Spike in ore prices in 2021

[DancingShadow.5689]

Starting a long-term project, I was messing around with gw2bltc and noticed a massive spike in the prices of the more common ores (mithril, silver, gold etc.) between roughly June and April of 2021. And we're not just talking a few copper, at some days the prices shot up to twenty times of those today. I've looked through update notes for the time, but found nothing that could apparently cause this, and other items don't seem to have been affected at the time. Is this just a coincidence or did something happen back then?

Edit: thanks for the answers y'all, great to be a part of this amazing comunity

Edited March 20, 2023 by DancingShadow.5689

[Shuzuru.3651]

Maybe four wind festival zephirite box preparation ? 

[Nekrooo.1869]

I was inactive at that time but there were some community event when ppl need to put a lot of materials. I'm not quite sure if the event time and the spike are overlapping.

Edit:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge_secrets 
This was the event I've talked about but only asked for mithrill and it was in 2019.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Nekrooo.1869

[Parasite.5389]

the price spike would line up roughtly with the release of the Champions episodesof Season 5, where players were asked to donate materials(specifically un-refinded ores) for faction based support marks https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kodan_Support_Mark

Edited January 23, 2023 by Parasite.5389

[Gorani.7205]

5 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

the price spike would line up roughtly with the release of the Champions episodesof Season 5, where players were asked to donate materials(specifically un-refinded ores) for faction based support marks https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kodan_Support_Mark

Most likely this. And Drizzlewood Quaestors take T5/T6 materials in batches of 50/100/200 for Commendations. The LS chapter started on the 26th of March and people bought a lot of Commendations at the start for the initial achievements on that map.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Gorani.7205

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, DancingShadow.5689 said:

Starting a long-term project, I was messing around with gw2bltc and noticed a massive spike in the prices of the more common ores (mithril, silver, gold etc.) between roughly June and April of 2021. And we're not just talking a few copper, at some days the prices shot up to twenty times of those today. I've looked through update notes for the time, but found nothing that could apparently cause this, and other items don't seem to have been affected at the time. Is this just a coincidence or did something happen back then?

Legendary armory went in in June 2021. A lot of people went for legendary crafting spree even before it went live, just based on earlier-announced info.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

Also the Living World Return events started in May 2021 ending in December 2021 which gave the player base free access to LWS2-LWS5 including Aurora, Vision, Rollerbeetle and Skyscale.  This likely also had impact on the TP prices of various required mats.

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Legendary armory went in in June 2021. A lot of people went for legendary crafting spree even before it went live, just based on earlier-announced info.

Have to agree this was first thoughts and if you consider the material syncs that the second Gen leggo weapons required that also would cause a lot more demand.

[Rogue.8235]

This thread is a good example of the multi-factorial nature of economics.  The answer is never any one thing but a multitude of events.  Thanks, OP, for being inquisitive.  One thing, if you want to continue with economic analysis, is to pay attention to consumer behaviors in response to changes in the environment.  In this case, there were several circumstances that led to players wanting to use more ore.  Don't limit yourself to explicit changes in supply, but rather changes in behaviors to both suppliers and consumers. 

Behavioral analysis is most evident with the 2008 financial crisis, where there was a whirlwind of consumer behavior changes leading to public-sector policy changes leading to further changes in consumer behaviors with real-estate industry changes leading to financial-sector changes with even more consumer behavioral changes leading to more public-sector policy changes prompting even more changes in the financial sector with more consumer changes finally ending with the public sector completely out of its depth and scrambling to figure out what to do.  Note, this is an extremely simplified summary of the 2008 housing market crash, and it was far, far more complex than this.

 

[DaFishBob.6518]

Prismaticite crystals were another factor as they came around Champions as well. These things are account bound until refined into ingots using orichalcum and mithril ingots, with 2 different recipes available at this time, one using 50-50 each and one using 10 orichalcum and 90 mithril. For a while, it was actually well worth converting the Prismaticite crystals into Prismatium ingots to sell as people needed them and it took a while for a single player to accumulate the crystals needed to make the weapons.