Salvage Price Guide

Introduction
The Salvage Price Guide is a growing catalog of the prices that stores will pay for your salvage and recipe drops. The Guide doesn’t indicate the current market value of the drops—it only indicates the minimum price that you should probably be asking for your drops at Wentworth’s (since that’s what a store will pay you for them, and you’ll only be cheating yourself out of influence if you accept less).

Background
This guide might seem like something you wouldn’t need at first. However, when the invention system came out, and we (namely, my mom and I) started getting lots of salvage drops and started going to Wentworth’s to sell them, we found it was often difficult to determine the correct price to ask for some of the drops. Clicking on the More button was frequently not useful, since many salvage drops, including uncommons and rares, were being sold for 100 or even 1 influence.

When I asked around about this apparent oddity, the answer that I got was that some players were intentionally underselling the salvage in order to obtain the badges. Now, the acquisition of badges isn’t something that I have a problem with and I’m not discouraging that in the slightest. However, given that the Wentworth’s window only shows the last five transactions, underselling drops can make it very difficult for players trying to make a profit to determine the correct or even minimum price to ask for a drop. It can make it altogether impossible to learn the true market value of any given drop (although one might argue that if a rare drop has just sold for 1 influence, that is now its true market value).

This issue becomes important because if you ask for too much, your consignments won't move, and if you ask for too little, your consignments won't fetch a suitable sum of influence. My experience thus far has been that in asking for at least the amount in the table below, I have nearly always turned a profit (and nearly always a substantial one). As always, your mileage may vary.

The Golden Rule for drop prices is as follows:
<ul type="square">[*]Common drops sell to a store for 100 or 250[*]Uncommon drops sell to a store for 1,000 or 2,000[*]Rare drops sell to a store for 5,000[/list]It’s worth noting that just because a drop is common doesn’t mean that it is worth a mere 100 influence. Both Brass and a Cybernetic Charger are common drops. However, Brass sells for 250, while a Cybernetic Charger will only fetch you 100 from a store. The same is true of uncommon drops: where Gold is worth 1,000, Steel captures a perverse 2,000 (likely due to its greater utility.)

Compiling, Contributing, and Correcting the Guide
In order to compile this list, we visit the store whenever we have received drops that do not appear in the catalog. If we have any recipes or drops in our inventory that are not in the catalog, we get the prices from the store and update the catalog. However, this process is slow and tedious, as we can only add an item to the Guide when we receive it.

If you would like to add an item to the guide or find that an entry is in error, please feel free to add a comment to the end of this post. I'll update the guide as frequently as I can.

A note about recipes: While I'm maintaining a price catalog for recipe drops at home, I've chosen not to include it here. It's far too piecemeal to be of any use in its current state, and there are far too many of them for me to be able to keep it up to date online. If demand for it is high enough, I'll consider it then.


The Price Guide

The prices below reflect the prices that a store will pay for a salvage drop. They do not reflect the current market value of the drop.

Alchemical Gold (Uncommon) 1,000
Alchemical Silver 250
Ancient Bone 250
Arachnos Gun 100
Armor Shard 100
Bio Sample 100
Black Box 100
Blood Sample 100
Body Armor Fragment 100
Brass 250
Broken Crey Pistol 100
Carnival of Shadows Mask (Uncommon) 1,000
Ceramic Amor Plate 250
Ceramic Compound 100
Charm 100
Circuit Board 250
Commercial Cybernetic (Uncommon) 1,000
Computer Virus 250
Corrosive Gas (Uncommon) 1,000
Cybernetic Charger 100
Daemon Program (Uncommon) 1,000
Dangerous Chemicals 100
Data Drive (Uncommon) 1,000
Data Files 100
Devouring Culture 100
EChip 100
Energy Source 100
Ensorceled Weapon (Uncommon) 1,000
Glittershrooms 100
Gold (Uncommon) 1,000
Graphite Composite 100
Holographic Memory (Rare) 5,000
Human Blood Sample 250
Hydraulic Piston 250
Improvised Cybernetic 250
Inanimate Carbon Rod 250
Inert Gas 250
Iron 250
Living Tattoo (Uncommon) 1,000
Luck Charm 250
Masterwork Weapon 250
Mathematical Proof 250
Mercury Circuits 100
Military Cybernetic (Rare) 5,000
Mu Vestment (Rare) 5,000
Mutant DNA Strand (Uncommon) 1,000
Mutating Genome (Rare) 5,000
Paragon Police File 100
Polycarbon (Uncommon) 1,000
Potion 100
Psionic Ectoplasm (Uncommon) 1,000
Reactive Gas (Rare) 5,000
Rune 250
Scientific Law (Uncommon) 1,000
Scientific Theory 250
Sigil 100
Silver 250
Sky Raider Device 100
Source Code (Rare) 5,000
Spell Ink 250
Spell Scroll 250
Spiritual Essence 250
Stabilized Mutant Genome 250
Steel (Uncommon) 2,000
Symbol (Uncommon) 1,000
Tech Power 250
Temporal Analyzer 250
Titanium 100

[Edit: Replaced "trainer" with "store." Like, duh.]

Something I feel needs to be added here:

Sometimes selling at a contact is the best idea, say when common drops sell at terribly low prices, or when a rare drop is one not many people need. More often in my experience, however, is that you would get more influence by selling salvage at Wentworth's/the Black Market. Off-level enhancements/recipes should most often be sold at a contact, but that's another story.

[ QUOTE ]
Something I feel needs to be added here:

Sometimes selling at a contact is the best idea, say when common drops sell at terribly low prices, or when a rare drop is one not many people need. More often in my experience, however, is that you would get more influence by selling salvage at Wentworth's/the Black Market. Off-level enhancements/recipes should most often be sold at a contact, but that's another story.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's an excellent point, and well worth noting.

My experience has been that recipes on the 5's tend to move relatively quickly at auction (level 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50), but everything else is best sold at a contact or store.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Something I feel needs to be added here:

Sometimes selling at a contact is the best idea, say when common drops sell at terribly low prices, or when a rare drop is one not many people need. More often in my experience, however, is that you would get more influence by selling salvage at Wentworth's/the Black Market. Off-level enhancements/recipes should most often be sold at a contact, but that's another story.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's an excellent point, and well worth noting.

My experience has been that recipes on the 5's tend to move relatively quickly at auction (level 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50), but everything else is best sold at a contact or store.

[/ QUOTE ]

Off-level recipes can, in some cases, move better than the 5's.

For example, a lvl33 Set IO recipe is useful for Siren's Call, since the zone auto-exemps/sk's to 30. Same with a lvl28 for Bloody Bay and a lvl41 for Warburg.

Now, granted that's only useful if the character plans on spending large amounts of time in those zones.

Find out what salvage is necessary for those level IOs and you'll profit pretty well.

Steel and Symbols both sell for 1,000 inf. All uncommon invention salvage sells for 1,000 inf. I know of no exceptions. All common invention salvage sells for 250 inf. Base salvage sells for 100, but not invention salvage.

Were prices different back in September, or is this list left over from beta? It does not appear to be correct today.

Has anyone made a list for the recipe's yet?

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone made a list for the recipe's yet?

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't need to. All uncommon set recipes sell for 100 times the level of the recipe. Rare set recipes are 200 times the level of the recipe. Common IO recipes follow a consistent formula based on the crafting cost, which is printed on the recipe. Take the crafting cost and divide it by x, where x is based on the level of the recipe:

LEVEL: X
10-25: 8
30-40: 5.3
45-50: 4

That gives you the price a vendor will pay to buy the recipe from you.