petulant Robes. There are several of these items in housing listed for about 7p. Problem is, its an ex-farmer house, CM is full, and its been that way for months. Because of this, lot 447 (a real player who acquires these robes and others to sell) sets his price below the dead farmer price. Result? I buy his entire inventory, and resell it for nearly 3x the price.

Why? Because the truth is, there is high demand for several of the Sidi BPs. People will gladly pay 2x, 3x the price. Same thing with dragon rings/bracers, and scales to a degree. The value of scales is tied to the value of dragon jewelry. And dragon jewelry is being artificially priced low because people think in order to sell a ring, they have to let it go for 5-6p, when in reality, they are selling like hotcakes for guys like me at 8-10p.

Dead serious, thank you.

 

-----signature-----

So you want everyone to triple their prices on thse items?


Why would you not just corner the market yourself?


Its not like this information makes you look like you are charitable.


So, what is your angle?

 

-----signature-----

Think cornering the market would mean actually being able to buy said items for the lower price, which his essay delves into why they can't be bought at those low prices. The motivation of course is to make the active market aware of the false positives and to correct for this, so that those same items he holds will sell for more. He is saying they are worth more than what they are listed in the market, but they can't be sold at those prices because people are unintentionally underselling their wares due to said false postives. In other words, he's helping active farmers (like himself) corner the market because he knows most will undersell based on phony plat farmer prices. Hence why he addressed the post to "Those Who Farm..."

 

-----signature-----

His angle is that as long as people are selling for less than "dead" houses, he can't sell his items at retardedly high prices.

 

-----signature-----

 

-----signature-----

Ah, VN cynicism at its finest! I don't need to sell things at "retardedly high" prices when I already bought them at "retardedly low" prices. I don't farm these items, but I know what the real value of these items are, and its in the ~20p range, not the ~5p range.

And its not just Sidi BPs, as I stated in my "essay" above. These dead, rotting items impact the price of scales and dragon loot as well!

Errith summed it up quite well, thank you.

 

-----signature-----

Nice attempt at defending your motives, but it's pretty transparent. If you bought them at the typical price they are at now, and wish to resell them at a profit, you have to convince people they're worth more than what you bought them for or you won't make a profit.

That being said, I applaud your attempt at making more money, I wish everyone to get whatever market value is for every item in the game, but don't pretend your motivations are altruistic, they're based on good old-fashioned greed and personal gain.

Nothing wrong with that.

 

-----signature-----

i used this principle to sell my ML10 bow the other day for a lot more then the "cheapest" on housing, because all the next cheapest ones were 30p more, I didn't even check to see if i could buy that bow, because i already knew i couldn't.