The Flipper: Hero of the Markets

I don't see this working for white salvage though. Seems to me that you have the choice between buying Alchemical silver for 100k or waiting 3 days for a lowball bid to come through, instead of picking one up for verdor prices. I just keep stockpiles of mid level salvage in storage to avoid the hassle.

See the "Neverselling Ice" thread.

But they don't really have anything to do with that. On the really rare stuff, there's not enough supply, and the erratic nature of the supply really shows up.

Here's the thing.

Let's take a look at Generic Purple. Generic Purple has a "fair market price" of about 100M -- basically most people think it's worth that.

Most of the time, there will be bids up around 100M, or supply up around 100M. And those can go either way.

There will also be a bunch of lowball bids. Some joker bid 1inf because hey, you never know. Someone else maybe bid 25 million on everything in the set at level 30 and is hoping to get lucky in the next month or so. So now, what happens is, every so often, there's a random streak of drops of Generic Purple, and what happens is, all the buyers around 100M get theirs. And some guy has a Generic Purple, and really he doesn't care that much, he's not into having the slot tied up for a few weeks, and he just wants to get rid of it, and figures hey, I'll just list it for 1, because he knows he'll get the highest bid.

Only right now, the highest bid is 25M.

So, his sells for 25M.

Now, an hour later, some other guy comes along. And he wants Generic Purple. NOW. So he bids 25M. Nothing. He cancels and bids 50M. Nothing. Cancels, bids 100M. Nothing. Cancels, bids 200M. He gets one. For all we know, it was listed at 100M+3.

See, you're making a mistake, which is a pretty understandable one. You're assuming that adjacent transactions are in some way related or connected. They're not. There is no reason to believe that it was the same guy who bought at 25M and sold at 200M. Even if it was, that doesn't mean he listed at 200M. It could just mean that someone was in a big hurry. Maybe impatient guy just bid 200M each on the whole set because he didn't feel like waiting and he has more inf than he knows what to do with anyway.

Lemme give you a concrete example. A while back, I made a mistake. I was tossing out lowball bids on level 45 and 50 common IO recipes with intent to vendor them. (Great way to get an initial nest egg at level 8 or so.) So I bid 5k x10 on To-Hit Debuff.

... Oops. I just bid on the crafted enhancement when I meant to bid on the recipe. And I won 6 of them before I could click cancel. So I have this level 8 peacebringer who now has six pretty much worthless level 50 IOs. So... I figure I'll list 'em at 7k, because 7k less costs will leave me not actually losing money on the deal.

The average price I got on those six IOs was around 200k. One of them sold for over 400k. Keep in mind, I had them listed at *7k*. The person who paid 400k did not try ONE bid at ANY price between 7k and 400k. Not one. Didn't bid 10k, didn't bid 100k, just started out bidding 400k.

That's not high prices caused by me flipping; that's high prices caused by impatient people none of whom even TRIED to bid lower numbers.

Well, you would if you looked. It was on white salvage that the experiment was tried. Pre-market merge, redside ancient bones. They were selling for anywhere from 100 to 100k, and there were plenty of times when you could bid 70k and not get one, but you could bid 1k and have one ten minutes later... or three days later.

So one of the marketers just started flipping 'em. Ton of bid offers at a lowish price, started listing them for a higher price.

Within a week or two, ancient bones were consistently selling for a mid-range price, and there were always plenty listed.

And what makes you think that "vendor prices" would ever have been an option? The reason alchemical silver is so expensive is that it's used in a ton of recipes people really want to craft. I'll pay 50-100k for it, because I just spent 5M on a recipe and I want to use that enhancement now. Sure, I put up lowball bids, but I don't expect them to go anywhere, because the stuff is just plain too valuable -- there are too many bids higher than those lowball bids that are not getting filled because there isn't enough alchemical silver being generated by the game.

Alchemical Silver is pretty much always expensive, running between 55K and 100K.
Improvised Cybernetics are so cheap you can't give them away.

Let's look at what they are used in, especially the generics. Improvised Cybernetics is used in Resist Damage, which maybe 20% of characters slot. Alchemical Silver is used in Defense, which maybe 25% of characters slot, and... umm... Accuracy.

Do you have a character, generic'd or SO'd out, with less than 6 Accuracies slotted?

Can't imagine why there'd be a high price on THAT.

Nonsense. There's plenty of supply, there's thousands of them for sale. There's also the fact that white salvage that doesn't have flippers working on them also have thousands for sale and they do sell as low as 5 a piece.

The way the consignment house works has a lot of parallels to the stock market. Read up on what market specialists do and why liquidity is a good thing.


And that has absolutely nothing to do with flippers. You're just not getting this. If a price just goes up and up, the flippers will be nowhere near that item - BY DEFINITION. If a price just goes up and up, you can't flip it. Flippers will buy at a low price, sell at a higher one, then buy the same thing at the lower price again. You can make money if an item keeps going up, but that's a completely different market tactic and you can lose a ton if the price drops. A flipper is waiting for the price to drop. If the price doesn't fluctuate like that, the flipper moves on to something else.

When a price skyrockets, it's because of sudden demand. With something like purples, it could be a single person who decided to finally purple out those toons that have been gathering dust. FYI, any time we get new powersets, you see EXACTLY that happen after a few weeks when the new toons get to 50.

Psst, you're talking nonsense.
The flippers know how the market works. They don't come in here and complain about it. They USE it.

<sigh> No. The GARBAGE salvage is selling for 5 inf. Surely you've heard the phrase "vendor trash".

No, it really isn't.

Only by people who want more than anyone else is willing to pay.

You don't seem to have cause and effect down yet.

The crap that sells for 5 a piece doesn't have any "flippers" working on it because it's not possible to make any money on it.

You have not yet provided even a shred of evidence that the price of alchemical silver reflects "flippers" rather than plain old supply and demand -- alchemical silver is heavily used. I mostly do yellows and oranges, and I probably need at least 10 alchemical silver to equip someone in the teens or twenties.

Having spent time in Belgium,that's a very Belgian thing to say.

There are thousands for sale. Lay your bid at 5 per. Heck, lay your bid at 287 per (which is the price point where the SELLER makes more inf than by vendoring). You will not buy any.

The problem is that there are none where YOU want to buy. If that is the fault of me or anyone in this forum, well, I can't help you. Good luck.

I think that the complainers don't realize yet that they are flippers...

Irrelevant! We ALL know that flippers buy everything, then sell it ALL back and gouge-your-eyes out prices. Alc Silv is only this high because the "regime" has decided to take it and its brother, Alc Gold and drive the prices through the roof!

Flipping salvage is SO worth it!

If you can buy all of the product at 50k - then turn around and sell them ALL for 100k you're doubling your money!

I'll bet you could make a billion in a week this way! I wonder how many you'd have to sell a day...

Let's see - you buy for 50k. No fees. You sell for 100k - 10k in fees. So... 100k-10k (in fees) - 50k (original purchase) and you make 40k PER!!! FOR EVERY ONE!

If you want to make a billion in a week like the big cats... you only need to flip 25,000 to do this. No problem!!! That's only 3,572 a day. Across say 20 market slots (per character) with another 20 slots (per character) buying these up (GET EM ALL!). You only need to turn over all of your slots 18 times a day. On 2 characters. While transferring it back and forth.

If you figure that you can really use 3 characters to buy and another 3 (all with 20 slots) to sell you only need to turn over all of your slots on all 6 of your characters 6 times a day.

SWEET!

Or, you could pull your head out of your *** and get off the damn flippers. Its small potatoes you dolts!

I just GAVE AWAY almost 900,000,000 for guessing a number.

LET IT GO!

srsly.

Its like complaining because Minion X gives 354 xp and this other one over here gives 355. Who cares?

You want it cheap? You want it now? Critters give them away. All you need to do is ask - then kill them. You just gotta find the right guy.

Oh yeah, Dr. Aeon sells them too. Fixed price. Just like you wanted. Go buy his.

Proof positive that man is not the rational animal but the rationalizing animal


Just an alternate interpretation the flipper paid the lowest price he thoght possible and listed at the highest price he felt would not be under cut

Well, it would...sometimes.
Other times you'd be paying 100k or whatever, or there just wouldn't *be* any.

And I've already explained how flippers increase supply. Brief recap, stuff that would otherwise be destroyed is recirculated, a higher price floor encourages listing junk rather than deleting it.

Not complicated.

Well, actually. Your post is pretty good at this. The post you were responding to was 100% simple literal truth.

You still don't get it.

If he paid any price at all, he paid it because his bid was the highest. Period. Otherwise, his purchase would never go through.

Similarly, if he sold at any price at all, he sold because his price was the lowest. Period. Otherwise, his sale would never go through.

And you're totally wrong about the "highest price" thing. Flipping can only be effective if you have volume. That means you list at the lowest price where you're happy with your profit. You don't waste time trying to get higher prices; higher prices come from impatient buyers offering bids without any attempt to find out whether lower numbers work.

Seriously. I listed stuff for 7k, some of it sold for 400,000. When it sold, it sold because my 7k was the lowest asking price. That means that every sale between when I listed it and when I got my 400,000, went to someone who was asking less than 7k. And it took a day or so to sell. During which many people paid 100k or more. Every one of those people bid a 6-figure number on something when there was at least one for sale for less than 7k.

Seeing as I have made billions flipping salvage, flipping IOs and have flipped enough to get all the sales badges without trying, I may not get it, but I sure got something that works.

Now let me give you the piece you don't get or don't want to get. Most of my flips are to people that don't bid creep. They are putting in their bid at what they think is fair, or what the last 5 looks like. The people I buy from are listing low to get a sale and they are hoping for a fair price. I urinate on their hope, and do my best to make certain that the smart shopper who comes by cant get too much from smart shopping it because I was there first.

To be honest, that's their own damn fault. If you list an item at 1 inf you should be prepared to see it sell for 1 inf and not complain.

No, it's not a valuable service to ALL. It's a valuable service to many, but the person it negatively impacts is the person who placed very low bids and was willing to wait a month for them to fill. There were plenty of people who used to list even some decent recipes for little inf to get an instant sale for their sales badges. A long while ago, but not in the real early days of the market, I IOd out a reasonably high end Kat/SR for 6M. I was bidding on most of the recipes across several toons from when that toon started. Even allowing for inflation, the equivalent would be much more difficult to do nowadays because of flippers.

Flippers also do not list for less than anybody is prepared to list for, they list for less than most people are willing to list for, if 6 a day sell at a given price, they're not too worried if a couple of non flippers sell another one or two in the meantime because they put them up for less.

Get out of my head!

edit:too subtle on my part. You just defined trading though with "the flipper paid the lowest price he thoght (sic) possible and listed at the highest price he felt would not be under cut." Now ask yourself if that is a good or a bad thing.

You are a buyer then. As a rule you want cheap prices.

Ask yourself who is selling and what they want.

Sooner or later, we'll end up here.