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{{Issue9}}
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{{TOCright}}
Totally a stub/wip at this point, but trying to assemble information about the potential for cross-server influence transfers with the [[Issue 9]] consignment house.
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== Overview ==
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'''Inf Transfer''' refers to the process where a player moves [[inf]] from one of his or her characters to another. In the current implementation of the game, this process is very easy: a player simply uses the [[Mail System]] to send a global email to his or herself with the inf attached to it. This is the safest method of transferring inf to one's own characters. Some specifics with regard to inf transfer using this method:
 +
* The maximum amount that can be transferred in a single email is 2 billion inf.
 +
* A maximum of 20 global mails can be in a mailbox at any one time.
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* Global mail sent to oneself will be kept for a maximum of 60 days, after which it will be deleted.
  
== Warnings ==
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Prior to the introduction of global emailing and email attachments in [[Issue 17]], players had to rely on less reliable methods to perform inf transfers among their characters. The rest of this article details these methods. However, players are strongly cautioned to avoid these methods in the current implementation of the game.
All of this is speculative at this point.  We know that the consignment houses are cross server.  And a post by Positron implied (without out-right stating) that they will not be blocking the buying and selling of an item by the same account.  If this ends up blocked, this entire page is invalidated. The rest of this page will assume that it is allowed. And, as with all Isuse 9 stuff, it is totally subject to change before it hits live.
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== Basics ==
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== Historical Methods ==
The idea here is that, while the consignment houses are not designed to allof for influence transfers, they do not disallow it.  The basic idea for a transfer is to have a poor character on one server offer for sale a cheep item, and then have a rich character on the same or different sever purchase the item for a large amount of Inf, effectively transfering teh Inf to the poor character.
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== Hazards ==
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{{historical|type=section|customreason=that has been superseded by changes in}}
Given how the consignment houses are understood to function, the above basic transfer method is subject to a couple of different versions of interception, where a different character than the intended recipient ends up receiving the transfer.  Both involve the interceptor happening to be at the auction house during the time it takes to swap over from one toon to the other to complete the transfer.  This may seem like a small chance of occurrance, except that there are likely to be people specifically waiting around the consignment houses specifically to try to make these intercepts in order to make a bunch of Inf for little effort.
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=== Buy/resell interception ===
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'''Warning. There currently appears to be a bug with the [[Auction House]] and certain items, particularly certain [[DO]]s. The bug has the CH reporting exactly one item for sale, if there are any items for sale, no matter how many are actually for sale. This make the "Number for Sale" check below invalid, and transfers using these items quite unsafe in general.'''
This one is actually the easier of the two to defend against. It involves the interceptor seeing the odd, low level item placed up for auction, buying it himself, and immediately relisting it in order to be the one to receive the transfer.  This scheme relies on the fact that items can be bought for much larger amounts than they are actually listed for.  For example, player A wants to transfer 10 million Inf from character A2 to character A1. Character A1 only has 10,000 Inf on hand.  Because of the 10% listing fee, the most A1 can list the item for is 100,000 Inf.  The player wants to transfer much more than that, and so goes ahead and doesn't bother listing it for even that much, instead listing it for a reletively small amount, say 100 Inf. He intends to then swap over to A2 and go ahead and buy it for 10 million Inf.  But while he is changing characters, player B purchases the cheep item and immediately relists it.  A2 gets logged in, and goes to purchase the item.  But since he cannot see who he is purchasing from, he ends up sending his 10 mil to player B instead of character A1.
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This one has a simple solution:  do not try to transfer more Inf at one time than you are able to list items for.  This means that, if you want to transfer 10 million to a character who is starting with only 10,000, you will need to do it in a couple of stages, getting the poor character first to 100,000, then 1 million, and finally 10 million.  This protects because at each step the item cannot be purchased for less than the amount that is intended to transfer.  The only way to buy/resell will effectively give the poor character the desired amount of money anyway.
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=== Basics ===
 +
The basic idea for an influence/infamy (Inf) transfer is to have a poor character on one server offer for sale a cheap item, and then have a rich character on the same or different sever purchase the item for a large amount of Inf, effectively transferring the Inf to the poor character.
  
=== Same item interception ===
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'''Warning: This is not an intended use of the consignment houses'''
This one is harder to protect against, and the strategy designed to protect against the buy/resell interception actually works against defending against this one.
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This one is based on the Interceptor seeing the transfer being listed, and happening to have a copy of the same item already in their inventory.  While there are a huge number of potential transfer items, it is still a finite list.  And some types of items are much more likely to be in the hands of random Inf-poor alts.  Low level TOs of various types, for instance.  The interceptor watches the consignment listings, watching for a listing that happens to match an item he already has.  The moment he sees such a listing pop up, he immediately lists his own copy for sale at a minimum price.  According to Positron, the low offers sell first, so when the transfering player logs back in with his rich alt and goes to buy the item, it will most likely be the interceptor's version that gets sold, not the transferer's poor alt's version.  Listing high to avoid the buy/resell problem just makes it harder to avoid this one.
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Lighthouse, a Community Relations Manager at NCsoft (a redname) posted this message in the official forums:
  
== Strategies to avoid interception ==
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:''We wanted to make people aware that using the Consignment Markets as a means to transfer influence or infamy between characters is not an intended use. If you attempt to do such a transfer and someone else buys your item, or the item is sold to someone else, please know that this is an issue our Customer Support Team will not assist you with. Our apologies, but the Consignment Markets are designed to enable the games economy, not to make transfers between characters. Thank you in advance for your understanding.''
  
A couple of strategies have been proposed on the boards to try to avoid having transfers intercepted. None of these have been tested, and so they are all, at this point, theoretical.
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The [http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Number=9012978 original message] is a sticky in the Market section of the forums.
  
=== Using Buy-orders ===
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=== Short list of steps for safe transfers ===
This one works on the major assumption that buy-orders are invisible.  That there is no listing of outstanding buy-orders that the players can access.  If there is such a listing, then this method is even more dangerous than the basic "sell-listing then buy" strategy.
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# Select transfer item
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# Make sure there are none of that item for sale
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# Make sure the transaction history includes some sales prior to the current date
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# Use the recipient to put the item up for sale for a low price
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# Log into the donor
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# If there is any number other than one of that item for sale now *or* the transaction history has additional entries, abort
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# Otherwise place your bid in confidence
  
But assuming that buy-orders are not visibly listed, there is a fairly simple way to be fairly safe with transfers.
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=== Detailed Reasonings ===
  
# Figure out an item that the low level posesses that is not currently up for sale.
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==== Transfer Item ====
# Swap to the rich toon and place a buy-order for the item at the desired transfer amount.
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# Swap back to the low level toon and list the item cheeply.
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This method is not 100% safe. But with no listing of the buy orders there is nothing for deliberate interceptors to see to act upon. The only danger to this is the possibility that someone else randomly lists the same item for sale between the time of the buy-order and the time that the player can place the item up for sale to complete the buy-order.  Not a large chance of this happening, but still not 100% safe.
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Selection of a transfer item is important. Ideally you want as a transfer item something that is rarer, and thus less likely to interact with anyone else's sales/transfers. The easiest selection is off-level low interest [[TO]]s and especially [[DO]]s. To avoid hazards (see below) you also want an item that is 1) not currently for sale at the Auction House, and 2) has not been sold more than four times during the current date. Selecting an item that meets these two criteria will allow the player to have the information that they need to safely conduct the transfer.
  
=== Flood the market plan ===
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==== Hazards ====
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Given how the consignment houses function, the above basic transfer method is subject to a couple of different versions of interception, where a different character than the intended recipient ends up receiving the transfer. Both involve the interceptor happening to be at the auction house during the time it takes to swap over from one toon to the other to complete the transfer. This may seem like a small chance of occurrence, except that there are likely to be people specifically waiting around the consignment houses specifically to try to make these intercepts in order to make a bunch of Inf for little effort.
  
Proposed by user Zombie_Man on the game boards:
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===== Buy/resell interception =====
 +
This interception type involves the interceptor seeing the odd, low level item placed up for auction, buying it himself, and immediately relisting it in order to be the one to receive the transfer. This scheme relies on the fact that items can be bought for much larger amounts than they are actually listed for. For example, player A wants to transfer 10 million Inf from character A2 to character A1. Character A1 only has 10,000 Inf on hand. Because of the 10% listing fee, the most A1 can list the item for is 100,000 Inf. The player wants to transfer much more than that, and so goes ahead and doesn't bother listing it for even that much, instead listing it for a relatively small amount, say 100 Inf. He intends to then swap over to A2 and go ahead and buy it for 10 million Inf. But while he is changing characters, player B purchases the cheap item and immediately relists it. A2 gets logged in, and goes to purchase the item. But since he cannot see who he is purchasing from, he ends up sending his 10 mil to player B instead of character A1.
  
# Rich toon on ServerA makes bids on Level 5 ToHitDebuff TOs offering 10 influence each until they're all bought out (at that low price). So, there are no more Level 5 ToHitDebuffs in WWs that are 10 inf or less.
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===== Same item interception =====
# Switch to poor toon on ServerB and flood WW's with 10 Level 5 ToHitDebuffs for the asking price of 1 inf* each. Wait and see if anyone's going to buy and resell in order to intercept**. If I get no buys in 10 minutes, then...
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This interception type is based on the Interceptor seeing the transfer being listed, and happening to have a copy of the same item already in their inventory. While there are a huge number of potential transfer items, it is still a finite list. And some types of items are much more likely to be in the hands of random Inf-poor alts. Low level TOs of various types, for instance. The interceptor watches the consignment listings, watching for a listing that happens to match an item he already has. The moment he sees such a listing pop up, he immediately lists his own copy for sale at a minimum price. The low offers sell first, so when the transferring player logs back in with his rich alt and goes to buy the item, it will most likely be the interceptor's version that gets sold, not the transferer's poor alt's version.  
# Switch to rich toon on ServerA and put in three buy orders for Level 5 ToHitDebuffs for 2 inf each.
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# Switch to poor toon and see if I just sold three Level 5 ToHitDebuffs. If yes...
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# Switch to rich toon and put in a buy order for a Level 5 ToHitDebuff for 10 million inf. Since I had seven Level 5 ToHitDebuffs in WWs queue, all at the lowest possible price, no one can sneak another Level 5 ToHitDebuff ahead of me. If someone were to use the buy and resell intercept method, they'd have to know to do it at least seven times in a row in order to intercept. And if they are online and buying up all sorts of lowballed TOs, see.
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>(Adjust the 1 influence to minimum order amount.)
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==== Avoiding interception ====
  
<nowiki>**</nowiki>(And if there are interceptors online, I'll just screw around with them by continually dumping all types of Level 5 enhancements on the market with multiple toons making them mad.)
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The consignment houses provide the necessary tools to avoid interception. Basically, by watching a couple of the details that the system provides about the auctions, it is possible to detect whether either of the above interception methods are being attempted. If an interception attempt is detected, the player can either halt the transfer altogether, or start from scratch with a different object as the sale item.
  
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===== Detecting Buy/sell interception attempts =====
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When placing the transfer item up for bid, take note of the sales history of the type of item. After swapping to the high level character, again check the history. If the history has changed since the item was placed for bid, then the transfer should be considered unsafe and aborted. The above criteria that the item not have sold more than nine times on the current date allows the use of the given date time stamps to make 100% certain that noone has manipulated the sales history.
  
=== Transaction log/protective buy-order plan ===
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===== Detecting same item interception attempts =====
Proposed by user Stonewash on the game boards:
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Ideally the transfer is being done with an item that is not currently for sale by anyone else. So once the player is swapped over to their high level, check the number of auctions active for the item. If more than one of the item is now for sale, the transfer should be considered unsafe and aborted.
  
# Find an item noone else is selling.
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=== Protective Purchase Method ===
# Offer to sell it at a random value slightly higher than what it's valued to. For an item valued at 10K inf, offer it for 10,632 inf.
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This is an alternative transfer method that gives an extra measure of protection, and is not subject to the bug warned about at the top of the page.
# Examine the last 10 transactions and remember what it said.
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# Swap characters.
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# Select item to sell. Does not have to be zero for sale in the market, and in fact extra items of the same type in the market will help hide the intended transfer from potential intercepters until it is too late for them to act.
# Examine the last 10 transactions to make sure noone's bought your item.
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# Record the item's recent bid history.
# Put in a buy order for 10,631 inf.
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# Place the item up for bid at an odd price. Likely 3 digits or low 4 digits, but not a round number of any sort. Remember the price.
# Buy the item for 5M inf.
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# Swap to the rich character.
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# Validate the sales history to assure that noone else has purchased the transfer item to relist.
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# Begin to place bids for one inf less than the price of the transfer item. If you buy any, keep biding at the same price. You want to clear out any items of a lower price than your transfer item.
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# When a bid finally does not buy an item, leave that bid active as an extra protection against any last second low-price sales listings of the item.
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# Now place your transfer bid. It should buy the transfer item, which is now the lowest priced copy of the item availible for sale.
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# Relog over to the no-longer poor toon and collect your inf.
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[[Category:Game Currency]]

Latest revision as of 18:41, 29 June 2012

Overview

Inf Transfer refers to the process where a player moves inf from one of his or her characters to another. In the current implementation of the game, this process is very easy: a player simply uses the Mail System to send a global email to his or herself with the inf attached to it. This is the safest method of transferring inf to one's own characters. Some specifics with regard to inf transfer using this method:

  • The maximum amount that can be transferred in a single email is 2 billion inf.
  • A maximum of 20 global mails can be in a mailbox at any one time.
  • Global mail sent to oneself will be kept for a maximum of 60 days, after which it will be deleted.

Prior to the introduction of global emailing and email attachments in Issue 17, players had to rely on less reliable methods to perform inf transfers among their characters. The rest of this article details these methods. However, players are strongly cautioned to avoid these methods in the current implementation of the game.

Historical Methods

Badge time.png This section contains information that has been superseded by changes in City of Heroes Freedom. It is provided for historical purposes.

Warning. There currently appears to be a bug with the Auction House and certain items, particularly certain DOs. The bug has the CH reporting exactly one item for sale, if there are any items for sale, no matter how many are actually for sale. This make the "Number for Sale" check below invalid, and transfers using these items quite unsafe in general.

Basics

The basic idea for an influence/infamy (Inf) transfer is to have a poor character on one server offer for sale a cheap item, and then have a rich character on the same or different sever purchase the item for a large amount of Inf, effectively transferring the Inf to the poor character.

Warning: This is not an intended use of the consignment houses

Lighthouse, a Community Relations Manager at NCsoft (a redname) posted this message in the official forums:

We wanted to make people aware that using the Consignment Markets as a means to transfer influence or infamy between characters is not an intended use. If you attempt to do such a transfer and someone else buys your item, or the item is sold to someone else, please know that this is an issue our Customer Support Team will not assist you with. Our apologies, but the Consignment Markets are designed to enable the games economy, not to make transfers between characters. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

The original message is a sticky in the Market section of the forums.

Short list of steps for safe transfers

  1. Select transfer item
  2. Make sure there are none of that item for sale
  3. Make sure the transaction history includes some sales prior to the current date
  4. Use the recipient to put the item up for sale for a low price
  5. Log into the donor
  6. If there is any number other than one of that item for sale now *or* the transaction history has additional entries, abort
  7. Otherwise place your bid in confidence

Detailed Reasonings

Transfer Item

Selection of a transfer item is important. Ideally you want as a transfer item something that is rarer, and thus less likely to interact with anyone else's sales/transfers. The easiest selection is off-level low interest TOs and especially DOs. To avoid hazards (see below) you also want an item that is 1) not currently for sale at the Auction House, and 2) has not been sold more than four times during the current date. Selecting an item that meets these two criteria will allow the player to have the information that they need to safely conduct the transfer.

Hazards

Given how the consignment houses function, the above basic transfer method is subject to a couple of different versions of interception, where a different character than the intended recipient ends up receiving the transfer. Both involve the interceptor happening to be at the auction house during the time it takes to swap over from one toon to the other to complete the transfer. This may seem like a small chance of occurrence, except that there are likely to be people specifically waiting around the consignment houses specifically to try to make these intercepts in order to make a bunch of Inf for little effort.

Buy/resell interception

This interception type involves the interceptor seeing the odd, low level item placed up for auction, buying it himself, and immediately relisting it in order to be the one to receive the transfer. This scheme relies on the fact that items can be bought for much larger amounts than they are actually listed for. For example, player A wants to transfer 10 million Inf from character A2 to character A1. Character A1 only has 10,000 Inf on hand. Because of the 10% listing fee, the most A1 can list the item for is 100,000 Inf. The player wants to transfer much more than that, and so goes ahead and doesn't bother listing it for even that much, instead listing it for a relatively small amount, say 100 Inf. He intends to then swap over to A2 and go ahead and buy it for 10 million Inf. But while he is changing characters, player B purchases the cheap item and immediately relists it. A2 gets logged in, and goes to purchase the item. But since he cannot see who he is purchasing from, he ends up sending his 10 mil to player B instead of character A1.

Same item interception

This interception type is based on the Interceptor seeing the transfer being listed, and happening to have a copy of the same item already in their inventory. While there are a huge number of potential transfer items, it is still a finite list. And some types of items are much more likely to be in the hands of random Inf-poor alts. Low level TOs of various types, for instance. The interceptor watches the consignment listings, watching for a listing that happens to match an item he already has. The moment he sees such a listing pop up, he immediately lists his own copy for sale at a minimum price. The low offers sell first, so when the transferring player logs back in with his rich alt and goes to buy the item, it will most likely be the interceptor's version that gets sold, not the transferer's poor alt's version.

Avoiding interception

The consignment houses provide the necessary tools to avoid interception. Basically, by watching a couple of the details that the system provides about the auctions, it is possible to detect whether either of the above interception methods are being attempted. If an interception attempt is detected, the player can either halt the transfer altogether, or start from scratch with a different object as the sale item.

Detecting Buy/sell interception attempts

When placing the transfer item up for bid, take note of the sales history of the type of item. After swapping to the high level character, again check the history. If the history has changed since the item was placed for bid, then the transfer should be considered unsafe and aborted. The above criteria that the item not have sold more than nine times on the current date allows the use of the given date time stamps to make 100% certain that noone has manipulated the sales history.

Detecting same item interception attempts

Ideally the transfer is being done with an item that is not currently for sale by anyone else. So once the player is swapped over to their high level, check the number of auctions active for the item. If more than one of the item is now for sale, the transfer should be considered unsafe and aborted.

Protective Purchase Method

This is an alternative transfer method that gives an extra measure of protection, and is not subject to the bug warned about at the top of the page.

  1. Select item to sell. Does not have to be zero for sale in the market, and in fact extra items of the same type in the market will help hide the intended transfer from potential intercepters until it is too late for them to act.
  2. Record the item's recent bid history.
  3. Place the item up for bid at an odd price. Likely 3 digits or low 4 digits, but not a round number of any sort. Remember the price.
  4. Swap to the rich character.
  5. Validate the sales history to assure that noone else has purchased the transfer item to relist.
  6. Begin to place bids for one inf less than the price of the transfer item. If you buy any, keep biding at the same price. You want to clear out any items of a lower price than your transfer item.
  7. When a bid finally does not buy an item, leave that bid active as an extra protection against any last second low-price sales listings of the item.
  8. Now place your transfer bid. It should buy the transfer item, which is now the lowest priced copy of the item availible for sale.
  9. Relog over to the no-longer poor toon and collect your inf.