tokens

Sagek - Sanctuary

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

DON'T second-guess for your actions! No offense to TheUnderLord, but in his advice he falls victim to a common merchanting blunder. What you did with the Tokens was absolutely correct.

Waiting until after the sale to sell the Tokens for a single, large markup would have been a mistake, and it's one that the vast majority of players make. I made it myself in my early days of merchanting, until somebody on the forums was kind enough to share with me their strategy instead.

Repeatedly selling an item during a sale, again and again, for just a little bit of profit each time, is absolutely the right way to quickly go from being poor to being rich in this game. In fact, I wrote a whole section of my merchanting guide dedicated to the tactic.

The fact that you used the Token NPC exchange to do it just shows you were resourceful. Maybe there were better profits to be had, but you found something that was working, and you ran with it. Good for you!


Heh... Sorry to rain on your profits, but in my experience, the little guys make their profits during the sale, while the lumbering behemoths make theirs after the sale.

Depending on the type of merchant (low, medium, high capital), we each take turns dominating sales. It's just the circle of merchant life. b:chuckle

And it's honestly not personal. I'm not liquidating them just for fun, or just to hurt everybody else. I have a very specific reason that I feel I need to sell them by a certain date, and even with the deep-discounts I'm still not meeting my sales targets. I'm still over-stocked by 1000s of Packs, so the price-slashing will be continuing until they're all sold...


Heh heh heh...

Like what Michael_Dark said, stock-piling alts full of Badges seemed like a really great idea until I actually had to sell them all...

If memory serves, I think I had 18 alts full of them at one point (7 on my merchanting account, 6 on my main account, and 5 more on Lost City). Profits were huge, but it nearly drove me to drinking!

It was worth it the one time (because it nearly doubled my net worth!), but after it was finally over I vowed never again... b:surrender

I really like your merchanting guide, thank you for putting something like this together.

TheUnderLord - Lost City

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Heh... Sorry to rain on your profits, but in my experience, the little guys make their profits during the sale, while the lumbering behemoths make theirs after the sale.

Depending on the type of merchant (low, medium, high capital), we each take turns dominating sales. It's just the circle of merchant life. b:chuckle

And it's honestly not personal. I'm not liquidating them just for fun, or just to hurt everybody else. I have a very specific reason that I feel I need to sell them by a certain date, and even with the deep-discounts I'm still not meeting my sales targets. I'm still over-stocked by 1000s of Packs, so the price-slashing will be continuing until they're all sold...

But the problem is I'm not a little guy with small amount of expendable capital, more like the opposite of it. I was also making profits during the sale but I only used like 10% of my capital to get gold to get the packs in preparation for the end of sale. It was only a small amount but damnnnnn I did not expect a billionaire like you come out of the woods and slaying the short-supplied merchants. You could afford to sell at a steep discount because you're stocked like Wal-Mart lol and STILL make a killing -____-

meanwhile I only have like 170 packs left and can't move em cuz you're being ridiculous b:surrender

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Heh heh heh...

Like what Michael_Dark said, stock-piling alts full of Badges seemed like a really great idea until I actually had to sell them all...

If memory serves, I think I had 18 alts full of them at one point (7 on my merchanting account, 6 on my main account, and 5 more on Lost City). Profits were huge, but it nearly drove me to drinking!

It was worth it the one time (because it nearly doubled my net worth!), but after it was finally over I vowed never again... b:surrender

I had 14 alts at one point... and then the 3 months of rep sale hit. Messed up my investment scheme. Got back to 11 alts before the rep sale ended. I think 14 is my limit. Any more than that I cannot sell it all before the next sale hits.

40% profit is nice, though. I'm having trouble doing fast merchanting, so I've been sticking to this scheme. Unfortunately, I don't think it's fast enough.

TheUnderLord - Lost City

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I had 14 alts at one point... and then the 3 months of rep sale hit. Messed up my investment scheme. Got back to 11 alts before the rep sale ended. I think 14 is my limit. Any more than that I cannot sell it all before the next sale hits.

40% profit is nice, though. I'm having trouble doing fast merchanting, so I've been sticking to this scheme. Unfortunately, I don't think it's fast enough.

you'd probably have to try other sale items that were ignored, it could be a potential fast-moving goldmine where other merchants have inadvertently miscalculated. (eg. mysterious chips sometimes)

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

TheUnderLord - Lost City wrote: »

meanwhile I only have like 170 packs left and can't move em cuz you're being ridiculous b:surrender

Well, I guess "ridiculous" is kinda a relative term.

On Sanctuary, Gold was 1.85m per Gold during the sale, and now Packs are selling for 485k, which is a profit of 17%. That's good profit, in my opinion, and there's are lots of competitors vying for that on Sanctuary.

But on Lost City, Gold was only 1.65m, and yet I was completely alone, with no competition at all, selling for 545k! That's a profit of 47%!!!!!

I'm sorry, but I just can't understand why anybody would turn up their nose at 47% profit and be upset that I'm ruining their profits, and yet it seems like every Pack merchant on Lost City is doing exactly that. They seem determined to sell for a minimum of 595k (ie. 60% profit), no matter what, which to me seems much more "ridiculous".

Of course, I've since lowered my price to 525k (ie. 42% profit), but that's still beefy, delicious profits that we poor Sanctuary merchants wouldn't hesitate to stab each other in dark Archosaur alleyways over...

TheUnderLord - Lost City

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Of course, I've since lowered my price to 525k (ie. 42% profit), but that's still beefy, delicious profits that we poor Sanctuary merchants wouldn't hesitate to stab each other in dark Archosaur alleyways over...

well you definitely got ur gold cheaper than 1.8-1.9mil when I bought mine on lost city -_-
you must've stocked up hardcore earlier during the sale. Some merchants are pretty ridiculous at 595k, hardly moving at all.

and LMFAO!!

Sarrafeline - Sanctuary

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Well, I guess "ridiculous" is kinda a relative term.

On Sanctuary, Gold was 1.85m per Gold during the sale, and now Packs are selling for 485k, which is a profit of 17%. That's good profit, in my opinion, and there's are lots of competitors vying for that on Sanctuary.

But on Lost City, Gold was only 1.65m, and yet I was completely alone, with no competition at all, selling for 545k! That's a profit of 47%!!!!!

I'm sorry, but I just can't understand why anybody would turn up their nose at 47% profit and be upset that I'm ruining their profits, and yet it seems like every Pack merchant on Lost City is doing exactly that. They seem determined to sell for a minimum of 595k (ie. 60% profit), no matter what, which to me seems much more "ridiculous".

Of course, I've since lowered my price to 525k (ie. 42% profit), but that's still beefy, delicious profits that we poor Sanctuary merchants wouldn't hesitate to stab each other in dark Archosaur alleyways over...

NO, gold was 2.1 mil during the sale at the highest. That is, there was a 12 or so hour period where gold in the AH was 2.1 mil or higher, even at the 'insta sell' price, I know because I sold some gold for 2.3 mil several times...

Also, comparing Sanct vs other servers, it's my understanding that Sanct has a decent population of merchants. That is, there are a lot of merchants.

And Warren, a few pack sales ago, I went head to head with you selling packs... You were selling for a lower profit margin, lower price that is, but I couldn't keep my shop stocked with packs, so I kept prices higher to keep packs in my shop a little longer... And ended up making a higher return on my investment. I also did that with rep badges then, too, I saved a few (9 alts worth, but uh, I have expanded the bank and inventories on them to max), and sold them all at about 30k a pop.

Sometimes, overpricing can work if you get into a good spot at the right time. After my rep sold, others moved in and drove the price back down, and it stayed down for a long time. I was building up coins for later investments, and I got a return of roughly 4 mil per gold on that (3,800,000 coins per gold).

Right now I'm trying to get into tokens, but... It doesn't look like the time to do so, therefore, I might be getting into Raps/Cannies instead. I ended up going a long time without a second computer to run my shop account on, and ended up needing the coins I had stored, so I'm trying to rebuild some of that base... But Merchanting right now looks slow. b:surrender

Ariella_ - Lost City

I like how this turned into a Merchanters Anonymous thread. Mostly alts here except for a few people haha.

This last week has made me do nothing but lose money, I got bored and bought source of force, didnt sell, bought genie packs, didnt sell. I so bored with nothing to turn. I need to manage my time and predict the sales ending dates better, because I clearly wasnt prepared this time around.

Big smart merchants **** me off b:angry

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Guess I'll pout in my oar.
Disclaimer:
I'm hardly a large merchant; and I've no skin in this particular sale.

Warrens guides, and advice, have been golden. Ignore him at your peril!

If he's undercut you - and you can't sell at his price, at a profit... Well, don't buy gold that expensively next time
His advice to shift merchandise, even at a loss, so that you'll have some coin to invest in the next sale... is really reeally hard to swallow. But can be worth it.
Your alternative is to hold on to the stuff and shift it later. (And hope that the next sale doesn't bring prices even FURTHER down, which it probably will.)

But refusing to shift things at a *profit*? That's just madness. Even one coin per pack is one more coin than you would have had otherwise. (And wow, you can expect some real hate from merchants if you do that to ditch stuff you don't want to bother with any more. I had a whole inventory full of crazy stones, and wanted to buy stacks of rep badges, so... yeah. The usual crazy stone catshops sent me hatemail that day.)

Personally, with badges, I simply set my price slightly under whoever was there when I went to stock up, and the inventory would be empty when I came back to check. (Except twice - one time the other sellers undercut me so hard I couldn't make a profit, so I just hung on to them; and the other they undercut me moments after I walked away from the PC and managed to stay stocked.)

The other-other alternative is to find a different location to sell at. You really can get higher prices from people in a hurry; but you tend to shift a lot fewer items. My personal alternative spot is in South Arch, near the place the tree spawns when that event is on. Lots of people running between the bank and the auction house.

Annoyingly, my merchant account got locked in the mass "Oh, let's just change all your passwords, no one will mind that" and appears to be unrecoverable. So since at least half my coin was there, I'm out of the big catshop game for the forseeable.

TheUnderLord - Lost City

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Annoyingly, my merchant account got locked in the mass "Oh, let's just change all your passwords, no one will mind that" and appears to be unrecoverable. So since at least half my coin was there, I'm out of the big catshop game for the forseeable.

What is this incident that you speak of? Was it a pwi mishap?

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

TheUnderLord - Lost City wrote: »

What is this incident that you speak of? Was it a pwi mishap?

Gosh, it was a while ago. They had a leak from one of their crappy websites that no one signs up for; and figured that might have leaked in-game passwords, so they reset the passwords of a whole bunch of people.

Yeah, it was PWI-side.

TheUnderLord - Lost City

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Gosh, it was a while ago. They had a leak from one of their crappy websites that no one signs up for; and figured that might have leaked in-game passwords, so they reset the passwords of a whole bunch of people.

Yeah, it was PWI-side.

Really? It sounds like you didn't get back your account at no fault of your own? How come?

Vitenka - Dreamweaver

Don't have access to the email address (since it was a throw-away one so that I could have a second account), no idea what random information I put in in it.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

Sarrafeline - Sanctuary wrote: »

NO, gold was 2.1 mil during the sale at the highest. That is, there was a 12 or so hour period where gold in the AH was 2.1 mil or higher, even at the 'insta sell' price, I know because I sold some gold for 2.3 mil several times...

True, I too sold a bit at ~2.2m (only like 25 or something), but the 1.85m price I was referring to was the average price I was able to buy a lot of Gold at. I did manage to get quite a bit for cheaper, but I did also pay for stuff that was more than that.

Sarrafeline - Sanctuary wrote: »

And Warren, a few pack sales ago, I went head to head with you selling packs... You were selling for a lower profit margin, lower price that is, but I couldn't keep my shop stocked with packs, so I kept prices higher to keep packs in my shop a little longer... And ended up making a higher return on my investment.

I do the same thing you're describing if my stock is low on a particular item, yet I know I still have time to sell it, and I've seen the same sort of thing. It shouldn't sell, because I'm not the best price, but it does.

I started doing this because my (evil) girlfriend often has higher prices than me for the same reason, yet still manages to out-sell me.

For example, just last night I slashed prices on my final batch of Anniversary Packs to 479k and named my shop "Packs 479k". My (evil) girlfriend had her shop right beside me, labelled, "Packs485k".

20 minutes later, somebody bought 50 Packs from her shop, and when I checked mine, I'd sold 7! So I raised my price back to 485k, and they're selling just fine. Go figure.

I've seen this kind of thing happen so many times now that I've basically given up checking other merchant's prices. I don't care about being the lowest price anymore, I just set my prices based upon how fast I'm trying to sell my stock, and adjust it up or down depending on whether it's meeting my goals.

Vitenka - Dreamweaver wrote: »

But refusing to shift things at a *profit*? That's just madness. Even one coin per pack is one more coin than you would have had otherwise. (And wow, you can expect some real hate from merchants if you do that to ditch stuff you don't want to bother with any more. I had a whole inventory full of crazy stones, and wanted to buy stacks of rep badges, so... yeah. The usual crazy stone catshops sent me hatemail that day.)

Very good point. I'll often liquidate stuff at-cost (or even a slight loss) if there's something better.

The way I look at it, I thought something would sell, but it didn't, so why not get rid of it and start using that money to make a profit again?

And I'm sorry to hear you lost so much of your stuff! If I lost my merchanting account, I think I'd have to just have a good laugh (ok, maybe a bit of a cry too) and decide it was time to move on. Plus, my (evil) girlfriend would be heart-broken, because she's in love with my bad-boy merchanting alt...

lordmot

Originally Posted by WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary
Repeatedly selling an item during a sale, again and again, for just a little bit of profit each time, is absolutely the right way to quickly go from being poor to being rich in this game. In fact, I wrote a whole section of my merchanting guide dedicated to the tactic.

The fact that you used the Token NPC exchange to do it just shows you were resourceful. Maybe there were better profits to be had, but you found something that was working, and you ran with it. Good for you!

b:chuckle It was your guide that gave me the idea to do it this way. b:thanks