How to read the market

I thought I'd try to explain, with visual examples, how I interpret the market when I'm buying and selling. Despite all of the advice and threads dedicated to how to use the market to help yourself, it seems to me that the biggest key is knowing how to interpret what you see. I know some marketeers keep graphs and charts (or at least in their head) and know market trends, but I, like probably most of the player base, never do that. However just using the limited information we have in the last five sells, number of sellers and number of bidders, I feel I rarely need to know more than that.

All examples are from hero-side on Sunday morning 2/21/10. Most of this should be obvious to people who market regularly (I think).



I'm going to mostly talk about recipes and IOs, since what I do is buy recipes, craft, and sell the IOs. But here's something I noticed this morning. Do you see multiple bids filling for 1 influence here? The 500 inf bid is actually mine; before I placed that bid, the last 5 bids were all 1 influence.

Now, note that there are 775 people bidding here. Or perhaps I should say 775 bids. That might not be very many people, that could be only 7 people with 10-11 bids in for stacks of 10. Or it could even be one person with all those bids in on different characters on his account.

The most important bit of information here though is that every other bid is less than 500 influence, and most, if not all of them, are for one influence only. This is a prime example of how a high number of bids does not equal huge demand. Iron salvage is plentiful heroside. Someone is simply buying tons of iron salvage for as cheaply as possible, maybe to vendor or maybe for crafting purposes.



My next salvage example is Living Tatoos. I've been suspicious that someone has been manipulating the price of these for a week or more. My reasoning? They've never (in the past) been hugely in demand, and the amount for sale has not, as far as I can tell, gone down much, but the prices have suddenly rocketed upwards.

Although I also have a theory that more people are abusing the AE for powerleveling these days, and when that happened last Summer the prices of rare salvage went down (people bought with AE tickets) and the prices of uncommon salvage shot up (people don't buy with AE tickets).

Anyway the important information we can learn from this picture is that someone bought a Living Tatoo for a million influence, but they've also sold for 22,222 influence within probably the last hour. Put your bid up for 23,000 influence or 26,000 influence and come back in an hour, you'll have your salvage.



Now let's talk recipes and crafted IOs. What we have here is a level 50 Aegis Resist recipe/IO. Aegis is a popular set, and for resist or defense sets, the one that grants only defense or resistance is always popular because your tank, brute, scrapper, etc. wants as much defense or resistance as possible. This is the first IO of the set that they slot.

As you can see the recipe is selling reliably for 8 million. In point of fact, it's selling for 8 million and 8 influence. This is not an example of five different people typing that same odd number, it's an example of one (or maybe two) crafters buying up the recipes to craft and sell (or possibly to flip by relisting the recipe at a higher price).

On the right you see that the crafted IO sells reliably for 15-20 million, so yes, you can make money on these buying them at 8 million. I've done a lot of this actually. Now, it's important to note that there are 95 crafted IOs for sale. Very likely if you list your IO for 20 million, it can sit there for months without selling. But if you list it for 14.1 million it would probably sell quickly. There's a good chance that some are listed at 15.1 million (and in fact, a good chance that one of my toons is listing them at that level). You might try listing them at 15.6 million, since someone here has bought one for just over 15.1 million. The trick is to list them low enough that they sell quickly, but that they still sell for that 18-20 million price. Very likely if you list 10 of them for 15.1 million, most will sell for 18 to 20 million.



Next up we have Decimation damage/recharge at level 40, which is the highest level for this set. Maybe because they don't go to 50, this set is not one of the most popular of ranged damage sets, but it still sells reliably well.

Now a non-savvy market user might look at this and say, "The recipe sells for as much as 3 million, and the crafted IO sells for as little as 1.1 million. There's no reason to buy and craft this recipe." But the important bit of information here is that there are actually only 9 IOs listed, and yet the last 5 sales are within the last 24-36 hours. Also, the recipe has sold for as little as 1.5 million and the crafted IO has sold for as much as 7 million. With so few crafted IOs for sale, you can list at very close to that 7 million mark and expect them to sell, at least within the next several days or a week. Put in a bid for the recipe at 1.5 million (you might be able to buy them even lower if you're patient, there aren't all that many people bidding) and then list the crafted IOs as high as 6.6 million, or 6.1 million.

Remember that a new blaster set is coming out this Spring. Ranged and Targeted AoE IOs will probably go up in price.

The rest of my examples use Mako's Bite, a set I've made a lot of money on over the last year. Here we have the level 50 dam/end recipe and IO. 51 recipes for sale, so these aren't in short supply. Someone is buying them up for 500,001 influence. This is almost certainly a crafter since they're not worth relisting; there are (probably) too many for sale for you to flip them.

There are 100 crafted IOs for sale. That means your IO is either going to move slowly or move cheaply. They are selling reliably for 5 million, so it's possible to make money buying them at half a million, but it's not your best marketing opportunity. If you don't list them low enough, they'll take forever to sell. List them too low and someone buys them well below that 5 million mark.



Here we have the level 50 mako's dam/recharge recipe and IO. This is a much better seller, as you can see. There are lots of people bidding, but you can still buy up the recipe for 6 million and sell for 15 million (or 100 million if you're lucky. ) Because of the 12.5 million purchase, I suspect someone was listing them at 12.1 million or thereabouts. There are only 19 IOs for sale though (and only the 1 recipe) so you can list pretty close to that 15 million mark and expect it to sell.

Also of note: despite only 1 recipe being listed for sale, all recent sales have been from this morning. This is not a hard-to-come-by set. If you bid on a stack of 10 at 6 million or thereabouts, it will likely fill in a few days.



Mako's quad recipe and IO. For some reason that I'm not able to fathom, quads are sometimes even more valuable than triples and sometimes not very valuable. An Obliteration quad sells for more than double the Obliteration triple, which itself does not come cheap. But Mako's quads are not so expensive, you can buy them for -- well, 650,000 in the above example. But the crafted IO is selling for 10 million, with only 19 for sale.

I probably don't need to explain that one any further.

Now let's get away from top-level IOs a bit. I actually tend to IO my toons out mostly with level 28-33 IOs these days. This is because the difference between a level 30 IO and a level 50 IO is actually not that great, but a level 30 IO allows me to exempt down to level 27 and still get the benefits of that IO. level 28 would allow you to exempt to 25 (say, Sister Psyche TF). Level 33 would still work at level 30.

Anyway, when shopping for IOs at the lower levels, using the market tools helps a lot. So as you see above, I'm changing the filter to show stuff for sale only. This is so I can see what's available for me to purchase right now.



Even at the lower levels, Mako's dam/end are plentiful (and likely very cheap). You should never spend much for this IO. It might still be worth crafting though, people will always pay for a crafted IO that they can slot immediately.

Accuracy/damage, on the other hand, is in short to supply. We have at least one at level 33, and at least one at level 36 and I think that's at least one at 38. Then we have some at 48 and 50.

If you can buy the level 33 IO for cheap you can almost certainly craft it and sell it for a profit. There probably aren't many others available (one crafted at level 48 -- I looked). When someone comes along who wants a level 33 or lower Mako's set, they will pay to to get that IO NAO. (And sometimes that's me. )



Mako's damage/recharge is in short supply at lower levels too. Only one at level 35, with 23 people bidding. If you want one at 33 or lower, you're going to have to put in a bid and then wait.



Now we set to bidding only.



No real surprises here. Very few people are bidding on the Mako's damage/endurance, but there are bids on the Mako's damage/recharge at nearly every level. For some reason we have 11 people bidding for a level 35 dam/end and no bids at other levels -- I can't really explain that, except that there are probably lots more available at other levels so people buy them immediately when they bid. (Well, I can explain it a bit, as it's a strange lowball number being sold for repeatedly, so some crafter is working this niche.)

Nobody is bidding on Mako's dam/rech at level 30 or 31, so if that works for you, you can probably bid low.

Anyway I hope some of that was useful.

tl;dr:

Many bids does not necessarily mean there is a high demand.

Several buys in the last 5 for an odd-numbered low price means someone has a bid out for at least 1 large stack, probably to craft or relist higher.

Compare the low bids for recipes versus how high the crafted IO sells. Pay attention to how many other crafted IOs are for sale. Crafted IOs can be sold for a markup pretty reliably; people like not having to craft it themselves.

If you want to sell something for 20 million, and there are a a lot of that item for sale, list well below 20 million, but somewhere above what the next lowest bid might be. Use an odd number.

If there are few others listed for sale, and it's a popular/useful IO, you can list for a relatively high price.

When buying IOs below level 50 or the top level for that set, using the market filters can help you find what's for sale very quickly, or what you can bid on with no competing bids.

As always, buy low, sell high. Leave your bids up and go do something else. For recipes, especially less than level 50 recipes, leave bids up for days or a week or two if needed.

One important thing to learn is that the listing priced is not usually "gauged" by buyers. Buyers tend to bid in the range of the last 5 recipes, and don't bother to check for lower prices.

Case in point: last week, I crafted 3 Adjusted Targeting recipes; the last 5 sales were for 10 million influence. I listed them for 5 million. They didn't sell immediately, so I let them sit.

That night, they sold - one for 10 million influence, two for 25 million influence each. Someone was really in a hurry to get two of those. Nobody bothered to bid under 10 million just to see if there were any available with a lower listing price.

Great post- I've always meant to put together something like this, but my problem with getting usable screenshots with the market UI open + my inherent laziness means it never quite happens.

Kudos!


And quick someone move this to Guides so it doesn't get forgotten and eaten by the forum monster.

Nice job.

You CAN get more detailed information than this by following things over time. You CAN be manipulated by other marketeers by simply trusting this information on a single snapshot on a single day. But I don't bother looking in more detail. I mostly just believe what I see and take the gamble because I don't like following a niche for a week before jumping in. I guess that makes me an "exploit it nao!" marketeer. I occasionally take a bath on something, but most of my gambles make me lots of influence.

nicely done

Very nice. I know that took a while to post. Want to know something funny? That's my 1 mil Living Tatoo. It was done this afternoon.

I have a toon stopped at 35 and was crafting like 20 lev 35 recipes. The average of those L.T.'s were in the 600k - 800k range. I just popped 1 mil because the Oblit at level 35 was selling for 15mil. I didn't feel like i'd miss alot by losing 1mil for that considering i had 5 levl 35 Posi's and 6 Oblits, and some Decimation. I like Deci, personally. Good rech and end red set.

A+ post, Organica. Great information.

Aww, you gave away the ebil secrets!!

j/k, awesome post. 5 stars and marketing secrets tag!

Very nice write up! This is definitely a good guide to show people if they're still having trouble with the market!

I can't answer that, but is the board even purged anymore now that it's been transitioned to vBulletin?

I find myself amused that your toon's UI is PINK (heeheehee), besides that, you've provided some excellent info!

good post! I now have a better grasp on this!

Great detailed explanation here!

Helpful stuff, Organica -- it's good to get an updated primer for the new UI


Regards,
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