Merchanting Dilemma...

Mirtilla - Sanctuary

...to buy gold or buy items...

Let's image a scenario,I got 100M coins.

If I buy when gold its low(Like 1M),I can get 100 gold(Ignore AH fee for the sake of simplicity).
Let's guess they put D.Orbs 10* for 25 Gold Each(Or 100 gold if x5),I can buy 5 D.Orbs with my 100 gold...

The point is,should I wait a good sale and buy stuff from boutique or just directly buy the items from those who got the gold when it was cheaper?,if I wait the sales to buy gold,with increased gold price(Like 1,5m instead of 1M),I would get less stuff,but have the coins available for uh other usages -- if instead I buy items from those who got gold before the sale(for cheaper), I would uhm...get the same result?, b:puzzled

Kinda confused

Olbaze - Sanctuary

... Gold will never be 1M again.

I think your scenario needs to be rebooted from 2010 to 2012.

Though: Buying items from other merchants is never good practice.

Also, preferably you'd always have whatever funds you have that are not as merchandise be in Gold, since Gold experienced temporary fluctuations, whereas the price of coin only goes down.

The only reason to have significant funds as coins would be if you have plenty of merchandise to sell and the gold price at the time is high.

Kerona - Sanctuary

I fail to see the "merchanting" aspect of your dilemma as you never mention selling stock for profit.

As I general rule of thumb, I had drilled into my head to only spend when you have 3 times the amount you need so that you can merchant with it. If you're buying the Dorb oceans to use for yourself right now, you're not merchanting, you're spending.

Mirtilla - Sanctuary

Ye I just put gold at 1M for the sake of simplicity.

The problem with the gold its the fluctuation...never known when its cheap enough to buy

I can get items for cheap either by buying gold when its cheaper or from other merchants who had stacked gold when it was cheaper,plus some fee...

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear

Generally item buying from sales then reselling after is the best bet. Invest as much as you want into the item if you know its a hot item such as Dorbs or HP Charms etc. (not all only a fool would do that in case it backfires and fails.) And once the sale is over they will climb back up and you can start selling them slowly. (You will always have the ones who rush to sell underbidding everyone else. Let them they just wanted a quick buck flip not a long term haul). And then yours will start selling... And that's what most merchanters do. They buy items in bulk when its on sale. And sell it in aftermarket.

Mirtilla - Sanctuary

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Generally item buying from sales then reselling after is the best bet. Invest as much as you want into the item if you know its a hot item such as Dorbs or HP Charms etc. (not all only a fool would do that in case it backfires and fails.) And once the sale is over they will climb back up and you can start selling them slowly. (You will always have the ones who rush to sell underbidding everyone else. Let them they just wanted a quick buck flip not a long term haul). And then yours will start selling... And that's what most merchanters do. They buy items in bulk when its on sale. And sell it in aftermarket.

So you mean its better to get gold from boutique before a sale(to buy stuff from boutique),rather than buy the items with coins during the sale?

Olbaze - Sanctuary

Mirtilla - Sanctuary wrote: »

So you mean its better to get gold from boutique before a sale(to buy stuff from boutique),rather than buy the items with coins during the sale?

Yes.

Buying with coins means someone else is already merchanting it. Of course, if all of your funds are in coin, buying from these people might prove to be cheaper. However, that's exactly why you should always have your funds in Gold rather than coin: the value of Gold increases with sales, whereas the value of coin goes down.

99% of the time the catshop will sell a little over the current gold price sale to still make a profit.

This is mostly true, but if there has been a sudden spike in gold prices due to some sale or in-game change, it's very likely that you'll find at least one or two shops selling their stuff at below the current Gold price simply because they had their Gold bought before it went up. In fact that's my favorite means of undercutting my competition.

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear

Mirtilla - Sanctuary wrote: »

So you mean its better to get gold from boutique before a sale(to buy stuff from boutique),rather than buy the items with coins during the sale?

That is dependent on your servers gold / catshop sale ratio.

99% of the time the catshop will sell a little over the current gold price sale to still make a profit.

Example

Ocean orbs.

x1 25gold
x5 100gold (basically x1 for 20 gold)

They would then sell the orb for 22-24gold worth in coin/gold ratio (which at first glance appears cheaper but its not.). And still profit off of you. So do some research first into that before you do. (I generally buy gold from AH then buy the items from the boutique. Fee tends to come out cheaper then buying from shops. for my server anyways.)

Deceptistar - Sanctuary

ya gotta think "profit" by relying on yourself, not by the sale of others

MyCatShop - Dreamweaver

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Generally item buying from sales then reselling after is the best bet. Invest as much as you want into the item if you know its a hot item such as Dorbs or HP Charms etc. (not all only a fool would do that in case it backfires and fails.) And once the sale is over they will climb back up and you can start selling them slowly. (You will always have the ones who rush to sell underbidding everyone else. Let them they just wanted a quick buck flip not a long term haul). And then yours will start selling... And that's what most merchanters do. They buy items in bulk when its on sale. And sell it in aftermarket.

I hate how everyone here is talking as though she has a lot of capital.

Your best bet is to always buy gold on thursday-satursay. Never buy after saturday, and especially NEVER EVER EVER on monday. And Buying on tuesday or wednesday is risky because new sales cause gold to fluctuate a lot. Might end up having to cancel a bid or two, which can cancel out a lot of sales. Don't worry too much about fluctuating gold prices unless of course, as Kawaii said, you're selling post-sale. If you're selling items in-sale then there's really no way to avoid paying at cost for gold. Because that time you'd be waiting for gold to drop, you could just pay more for gold, and sell the items you're buying right after, and make coins. So waiting for gold to be low so you can buy, ends up just being canceled out by all the coins you could have made had you been spending more for it the entire time.

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear

MyCatShop - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I hate how everyone here is talking as though she has a lot of capital.

Your best bet is to always buy gold on thursday-satursay. Never buy after saturday, and especially NEVER EVER EVER on monday. And Buying on tuesday or wednesday is risky because new sales cause gold to fluctuate a lot. Might end up having to cancel a bid or two, which can cancel out a lot of sales. Don't worry too much about fluctuating gold prices unless of course, as Kawaii said, you're selling post-sale. If you're selling items in-sale then there's really no way to avoid paying at cost for gold. Because that time you'd be waiting for gold to drop, you could just pay more for gold, and sell the items you're buying right after, and make coins. So waiting for gold to be low so you can buy, ends up just being canceled out by all the coins you could have made had you been spending more for it the entire time.

Now granted my Dorb example was pricy it was purely the easiest example I could put across for a spur of the moment thought. You could do it with a lot of lower costing items. Example right now is a prime time to do so with 1* orbs as they are on sale for now...

O_O? I never buy gold during those times(I like to buy on Weds-Thursday after I know what the sale is and gold settles down.). TW days tend to be when stuff rises in price. Though I agree with most of the other stuff.

unceuncerave

Why are you guys seriously giving away how to be a "successful" merchant on the forums. you gotta give them WRONG information so you can make more money off of them. Derp.

XxZavxX - Raging Tide

MyCatShop - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I hate how everyone here is talking as though she has a lot of capital.

Your best bet is to always buy gold on thursday-satursay. Never buy after saturday, and especially NEVER EVER EVER on monday. And Buying on tuesday or wednesday is risky because new sales cause gold to fluctuate a lot. Might end up having to cancel a bid or two, which can cancel out a lot of sales. Don't worry too much about fluctuating gold prices unless of course, as Kawaii said, you're selling post-sale. If you're selling items in-sale then there's really no way to avoid paying at cost for gold. Because that time you'd be waiting for gold to drop, you could just pay more for gold, and sell the items you're buying right after, and make coins. So waiting for gold to be low so you can buy, ends up just being canceled out by all the coins you could have made had you been spending more for it the entire time.

Uh, lol, Mondays and Tuesdays are ok to buy gold.

shopitup

Real answer: it depends.

It depends on how quickly the stuff you want to re-sell will move (how quickly you'll get your investment back) and on how large a fraction of your total capital you've got invested in it.

For something that'll move quickly --- you'll get your coin back and be buying more gold with it before the sale ends, maybe do it a few times over even --- and especially if you'll be putting most of your gold into buying the trade goods; re-sell immediately. Get your investment (and profit) right back and repeat, even if it's a lower profit, because the profit per time period will be higher and make it worth it.

That'd be what WarrenWolfy called a Type III or Type IV merchant strategy, in other words.

But if you'll only be investing a smaller fraction of your coin, and especially if you won't sell out of your stock any time soon --- start selling at higher profit after the sale ends, aim to sell it all off and have the coin converted back into gold before the next big sale starts. Warren's "Type V" strategy, in other words.

As for when to buy gold, that varies not just from server to server but from month to month, sometimes from week to week. Once enough many people learn that suchday is the best to buy gold, then enough many people will be buying gold on that day to make sure it no longer is the best day to buy gold. The PWI gold market, like real-life stock markets, is strongly anti-inductive this way --- and that means you can't just give static advice like "buy on thatday", because by the time you give it it's already obsolete. Merchants have to track, follow, and understand the market for themselves.

And ignore the troll who thinks money is to be made from keeping secrets. There's no secret in how and where you put up your catshop, nor in how much you charge for what you sell in it. Money comes from having lots of people buy stuff off you, which won't happen unless people know to come buy. Merchanting is a game like chess, with all the pieces in the open; it's not a game like poker, with any important information withheld.

...Well, okay, there's also the major player in the market (Perfect World Entertainment, Inc.) making their plans and decisions without informing anybody else ahead of time, so there's that much kept secret from the rest of us. That'd make merchanting a little bit like D&D, with a GM hiding behind a screen to set the rest of us up the bomb. Close enough.

Olbaze - Sanctuary

unceuncerave wrote: »

Why are you guys seriously giving away how to be a "successful" merchant on the forums. you gotta give them WRONG information so you can make more money off of them. Derp.

Because plenty of the people here are already in a region where another small fry isn't going to affect their market significantly.

MyCatShop - Dreamweaver

KawaiiJen - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Now granted my Dorb example was pricy it was purely the easiest example I could put across for a spur of the moment thought. You could do it with a lot of lower costing items. Example right now is a prime time to do so with 1* orbs as they are on sale for now...

O_O? I never buy gold during those times(I like to buy on Weds-Thursday after I know what the sale is and gold settles down.). TW days tend to be when stuff rises in price. Though I agree with most of the other stuff.

XxZavxX - Raging Tide wrote: »

Uh, lol, Mondays and Tuesdays are ok to buy gold.

@ Both of you: Then it must vary between servers because I notice on sunday and monday night gold tends to steadily rise, and on tuesday night it goes up a lot as people try and get as much stuff as they can out of fear of the sale ending. With a good sale gold goes up steadily on wednesday and thursday which is why I avoid buying on those days, friday and early saturday usually always has the cheapest gold at any point in the week, I've been tracking it 3 times per day (8am, 4pm, and midnight, as much as I can, work and life tends to stop me from getting all 3 measurements each day though) for quite a few months now and that's what Ive noticed.