Stop Me From Becoming A Flipper!

Seriously. I'm happy crafting and selling. BUT...

I decided I wanted to make a little money on another server that I never play on. My highest character there is level 14 and is not rich. I'm in no position to buy a 10-pack of a favorite recipe, salvage, craft and sell.. I need to raise a little capital first. So what's easier than buying some popular salvage for a low price and selling high?

This worked well the first night and I put in a lot more bids for stuff, including some recipes.

Tonight I logged in. While I paused to read something on the forums, I purchased two Titanium Shards for 5,000 influence each. Apparently the price hadn't reached my buy price in the last 24 hours until just before I logged on.

I saw that some had sold recently for 500,000. I put up one stack for 80,000 a piece. I immediately sold one for 500,000 and not three seconds later bought two more for 5,000 influence.


Hello? Reason? Are you out there?

I also had put up bids for a certain level 30 damage set IO for 100 influence each. I'd picked up 6 of them so far for that price. I saw that some had sold for 500,000 and some for 1,000,000 in the last 5, so I decided to price them at 510,000 influence.

All six sold instantly! For almost 8 million all told, mind you.

It can't always be that easy, can it?

(Well ok, a lot of my bids didn't fill... I've only made 15 million after starting with maybe 50,000 earlier this week... but damn.)

heh thats what i do sometimes best way to make money other than selling purples....

All high-level uncommon salvage is a gold mine right now.

Make your fortunes before i16 hits!

"It can't always be that easy, can it?"

Yes it can and that is how i usually start a lowbie on his way to making money

Uncommons are gold, but another great way for quick influence is rare salvage via tickets. Though in this case, the subject of the thread might have to change to "Stop me From Becoming a Ticket Farmer!" At least with flipping, you don't have to be logged in to do it.

I can make more by actually playing and selling the drops than standing in WW flipping. That's more boring than farming or running missions to me. But please, carry on and help raise the prices in WW for eveyone.

When I do flip, I try to be mindful of the actual price of fabricating the enhancment into the price. Often, since dub xp weekend, I get bids that are 5 - 10 times the cost to fabricate them. Amazing. They bid several times my asking price! But my asking prices aren't silly high at all. I win some and I lose some to lowballers, but at least my conscience is clean and I believe that I'm not frustrating players and driving them away from the game. (one of the reasons I never play CoV is the market there is totally whack)

I must say that I16 will have me playing maps more and playing the market less, but I'm always going to end the day by visiting WW and selling off what I can and filling every slot with bids on something. Seriously, though, when I'm too busy to play on a team, I can log on a toon, visit WW and leisurely buy and sell. Only takes 5 - 10 mins and I make over 2 million easy, while preoccupied in RL with something else. Not too shabby for 5 - 10 mins of unattentive effort.

That's how it works.... literally. There is, by definition, a gap between the lowest bid price and the highest list price. If that gap is really high, flippers make lots of money. Competition between flippers pulls that gap together... but the gap will never go away.

In my experience, the only thing that can stop you from becoming a flipper is to make enough money that flipping isn't worth it anymore. Ironically, for me this level of wealth coincides with no longer caring about what I buy and sell salvage for, turning me into a supplier and a customer of the salvage flippers.... trickle down economics as it were.

Stop! Don't flip!

... did that work? Huh.

zzzzz

If you see someone flipping at the market, shun them. SHUN them I say!