What to do about Market Blockers?

I've noticed this whenever I'm on when a lot of other people are on. You'll go to buy basic salvage, and you'll see a whole bunch of it getting bought in a row at some low price and then all of a sudden the price is 200,000 inf.


My theory is that some people have gotten the idea to buy every bit a certain piece of salvage that goes on the market, until there's none left, and then turn around and immediately sell it at a higher price. So, if 10 people each put a clockwork winder on the market over the last 20 minutes, and 10 individual people show up and want to buy those winders, ordinarily they'd pay about 5k. But if a "market blocker" is on at the same time, the blocker will just put a few bulk offers in place, buy all 10 new CW winders, and force the 10 individuals who show up to pay them instead.

So, maybe people are trying to be generous by offering their spare salvage at say 5 inf per item, but it's not accomplishing anything. The "market blockers" just get a better margin when that happens.

Easy way to defeat those nasty (lol) market blockers: wait 5 minutes.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

If I'm in a hurry, or slotting a bunch at once, I've been known to spend 222k on a 2k item :P Inf is so easy to make, I don't sweat a few extra mil here and there.

I love how people who can read DONT.
As I said -- "" When you only have a limited time to play, its worth it for me not to wait 4 minutes until my bid of 2000 is accepted ""
So waiting more than 10 seconds or going and running another mission while I wait is not an option I choose to use.. thus why I said what I said LOL
Just cuz I pays lots doesnt mean u haz to

PS - Always good to get a "PRO TIP" from someone registered on the forum March 2011 with 5 posts under their belt LOL

I've bought stuff just to dick with the last 5 before. Actually its fun.

In addition to what Silver Gale said, there's been multiple times where I've bid SIGNIFICANTLY under the last 5 price on common salvage (as in, bidding 1 inf) and got it instantly filled. Back before the market merger, I used to list my common salvage for just 1 inf (except a couple actually GOOD ones), and they'd go for anywhere from 1 (very rare) to upwards of close to 100k. Some people will just put in a HIGH price to not have to wait (I've done that before... a high price of '10,000' isn't worth worrying over!).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Something that I've seen happening (especially with "in demand" items like Luck Charms,) is that the price is consistently fairly high, and there are often hundreds of bids. Someone will show up at the market, and either be in a hurry, or they don't want to pay the transaction fees on a high selling price. And since the last five Luck Charms sold for 50,000 each, they figure it'll be a huge profit, so they sell off a big stack at 5 inf each. And it turns out that the hundreds of standing bids are all for 500 inf each, so that's what the stack sells for. Then someone else shows up, who simply wants to craft a given recipe right now. This person knows that Luck Charms are all over the place, and simply doesn't want to wait. So they throw down a bid for 200,000 because they know that's well over the "buy it now" price and they have the money to spare. Ta-da! No conspiracy needed.

There has literally never been something I wanted to craft that I needed to craft right then. Now, I'm not saying I won't get impatient and pay far more than I need to in order to have it right when I decided I wanted it. You know what? When I do that, I am encouraging people to do what's described in the OP. (Note that, as other posters have mentioned, sweep-and-relist is not always what's going on here.)

When I'm not being impatient, I post bids when I'm done playing, so that I can bid overnight or whatever, which vastly increases the odds that someone will come in and list at a price I'm more willing to pay at a time no one is outbidding me. Unless I am bidding woefully low compared to what others are bidding, I probably buy what I was after 95% of the time (actual number created from thin air). The point is that the key to saving money on bids is to plan ahead and not try to bid on something the very moment when you want to have it to play with.

The other thing to mention is that 200k for salvage is spit to an awful lot of people. If I don't need a stack of 18 pieces or something, I balk at something like that only on irrational principle, not because I would actually notice spending it.