purple prices plummeting?

Wow, whats up with purple prices? They seem to have dropped 50-100 mil since this weekend!

Well, this weekend was doubleXP, which probably raised prices (common salvage was going for MILLIONS of inf!). Of course, with more people playing, there's probably more purples available for sale, which drags down the price. I would also surmise that a lot of people saved purples for DXP and listed them, leading to a glut.

I should note that the "Common salvage for millions of inf" was all middle-tier salvage. Maybe there's a lot more 25-39 characters being attended to, which means less demand for purples?

There's a lot of potential reasons. The most simple being maybe flippers are the only ones buying right now.

Yeah, they really jumped in the completely opposite direction as I expected them to. I figured double XP would spike the prices - my reasoning was something along the lines of:

Double XP -> more people playing sub-50 characters -> lower purple supply
After double XP -> lots of new level 50 characters -> increased purple demand

So, I figured that purple prices would *spike* this week. I had been doing the 'buy cheap purples -> convert to expensive ones' routine for a couple weeks, so I stopped selling the ones I'd gotten in the days before double XP, figuring I could sell them for higher prices during and after the weekend. The first wave that I put up for higher than average prices sold, but then the next wave just sat there as I watched the prices start to sink. I managed to dump the rest of my inventory for near-normal prices before the going rate dropped too far below the previous averages, but I've still got several stuck up for sale at prices a good 50-100 mil above where they're trading now.

My guess as to what actually happened was that too many people jumped onto the 'convert cheap purples into expensive ones' gravy train, and between supply rising from people doing stuff like what I did and demand dropping from people playing sub-50s double XP tipped it over the edge. I had already noticed before double XP that the prices on cheap purples were edging up, and it's definitely notable that the post-DXP price crash affected the expensive ones and left the cheap ones mostly untouched. If it had solely been a global supply-demand shift it ought to have hit both of them, so to me that suggests that the converter action was a big part of it.

So, I think there were too many of us thinking the same thing. I saw purples moving relatively briskly prior to dxp weekend, and I agree, they are down. (I'd say averages are down ~25m from 2 weeks ago, but things were maybe +25 the week before dxp)

Anyhow, so I had a larger than normal stash expecting a spike myself. (~70 or so on hand)

The gap has narrowed as well -- the low-end stuff is now priced higher. Can't snap up too much for 150 million anymore. At least that part makes sense, if lots of people have been buying cheapies. (Isn't it downright weird when the COH/V market acts rationally? Just doesn't feel right, does it?)

Incidentally I had a spectacular instance of luck with conversion last night. Might as well tell the story here.

Over the past few weeks I've been slowly assembling a big, expensive-by-my-standards build, and I was getting close to finished. I had already acquired four of the five Ragnarok pieces I wanted, lacking only the triple. Now, Ragnaroks are available on the market...and I have some money left...I could have bought the triple outright. But I've been feeling cheap after blowing so much cash and so many A-merits on this build, so I bid-crept up from underneath on both the recipe and the crafted versions until it was obvious I wasn't going to get a bargain, and declined to actually pay the going rate.

Ah well. I shrugged internally and went off to play a character. When he loaded up, I saw he'd had one purchase come in on the market. It turned out to be a low-priced purple (I don't recall which set) -- apparently the last one I'd managed to pick up before the prices rose a bit. My eye strayed over to the enhancement tray, and I saw that I had one converter on this character.

What the heck, right?

I stuck it into the converter, set it to "out of set conversion," and clicked. Out popped a Ragnarok Damage/Recharge/Accuracy.

What are the odds of that? The piece I've been looking for for days (but too cheap to buy) on the first and only conversion I rolled that night? Looks like there are 10 purple sets, unless I've missed one, and it can't be one from the set I converted, so that's...something like 1 in 54 of getting the one piece I'd been looking for?

It's probably karmic balance for my Summer Event runs, heh (at one point, 2 procs in 55 runs, although it eventually got a bit better).

purple prices plummeting

Say that three times fast...

I'm expecting a backlash this weekend.

Purple prices have breached previous lows pretty hard. I think my average profit on a conversion flip is probably ~1/3 of what it was, and other niches may now be more profitable than purples.

What's funny is, this isn't hurting mez recipe prices. I lowered my bids in response to the falling dmg purple market, and even at -14m from my previous buy price, I've been 100% shut out for the past 16 hours. Granted, we're only getting into prime time, but that's pretty surprising.

Yeah that's pretty much the conclusion I came to last night. To much competition in the purple conversion market at the moment. Time to move to greener pastures.

I enjoyed this niche more just post-converters when I could buy at 111 and sell at 300-400 regularly

Yeah, I picked the wrong time to start converting purples. I think I'll just sit on the ones I have for now.

Do you all remember when purple's only cost around 50mil? And even then people thought that was a Satan wrought evil. haha

I've seen the prices drop on some of the popular purples, but there are still some here and there going for a lot if you look carefully enough. I put up a bunch of purples for sale on Friday night and when I checked two toons on Saturday, one had made 1.5 billion in sales on 6 purples and another 1.3 billion in sales on 5 purples. That's about 255 million for each purple sold after buying them for 170 million on average with about one conversion on average (I can flip a lot with no conversion at all).

I've been socking converted purples away in my base the last while.
As noted, the margin has shrunk to a questionable level so I'm waiting it out.

I'm thinking it will be a fair wait until 'the herd' figures out sale prices aren't really justifying the up front costs, but when they do I'll be ready.