Merchant Archive
Thread: The sad state of the market..
I play on Gorath so can not really speak for other servers.. but it appears that most resources sell in the bazaar for about 5-10 creds per unit. The problem is that everyone is selling finished products for like 3-5 cred per unit required to construct it.
Take a small house deed for example. Ore is listed at an average of 7 creds per unit and it take 2350 or so ore alone to make the deed, putting the price of the deed based on just ore at 16,450cr. Small houses now sell commonly for 10k. The same holds true for pretty much every other item out there as well. How exactly is someone supposed to make money when finished products sell for less than the cost of materials?
Anyhow... it appears that combat type characters make just huge amounts of credits running missions and such... so why is everyone low-balling their prices and killing the economy? I was kind of hoping to be a merchant/crafter.. not a miner, but it seems that the only way to make money is spend days gathering resources yourself.. and even then after power and maint costs on harvesters, it is about break even.
There is any easy answer for this one... reduce the cost of acquiring the resource.
If your a merchant.. that wants to sell houses without making them.. I recommend making an arrangement with an architect to buy several at less then 10k.. If your an Architect looking to make money, then I suggest digging up your own resources. I can gather ~2000 units of ore for ~1350 creds (figuring in power.. all just estimates really). Now I could try to sell that for ore for 14,000cr.. but I haven't had much luck...so I turn it into something, or better yet.. I pay someone else a small fee to do the actual crafting and I sell the finished product. This latter arrangement require a trusted crafter contact, but a merchant should have a few of those.
Spending the time to find a very high resource concentration really helps reduce the cost of gathering materials. Unfortunately, if you don't have time when the resources radically shift.. you may miss that "resource window" since the resources shift very quickly on some servers/planets.
My 2cr
If they are charging 3-5 per resource for their items then they have found a cheaper way to get resources. Figure out what it is or find someone selling for less than you are seeing in the bazaar.
On starsider I am charging 3 per resource and selling for 4 per on crafted items. My cost on most resources is in the 1.6-2 range
Night_Stalker wrote:
There is any easy answer for this one... reduce the cost of acquiring the resource.
If your a merchant.. that wants to sell houses without making them.. I recommend making an arrangement with an architect to buy several at less then 10k.. If your an Architect looking to make money, then I suggest digging up your own resources. I can gather ~2000 units of ore for ~1350 creds (figuring in power.. all just estimates really). Now I could try to sell that for ore for 14,000cr.. but I haven't had much luck...so I turn it into something, or better yet.. I pay someone else a small fee to do the actual crafting and I sell the finished product. This latter arrangement require a trusted crafter contact, but a merchant should have a few of those.
Actually...your reply doesn't really address the problem... which is that resources still sell for more than finished products.Yes, I could dig up my own or I could just buy products to sell.. but that isn't the point. The point is that either products are selling much to cheaply or resources are selling for way to much. Something needs to be adjusted at some point.
I expect that the problem right now it power-crafters, who are both willing to sell their pproducts at next to nothing to get them circulated and willing to pay to much for the resources to make those products so they can skill up faster. Anyone with a few combat type friends who are willing to finance the operationcan easilly be in the position to do this. Unfortunately it completely borks the global market. It is actually self defeating, since they are in fact killing their own market for when they do level up. I suspect they think they will make all their money on the high end items, but unfortunately that leaves 95% of the (lower level)products messed up.They will be left competing with each other(and everyone else)in a price war on the few high end items that are not affected by power-crafting, so even the high end items will end up being sold near or below cost in the end making it an unprofitable situation for everyone.
Anyhow.. thats my take on the situation.
Yah, but another issuse I have noted is...
I sell resources, I can yell till I die," 5000 whatever 12k Credits", that is 2.1 credits per. AND NO ONE WILL BUY IT.
I can split it onto 500, and sell it for 2800 in the bazzar, that is 5.6 credits per, and I can sell the crap out of them. You buyers need to think about ehat you are being sold. They look at the 12k not the 5000.
Just a thought.
I've noticed that as well, that small quantities will sell fast at higher prices, even ifthey have to buy 10 of those stacks to do what they wanted, rather than 1 large stack for less cash per unit.
I don't understand it, but I'll happily turn a profit from it.
Sir, it's quite possible that this game is not entirely stable.
"Not entirely stable." Well, I'm glad you're here to tell us these things. Chewie! Take the professor in the back and plug him into the patch server!