New in flipping.

[AMRF.8649]

So, I started playing GW2 in quarantine, Im one of the so called "casual players" but Im really getting into the game and I really like it, but due to online uni I dont have as much playing time as I would like. Anyway, I wanted to get more money and read about flipping, sounded pretty dificult but decided to try it, checked items on GW2 BLTC and decided to go for the ice reaver focus skin that had a pretty good profit, at that time it was bought by 25,60 gold and sold by 34,50, so I decided to buy 7 of this. Now, 4 days after, you can buy the skin at 23 and sell it by 31, can anyone tell me how does the skin prices change? Should I unlist them and list them cheaper? I used pretty much all my money into this, and I know that it can fail but I wanna know if they're going to be more expensive in the future or if they will get even cheaper and should panic sell now. Thanks to everyone that takes the time to answer this.

[Shikaru.7618]

Oh dear...flipping on the tp is not as simple as just listing buy orders and putting them up for sell orders. There are some very critical pieces of math you're missing in the process.

First of all theres a 5% listing fee each time you list so you cant just list unlist constantly to match the lowest price for free. Second the tp takes a 10% tax when your item is sold. In total assuming you only list once, you are only making 85% of the gold you actually list it for. So buying at 25.6 and selling for 34.5 only resulted in a 4 gold profit not 9. If you unlist an item, you will be paying ~1.7 gold to put it back on the tp.

Next, supply and demand is not something anyone has a clear answer to. If you want a good model for price fluctuations, you can look at some of the other skins and how their prices trend but honestly a number of things can influence how much a weapon skin goes for.

[AMRF.8649]

Yeah already calculated that, but 4g profit per item is still really good, and that was my plan but if I unlist them all its going to be a really big loss taht I dont want to take. The real question is, unlist now and panic wait or wait a few months?

[Linken.6345]

@AMRF.8649 said:Yeah already calculated that, but 4g profit per item is still really good, and that was my plan but if I unlist them all its going to be a really big loss taht I dont want to take. The real question is, unlist now and panic wait or wait a few months?

Just let them sit there I had stuff sold after 2 years.

[Danikat.8537]

One thing you need to bear in mind if you're going to try to make gold by flipping items is very few things in this game have stable prices and nothing is guarenteed to keep increasing in value, you can't simply pick an item and then keep buying and selling it indefinitely and trust that it will always make you a profit. Instead you need to constantly follow the market - keep track of what's been added or changed in updates and what's currently popular and adjust for that.

The Ice Reaver weapon skins are the newest Black Lion weapon set. They were only added to the game on the 26th May and they're still available for 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket each. What you're seeing is the initial fluctuations caused by a combination of relatively low numbers of available items, meaning each sale or addition is likely to shift the price and lots of potential sellers and buyers are still discovering the set. After that there's likely to be a downward trend while they're still available for 1 ticket each, because more of them will be entering the market and potential buyers can get them directly from the NPC relatively easily (especially since ticket scraps are a guarenteed drop from black lion chests). After a new weapon set is introduced in a few weeks or months the price will start to go up again. But at some point in the future they'll be available again, probably as direct drops from black lion chests.

So if you're willing and able to let them sit you can and you'll eventually get your gold back and make a bit of a profit. If you want to regularly make money by flipping items without having to wait months you're going to have to do some research to find out what's currently going up in price and jump on it quick (preferably before everyone else does as an excess of sellers will crash the price), and you'll have to keep changing what you buy and sell as demand and prices change.

[Jojo.6140]

Those BLC-Weapons typically go up slowly in price after their price increases from 1 to 2 Black Lion Claim Tickets. For that to happen, a new set of BLC-Weapons need to be released, and they tend to release a new set every 2 months or so.

[Gundahar.2765]

Flipping is smart, but scummy in the same time if its the main source of income. IRL is way worse, I worked in trading industry. Luckily it happens in the higher nieches with big big money.Not against ingame flipping, fortunately in GW2 its not ruining the markey as in other games.

[AMRF.8649]

@Danikat.8537 said:One thing you need to bear in mind if you're going to try to make gold by flipping items is very few things in this game have stable prices and nothing is guarenteed to keep increasing in value, you can't simply pick an item and then keep buying and selling it indefinitely and trust that it will always make you a profit. Instead you need to constantly follow the market - keep track of what's been added or changed in updates and what's currently popular and adjust for that.

The Ice Reaver weapon skins are the newest Black Lion weapon set. They were only added to the game on the 26th May and they're still available for 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket each. What you're seeing is the initial fluctuations caused by a combination of relatively low numbers of available items, meaning each sale or addition is likely to shift the price and lots of potential sellers and buyers are still discovering the set. After that there's likely to be a downward trend while they're still available for 1 ticket each, because more of them will be entering the market and potential buyers can get them directly from the NPC relatively easily (especially since ticket scraps are a guarenteed drop from black lion chests). After a new weapon set is introduced in a few weeks or months the price will start to go up again. But at some point in the future they'll be available again, probably as direct drops from black lion chests.

So if you're willing and able to let them sit you can and you'll eventually get your gold back and make a bit of a profit. If you want to regularly make money by flipping items without having to wait months you're going to have to do some research to find out what's currently going up in price and jump on it quick (preferably before everyone else does as an excess of sellers will crash the price), and you'll have to keep changing what you buy and sell as demand and prices change.

Thank you very much, this helps me wait in ease. I didnt really investigate a lot about BL tickets so I think what happened to me was expected lol, I'll try to investigate the market better before doing this again.

[AMRF.8649]

@Gundahar.2765 said:Flipping is smart, but scummy in the same time if its the main source of income. IRL is way worse, I worked in trading industry. Luckily it happens in the higher nieches with big big money.Not against ingame flipping, fortunately in GW2 its not ruining the markey as in other games.

LOL with this experience I know that I will never work in trading, too much things involved.

[Cuks.8241]

I think the best advice is know really well what items you are trying to flip. Like people said flipping is not usually capitalizing on the difference between buy and sell order prices because those are usually so low that it is not worth it or there is just not enough market and stuff don't sell at those prices. It is about price changes over time (usually long term) due to various reasons that affect supply and demand. And here you have to know what you are doing.

Secondly if your worth is 7 BL skins I would not go flipping, especially not with all your gold. Flip with the gold you are willing to lose or at least wait a long time to get some profit and don't throw all your eggs into one basket. BL skins are a long term investment. If 200 gold seems a lot to you, you probably need that gold to invest into your character and not wait weeks or months to get it back.Keep in mind that gold in your pocket you can invest into progressing your characters and account. You might get better gear, do better and more profitable content and actually get more out of it than what you might get with flipping. Gold sitting in TP waiting for that measly margin is dead gold. There is nothing you can do with it. Money now is worth a lot more than money later.Now if you have thousands and thousands of gold you might as well dump a few hundred into flips and not care about what comes out of it.

Now you have 2 reasonable options. Wait and forget about it. In a few weeks you might get some profit out of it. Or cancel the order and eat the TP fee loss. But don't cancel and re order because you're just losing more and more. You already need to traverse the 15% of the base price to get some profit. Next time it is 30% and that you will not get back in any reasonable time or ever.

[Nedo.7483]

With everything above said by everyone.You u ask yourself , is it worth it to make a 4g profit over a couple months of waiting? Do u have the capital to keep ur trading going even when ur money is stuck in TP for a couple months. I tried flipping,i did made profit. But I was fidgety all the time. It ain't for me. For us farmers, Time is money.

[Ariurotl.3718]

Flipping in GW2 requires two things: knowledge and patience. Prices often change slowly and you have to learn what items might or might not increase or drop in price.

Currently one of the main flipping sources is the BL chest rotation. Exclusive dyes and skins available from the chest are rotated regularly so the idea is to buy them when they're available (ESPECIALLY on key discount days) and then sell them when they rotate out.

Free tip: currently the much-coveted Permafrost dye is available from the chests, and therefore its price has dropped. That's a good investment opportunity. This dye will never go out of fashion and once it rotates out of the chest (could be with the next update or the one following that), the price is pretty much guaranteed to go up.

[DD39C89C-1C46-4F28-BDB7-49]

Pure flipping is bad and usually slow. Better buy materials to craft something, the more own materials the better, but some items are profitable even when buying all materials. Needed high crafting level and/or recipe add value to a price of crafted item.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Find an item with a high profit margin, the margin must be 20% or higher to make a profit, due to the TP fees of 15%. Buy the item, then relist it, and then wait patiently for weeks or months and go farm gold from other sources to repeat the process.

1. Don't be surprised if the profit margin changes and your item never sells for what you listed it as. But the general rule is, even when something drops in value it does increase in value again eventually ("if it sold once, it will again"). Its usually just a matter of how patient you are, and for some items and materials it can take years, for example what happened with Quartz Crystals.

2. Don't use it as a source of income, flipping is more of a source of interest. Until you have thousands of gold in your wallet and hundreds of items on the market, you're always going to be able to make money faster by just playing the game, so if you put both approaches together you'll make lots of money from playing and always have extra cash available from flipping as well.

If you're not good with these things than just use "get rich quick" guides. They usually revolve around repeating a small subset of the game for about 30mins-1hour daily and making a large profit over time instead of all at once.

[lezbefriends.7516]

Bleh, you’re better off farming the actual game.

[Ariurotl.3718]

Nobody "just" flips on the TP and does nothing else in the game. At least I hope nobody does that cause it makes no sense. It just allows you to play the game however you want to and not just farm metas for hours on end for the gold. Just like in real life, knowing that you're largely set for the long term frees you up to do things in the game that you actually like to do instead of worrying about not earning enough gold and getting yourself willingly locked into whatever joyless farming thing is most profitable at the moment.

[crepuscular.9047]

I don't play the TP game, but I do invest in the stock market in the real world.

@AMRF.8649 said:can anyone tell me how does the skin prices change?

Simple, and it applies to the entirety of the TP, the Order Price increase as there are more buyers, but less seller want to sell at the price the buyers wants; the buyers would place a price higher that other orders or buy at the Listing Price, this in turn increases the overall value of the asset.

But if there are more sellers want to get their gold asap by offloading the items at the buyer's order price or couple of silvers under the lowest Listing Price, the value of the asset decreases.

what stimulates the increase/decrease weapon skins is the availability in Blacklion Chest

Should I unlist them and list them cheaper? I used pretty much all my money into this, and I know that it can fail but I wanna know if they're going to be more expensive in the future or if they will get even cheaper and should panic sell now.

Just like the stock market, no one can tell you if its going to go up or down; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and it's depending on how much research you have done; sometimes you just have to cut your loses for greater gain, be that in value or/and knowledge.

the term we use in the world of finance is Opportunity Cost, meaning chance for profit lost when an alternative is selected over another.By locking your money into an illiquid assets you are losing out on a lot of opportunities; how you access whether if an asset is liquid or illiquid is looking at the numbers of orders placed, listing placed, and number of trades occurred over a period.

The saying goes in the stock market, if you pick stocks based on technicals then you are playing the share market; if you pick stocks just following the momentum, then you are simply gambling.