Discussing Flipping:
If nobody flipped prices would be lower, but supply would be distributed more randomly rather than to those who are willing to pay the higher prices. Thus flipping should raise the economic efficiency of the in-game economy by passing items more reliably to those willing to pay the higher prices rather than to those who just happened to have a bid out for the item at 38 or something (who often intend to vendor it!)
Discussing the creation of artificial shortages:
It is nigh impossible for a single player no matter how motivated to create a sustainable shortage of salvage. Trust me, I tried a few times and though I moved the price for a couple hours or in lower volume items a day or two, unless I was going to stay online all day working on it I couldn't keep prices up. I'd be more opposed to these schemes if they actually worked, but they don't no matter how many pangean soils you cram into your base or whatever. The problem is to drive the price up you either have a huge left-over stock at some point wasting storage space or you delete a large number of the item to raise the price. They don't work so meh on how bad they are. I don't believe people do these because they won't profit.
So what is causing the recent rise in common and uncommon salvage prices while a concurrent drop in rare salvage?
AE plain and simple. People can't be bothered to travel back and forth from AE to sell common rolls for tickets but can for rares. The price for the conversion from tickets to infamy here is not just the time to pop the tickets but also the time to move the coverted salvage to market. Its the same reason I've made hundreds of millions selling purples I had laying around when just 3 issues ago they were going for a 500k or 1M.
The reason people can't outfit their 50's is because AE has changed the ratio of the supply of 50's to the supply of pops by lowering the amount of pops to equip those 50's with while at the same time making it much easier to get those 50's who need to be equipped. If you don't like it, don't blame the ebil marketeers, blame the people who have 11 50's and don't know where Nerva or Sharkhead are.
Eris
