Market Correction, Fluke or Collapse?

Hey Everyone,

I'm still fairly new to the Marketeering circles, just about 1.5 months of real experience.

Recently I started investing in some higher priced IO's to craft and sell and I'm worried that I've got bit in the rear end.

I Purchased:

7 Coercive Persuasion Confuse/Recharge
- Paid $5mil each -Selling Crafted for $25mil each.

2 Absolute Amazement
- Paid $35mil each -Selling Crafted for $125mil each.

1 Blessing of Zephyr -KB
- Via Rare Recipe Roll - Selling Crafted for $100mil.

When I posted these on the market, I listed each for $5-$10mil less than the going rate (the most recent 5 purchase prices), but since this past weekend the going rate has plummeted to well below what I have them listed for. In fact at one point, the Crafted Coercive Persuasion was selling for less than the Recipes, something I don't understand at all.

I understand that patience is a vitue in the market place, but I'm worried that I just posted these a fluky times when the Going Rate happened to be higher. Either that or several others noticed the profit being made off of these recipes and flooded the market place with more crafted versions, thus driving the price down.

Am I going to have to pull my IO's of the market (eating the original posting fee) and re-listing for a low price?

Thanks in advance for the advice, I feel like I'm learning a lesson the hard way here.

Unfortunately I don't really follow those recipes so I can't say for sure. However in general items with both low supply and low demand (i.e. most of the mez set purples) will be subject to more erratic price shifts than other IOs. In this case all of those IOs are ones that have a low rate of consumption (especially the Coercive Persuasions) so it'll take a while to sell them no matter what price you list at. I've experimented in the past with crafting Purple and PvP IOs and in my opinion the profit margin is not high enough to justify the risk and the amount of time that it ties up slots for. For example a few months back I tried crafting a couple of Javelin Volley IOs for resale, I bought the recipes for 90mil and sold the IOs for 170mil but it took over a month to sell them both.

At the very least I'd wait until monday to relist them, this is a 4-day weekend for a lot of Americans so demand should go up at least a little bit (although I guess it will be counteracted somewhat by time wasting activities such as family ).

I've been working a particular purple set, selling for 100 million crafted.

I checked in the other day, and the 'last 5' was 11 million & 20 million, which is substantially less than the recipe was going for. Checked the others in the set and found a similar pattern.

There hasn't been any game event to explain any kind of sudden widespread price collapse. If it's affecting a lot of high value IOs, it makes one say "hmmmm..."

This is why I often leave out lowball (relatively for purples) bids. You never know when someone will come along and dump a bunch.

I got a lot of possible theories.

1) This is a small enough market that one person, or a few people, could make a difference. If PumBumbler decided to, he could crash the entire level 50 Rare IO market for at least a week. Maybe someone started their SG on a "Best Farmer" competition. Maybe someone with a lot of stuff decided to leave the game and sell everything. EVERYTHING! Maybe someone's spouse got mad at them, like the urban legend goes. Maybe someone got invited to an SG with bad permissions and looted the purple bin.

2) The market is chaotic. There didn't even need to be one deliberate action by someone. Maybe someone lost a zero, listed for 14 million, then someone else came on with a new purple and listed for the last sale price, then someone lost their nerve and dumped their supply.

3) There's been a longrunning theory around there that "purple prices are bound to drop now that people are leaving AE." Maybe they did drop. I remember from watching rare salvage prices back when a "quick Katie" was ten minutes- and when they transitioned to a 40 minute Katie, salvage prices didn't drop gradually. They stayed at the old level for a while, as the people who'd been flipping them supported their old price points and inventory started growing dangerously. Then they went from, like, 4 million to 1.5 million in a week.

In two of these cases, supply will drop and demand will rise. In the third, demand will not rise faster than supply until something fundamental changes in the game (I don't know, the Devs halve Purple drop rates by accident or a REALLY GOOD level 30 TF opens up or something.)

A question, I don't follow those particular purples but is there increasing supply available ?


Its easy to fake demand on our markets but supply is not nearly as easy. Redside there is a recipe I play with that has anywhere from a 40 million to 60 million gap between recipe and crafted IO. Recently supply has been piling up on the crafted. I take this to mean that other people have noticed a good thing and are horning in on my action. (Seeing as its redside I will send my army of mercenaries to convince them otherwise)

Edit: On the Coercive's a couple of months ago it looked like someone was trying to buy them all there prices just started skyrocketing. I was outfitting my plant rad at the time so thought to look for it.

I've certainly been expecting a drop. And while I AM surprised if it was this sudden and sharp, it probably shouldn't have been surprising. While it's been a while since the double XP weekend, I figured the glut of 50s from that would support the old price points for a while, or at least have the prices dropping slowly. Perhaps everyone's IO'd their new 50s now, and between that and much bigger supply, it's time for the crash. I expected a much more gradual decrease, and for it to start earlier, but sharp and sudden is probably reasonable as well.

Or it could be a temporary glitch. I wouldn't panic and pull myself. I'd wait and see.

with regards to my niche, it seems someone just dumped their storage- logged in tonight and my 100,000,000 listing had sold. Prices in the last 5 were back to roughly normal.

I will probably wait it out until at least the New Year as I do have plenty of free slots and 300,000,000 influence sitting in my back pocket.

I will certainly play things safer in the future as I continue my journey to 1billion influence. (perhaps I just got greedy as selling everything I had listed would have netted me another 400,000,000 over the course of 1 weekend)

It may well be that the drop fix is finally having its effect. I'd gotten maybe 6 purples since they were introduced, and in the time since the fix I've gotten four, and I haven't really played all that much.

People expected the drop fix to have an immediate effect on prices, but it may be that it just took a little while before the high-priced inventory finally cleared out, and now people are pricing lower because their slots are filling up with unsold inventory.

When you get a lot of drops you soon run out of market slots and you either have to list lower or start tossing things or moving them to other characters.

On the other hand, crafting IOs and expecting them to sell at much higher prices than the cost of the components is a rather risky investment. You are counting on people to be both stupid and lazy. It's a popular combination, I admit, but stupid and lazy people aren't well-known for their reliability.

I always look at the spacing between the sales, and not just the numbers. If a crafted IO is selling three or four times a day it's a no-brainer to make it. If it's once a week, it's a bit riskier, but I may still do it. If it's once a month I'll just post the recipe, unless it's a character I'm not actively playing.

Im seeing some corrections due to the 4X slider and SSK.

Purples are definitely trending down.
Non-50 IOs are getting scarcer, 50s are still very available.
PVP IOs are going up.

I feel your pain, I work the high end market a lot especially and I have seen several of the targets that I work in take a serious drop.

Like the Goat stated there is nothing game wise to explain this. For me, I am not going to pull my sale prices I have always been a patent worker but his latest drop does have me scratching my head.