Merchant Archive

There seems to be a steady stream of overnight masters in the various crafting professions. Perhaps some of this is due to the 'holocron told me to master X' effect. This is a great opportunity for you merchants. You see, most of them are completely, utterly clueless on how to price their products, and what happens is they are dumping their products on the market well below market value.

Your golden opportunity?

Resell.

Take Petstims for instance. I know a well advertised shop can sell out A'a and B's for (0.1-0.15)*(ch)*(eff), and C's for (0.15-0.2)*(ch)*(eff). But there are the guys out there who macro grind to BE master in a few days and dump everything for 0.1*ch*eff or less. All you have to do is buy them, and put them on a vendor in a high demand area and you will sell them out in no time flat. You can even find them there on the bazaar. You don't even need to bother with putting them on a vendor. Just buy out the stims on the Bazaar and resell them on the bazaar at the higher price. I have heard of guys making 100-200% profit on this.

Their ignorance = your profit. Encourage their ignorance.

When they say things like 'I can sell whatever I want for whatever I want' you say 'yes, that is the way it should be' and you buy out their stocks and double the price and sell it.

Also there are new crafters out there who set up a vendor in some way out place, like say a future player city, and they underprice their product. Clean out their vendor and move the stuff into a high demand area.

Totally agree with ya and thx for the pointers, it's amazing how many players grossly underprice their misc items on the bazaar so I'm always on the lookout for items to mark up

Just keep in mind that these people may be (most likely) grinding their way to the top. The quality of the final product will not be even close to a true master. They will not spend weeks trying to find the best resource to build that T21 or experiment the largest size hopper possible.

I do agree with you, there is an opportunity for any savvy business person.


Otiamo

Hi. This is the first time I've posted in one of these so I'll try not to be Troll

I make my living entirely in the difference between what people think they should sell at and what the market will actually bear. I traffic exclusively in Stim-B's and if you play on Eclipse and spend a lot of time on Rori or Tattoine you can probably figure out who I am. My purpose is to drive the price of Stims through the roof. I'll make a lot of money doing this but my motivation is more to teach people not to waste their time. Generally when I find someone underselling themselves, I'll email them and explain to them that they could raise their prices without hurting their business. The usual response is that they stay low to increase volume.

Hrm. Is volume a good argument? Well, if you're a business then it might make you more money to sell 50% more product at 25% lower prices. But this is a game. If you're a crafter and you increase volume what you're actually doing is spending more time crafting and less time camping Dantooine with the l337 guilds. Why one earth would you want to spend MORE time in grind mode? So I buy their stims at whatever miniscule profit theu are eeking out and resell at 60-100% markup depending on market conditions.

Why do crafters who do not make weapons/armor consider their time to be less valuable than smiths who can charge 50cpu for combat gear. Aren't combat monkeys going to pay 50cpu for stims if that's what's available. (Yes, people will start undercutting that price so on to the next point.)

And on undercutters- undercutters exist because we allow them to. If you're selling at or below or even near cost you're going to be spending so much time running missions that you won't have any time to craft. And if you're a guild undercutting the market then more power to you. I'll buy as much as you can make. These things only happen because people aren't buying their wares fast enough to put them put of business. I'm doing my part so the rest of you hop to. A quick end to undercutters.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

yeah, I'm a master BE and I see these guys selling stims for insane low prices and just lauph. Not just novice BEs either. Lot of new master BEs dont realize what they can sell for so they price their stuff comparable to medic stims which nobody can use cause they aren't doctors. Dumb. They will learn, but merchants might as well make some cash while dumb people are out there. Mine are marked up and I still cant keep them in stock. Im selling so many of mine I dont even bother to buy theirs and resell them even though I could. Ill leave that up to the pure merchant out there.

Yep, me too! I made my first 100K in the game before ever owning my own vendor or harvester. I just used the bazaar terminal like wall street - buying up cheap and reposting it at maket value.

I'm already starting to have fun with all the new "combat merchants." Evidently a LOT of peeps are having their holocrons tell them to master merchant. These guys don't have a clue that they don't have a clue. There's one guy on Scylla that has slapped up many 100Ks worth of stuff on his newbie vendor for 1 credit each!! - thinking he's gatting merchant XP for every sale..*snicker*