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When you keep trying to make money selling an item but everyone else keeps undercutting you


Rise.8259

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You can't be undersold if you choose to sell instantly. Anything above that means you want more money than people are willing to pay right now. It's fine to take the risk to get more, but that means accepting that sometimes you wait, sometimes you get nothing.

As a general rule, for high velocity items, you can successfully sell for more than the lowest existing list price. For high value items, you can almost always sell for somewhere near the mid-point between lowest sell listing and highest buy offer. (And specific markets have their own equilibria and monthly/weekly/daily patterns, too.) (And of course, you can make still more using riskier and more aggressive techniques, but... with great rewards comes great risk.)

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It's important to remember the Trading Post is not an auction house. If someone undercuts you that doesn't mean they've won the sale and you've lost, it just means their item will sell first and yours will sell later on. Unless the item is new or the supply has recently increased so the price is dropping rapidly it's highly unlikely you'll be undercut constantly and your item will never sell. (And the same is true for buying - they don't 'outbid' you, they just jump the queue.)

And that's true even with items which don't sell in large volumes. A few months ago I listed a legendary for sale. When I put it up in the evening it was the lowest sell price. When I went to bed there were 2 cheaper. When I woke up the next morning it had sold. Of course I don't know if the others sold or were taken down (although that would have wasted about 100g each), but being undercut didn't stop my sale going through.

I normally list things just below the current sell price and only take them down if they haven't sold after 15 days. At most I have to remove 1 item for every 20 I list, and that's usually one of the green/blue level 80 armour pieces where there's a huge difference between the buy and sell prices but I decided to take a chance anyway.

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I'm feeling the opposite right now. I have a buy order for something and keep having people go above me and they are doing so in stacks of 250. At this point I am actually laughing a bit since there is a group of 3-4 people putting buy orders of one copper more then the next stack of 250 (I put or for say 25 silver, then 1 person puts an order of 250 at 25 silver 1 copper, then next person at 25 silver 2 copper, then third at 25 silver 3 copper, then first person takes down their buy order and puts one up for 25 silver 4 copper and on and on).

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@Neutra.6857 said:I'm feeling the opposite right now. I have a buy order for something and keep having people go above me and they are doing so in stacks of 250. At this point I am actually laughing a bit since there is a group of 3-4 people putting buy orders of one copper more then the next stack of 250 (I put or for say 25 silver, then 1 person puts an order of 250 at 25 silver 1 copper, then next person at 25 silver 2 copper, then third at 25 silver 3 copper, then first person takes down their buy order and puts one up for 25 silver 4 copper and on and on).

Well since you dont lose any on buy order it makes it so people can do this.

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@Linken.6345 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:I'm feeling the opposite right now. I have a buy order for something and keep having people go above me and they are doing so in stacks of 250. At this point I am actually laughing a bit since there is a group of 3-4 people putting buy orders of one copper more then the next stack of 250 (I put or for say 25 silver, then 1 person puts an order of 250 at 25 silver 1 copper, then next person at 25 silver 2 copper, then third at 25 silver 3 copper, then first person takes down their buy order and puts one up for 25 silver 4 copper and on and on).

Well since you dont lose any on buy order it makes it so people can do this.

Oh I know. I decided to find it amusing rather then getting frustrated. I kinda want to see how high they will go with the one-upmanship. Anyway I am getting close to the point where I need the thing so eventually I will just remove my order and craft it.

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All supply and demand. A month ago, the Leatherworker's glyph was selling for over 900 gold. Today it's less than 200 because it's been in the black Lion chest. I got one, now I'm wondering whether to use it for more extra leather or to hang on to it to see if the price goes back up to insane levels after the chest changes.

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The other week I put twilight up for sale. I put it up at the lowest price, ready to wait for somebody to buy it. I come back the next day and find that I have been undercut by 5 other people selling twilight, each by a single copper.. Now you see, this isn't just a minor inconvenience. With how slowly legendary weapons move through the market, there's a chance that the rate at which people make twilight is faster than the rate that people buy twilight. The cost of relisting is 138 gold.

For all my gripes, there's somebody who has a twilight for sale for 5000 gold. I pity this person, because not only is his sword never going to sell, but he paid 250g to list it. Honestly, I think that if you're going to be selling something really valuable that moves slowly, you should either undercut by a significant amount, or just match the lowest sell price.

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Theres no such thing as undercutting on the TP, as undercutting implies there is some standard price that goods MUST be sold for.In your case its still supply / demand economics as the supply for twilight exceeds the demand.If you want something to sell, you either sell it immediately, or list it at a substantially lower price than the existing cheapest listing.Why people think that they can list something on the TP, and then no one is allowed to list the same thing at a lower price is beyond me.Listing extremely expensive items on the TP is always risky unless the supply / demand economics favors the sellers.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:The other week I put twilight up for sale. I put it up at the lowest price, ready to wait for somebody to buy it. I come back the next day and find that I have been undercut by 5 other people selling twilight, each by a single copper.. Now you see, this isn't just a minor inconvenience. With how slowly legendary weapons move through the market, there's a chance that the rate at which people make twilight is faster than the rate that people buy twilight. The cost of relisting is 138 gold.

It only happened because 5 people are expecting to get the same price in a system that is only supporting maybe 1-2 sales per fortnight, i.e. the market didn't agree with you about how much Twilight should sell for. Had you asked for something halfway between the highest offer and the lowest list price, then you wouldn't have been undercut.

I don't mean that I have no sympathy. I've lost track of how many items I've still got on the TP for overestimating the markets. I just mean that undercutting isn't the issue; it's the symptom of asking for more than people are willing to pay soon.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:The other week I put twilight up for sale. I put it up at the lowest price, ready to wait for somebody to buy it. I come back the next day and find that I have been undercut by 5 other people selling twilight, each by a single copper.. Now you see, this isn't just a minor inconvenience. With how slowly legendary weapons move through the market, there's a chance that the rate at which people make twilight is faster than the rate that people buy twilight. The cost of relisting is 138 gold.

For all my gripes, there's somebody who has a twilight for sale for 5000 gold. I pity this person, because not only is his sword never going to sell, but he paid 250g to list it. Honestly, I think that if you're going to be selling something really valuable that moves slowly, you should either undercut by a significant amount, or just match the lowest sell price.

And how much did you undercut the one above you?

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@Linken.6345 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:The other week I put twilight up for sale. I put it up at the lowest price, ready to wait for somebody to buy it. I come back the next day and find that I have been undercut by 5 other people selling twilight, each by a single copper.. Now you see, this isn't just a minor inconvenience. With how slowly legendary weapons move through the market, there's a chance that the rate at which people make twilight is faster than the rate that people buy twilight. The cost of relisting is 138 gold.

For all my gripes, there's somebody who has a twilight for sale for 5000 gold. I pity this person, because not only is his sword never going to sell, but he paid 250g to list it. Honestly, I think that if you're going to be selling something really valuable that moves slowly, you should either undercut by a significant amount, or just match the lowest sell price.

And how much did you undercut the one above you?

50 gold.

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