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R M's Consignment Market Buying Guide for the Casual Player

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Revision as of 01:33, 3 June 2008 by Robotech Master (Talk | contribs) (Common Recipes: Gourmet Hot Dogs: clarifications)

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Introduction

If you are reading this, chances are you are not that interested in the market except as a place to find cheap Single Origins, or buy that Invention Enhancement you've been wanting. When it comes to spending your time crafting, or making a fortune by buying low and selling high, you could care less—you just want to go out and bust some head, and plunk down your hard-earned Influence or Infamy to trick your character out with the latest and greatest Stuff. You do not want to get a PhD. in Economics for the enjoyment of your favorite game.

If that is the case, then you have come to the right place.

This guide will cover some common-sense tips for buying on the market and paying a reasonable price—or at least not losing your shirt. It will not cover selling, except where it relates to buying. Also, I will not go too deeply into the mechanics or economics—this is a strictly practical guide. If you want to delve further into the depths of Black Market black magic, you should check out some of the guides available on the "Guides" or "The Market" forums on the City of Heroes main board.

If you are interested in learning more about the market in general, PeterPeter's Wentworth's 101 is a good broad introduction to its principles and mechanisms. You can also learn more by following The Paragon Wiki links within this guide.

Enjoy the guide, and I hope it will be very helpful to you.

Robotech Master 19:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Basic Principles

The consignment markets work on a blind bidding system. Sellers list their items at the minimum prices they want to receive. Buyers bid the amount they are willing to pay, without being able to see what the sellers' list prices are. If they bid more than at least one seller's asking price, the sale will go to the seller who placed the lowest price on his item (and, in the event of a tie on sale price, to the item that was listed first). In short, highest bid buys lowest price.

Although buyers and sellers cannot see the sale prices of items up for bids, they can see the sale price (and, if they drill down, the date and time of the sale) for the last five items of that type to have been sold. This will give them a general idea of the current "going rate" for an item, from which they can determine what they would like to bid. However, the "going rate" can be deceiving.

So You Want to Buy a Widget

The first step in buying something from the marketplace is deciding what you want to buy.

There are some things you can find on the market for which wisdom in buying is largely unnecessary. A number of marketeers sell DO or SO drops at the market rather than go out of their way to hit a store since they are going there anyway, and since they just want to get rid of them and free up their slot (and also work on the "X items sold" badges) they will list them low. If you are filling up with Single Origins on a budget, you can do a lot worse than to place some low bids and see what you get. (This can also be a decent way for low-level/low-Inf characters to pick up some fast cash, by buying SOs dirt cheap and then trotting them to a store to sell at a profit. Be sure and take them to the store that matches their origin for the best payout!)

Also, Inspirations can be easily found on the Consignment Market. Generally speaking, the best bargains are from the lowest level Inspirations, which can often be found for under 10 Inf each as people unload them to work on "X items sold" badges. Medium and large Inspirations are often priced out of relation to their actual value.

Other items for sale at the market come in three basic categories: recipes, salvage, and crafted Enhancements. The question is, which of these do you want?

Crafted Invention Origin (IO) Enhancements come in two categories: common and set. Common IOs are like Single-Origin Enhancements that do not expire (and can be, depending on level, up to 25% better than the equivalent SO). Set IOs are harder to come by, but can provide your character with additional bonuses or special abilities when you slot more than one of a set in a single character.

Recipes and salvage (and a dollop of Inf) are necessary to craft these IO Enhancements.

These IO Enhancements (or recipes + salvage + crafting costs) can be a bit expensive. However, since they do not expire the way SOs do, they can save a good deal of money in the long run.

For reasons that I will explain later in this guide, it will work best if you decide ahead of time what Invention Enhancements you plan to slot, and when. Knowing well in advance what you will need will give you plenty of time to lay your plans to meet those needs.

Caveat Emptor: Prices, Bids, and You

Another important thing to decide is how much you should bid. This is where many players make mistaken assumptions that unneccessarily cost them a good deal of money.

The Last Five Sales

When you open an auction, you see five sale prices listed in a window to the right. These are how much the bidder paid for each of the five the most recent of those items to sell. Now bid 1 inf on that item, and click on the bid listing that appears at the bottom of the auction window. Click the blue button to the right that says "More" and you will see the dates and times of those bids as well as the price. (You may then cancel the bid after you finish looking.)

When the last five sales are all at the same price, or relatively close in price, it is easy to assume that "that's just how much it costs," and bid accordingly. However, this could end up costing you more than you need to pay. What you should remember is this:

The last five sales are only what the last five buyers were willing to pay. They are not necessarily what the next seller is willing to take.

For example, what if you are buying a piece of salvage that normally goes for 500 Inf. What if you come to the marketplace listing and find the last five of that salvage sold for 30,000 Inf? Does this mean you will have to pay 30,000 Inf to get that salvage? No—someone could have come in since then and dropped a dozen pieces in for 1 Inf, hoping to capitalize on the high price. You might very well get it for a bid of 100. (In fact, this is a common technique used by marketeers, called "honeypotting"—sell five of something they want at very high prices, then buy it up cheaply when everyone who has some drops it on the market to take advantage of the apparent high price. It is also common for dedicated crafters, such as the "value-added resellers" I cover later on, to bid significantly more than the current going rate for salvage just so that they can have it in their hands immediately for crafting purposes.)

Also, prices fluctuate over the course of the day, or even the week, depending on when and how many marketplace-using players are logged in. If you have the time, it might be best for you to check out the market several times to get a better picture of the going rate for an item. If you do not, it will still be worth your while to place a bid that is lower than the going rate. If the bid turns out to be fruitless, you can cancel it with no loss. If it turns out to get you the item, you have just saved some money.

Bid Creep

If you have the time, one technique that you may find helpful is "bid creep"—starting with a very low bid, waiting to see if it "takes," then "creeping up" to a slightly higher bid and repeating until you have the thing you want. Unlike listing an item, there is no fee for placing a bid, so you can place and retract as many bids as you like without it costing you anything until you reach a successful amount. This may take more time than you are willing to spend, and may be unnessary in the bargain. Because in the long run…

All You Need is Just a Little Patience

The best way to get what you want from the marketplace is developing your patience.

One of the things that makes more money for sellers than anything else is the deeply-rooted sense of impatience that many City of Heroes players have. To be fair, you are trained into it: you smack a mob, you get a reward. You see the benefit right then and there. Likewise, when you go to an "ordinary" Enhancement store, you pay the money and you get your SO immediately. (This impatience is also what can lead to powerlevelling, as players are so eager to have higher-level characters that they embrace any and every means by which to do it.) It can take some real effort to wrench yourself away from that mindset of instant gratification—but if you do, the results are rewarding.

The best way to buy (or sell, for that matter) an item in the marketplace for the amount you want to pay (or receive) is to post the bid (or sale amount) and wait. Go do something else. Play your character for a while, that is what it is for. You will be notified of any movement by the Marketplace channel. (You may wish to set up a separate tab for the Marketplace channel and check it every so often, so that the notification does not get lost in combat spam.) As long as your bid is not unrealistically low, sooner or later your low bid will coincide with the dip in the periodical price cycles, or with somebody dumping the item on the market cheap to get rid of it or work toward his sales badge—or, for that matter, because he does not know or care how much the item is worth. And you will have your item!

This is why I mentioned earlier that it is wise to plan out ahead of time what you want for your character and when. Knowing in advance what you will need to buy gives you plenty of time to place low bids on the market and wait for them to come in. If you are set on slotting Level 25 Common IOs for some of your powers when you reach level 22, place your low bids at level 19 or 20 and let them ride. You should have your Enhancements with time to spare.

Caveat Emptor II: Special Cases

There are a couple of special pricing cases that you should be aware of before you start to bid. These are Common Recipe sale prices, and recipes and salvage versus Pre-crafted Invention Enhancements.

Common Recipes: Gourmet Hot Dogs

Whenever a food calls itself "gourmet," that usually means it is about the same quality as the regular version, only more expensive. For example, most "gourmet" hot dogs are not significantly better (or better for you) than the regular kind—but they sure do cost you more.

And so it is with common IO recipe prices in the consignment market. Whether it is because the buyers want to swindle you, or because they do not realize themselves what a recipe should go for, many common recipe sellers list their recipes for more than they actually cost to buy from a crafting table. If would-be buyers do not bother to acquaint themselves with the actual prices before bidding, it is easy to end up paying more than they would at the table.

The only reason to buy recipes at the marketplace is if you can save money over table prices doing so. If you have to pay the same amount as or even more than what the table will run you, there is no point buying from there—you will be at a crafting table anyway to craft the IO, so you might just as well buy it there.

But how can you know what the table price of a recipe is while you are at the marketplace without always running back and forth to a table? Simple; Paragon Wiki provides an excellent price list for Common Invention Recipes. You only need to bookmark it and open it when you are at the market—or else print out a copy if you doubt your computer can take the strain of running a web browser in addition to City.

It is all right to pay more than the listed "Resale" price for a recipe—in fact, this helps both you and the seller out, paying him more than he would have gotten from a contact store, but less than it would cost you to buy the recipe new. But do not pay more than "Purchase" price—you are only buying "gourmet" hot dogs. If there are no bites to your bids as you creep up on the list price, buy it from the table instead.

Pre-Crafted Enhancements and the Value-Added Reseller

One thing that many casual players lack is the desire to spend time in research on fiddly bits of gameology, such as learning about crafting and how the market works in detail. (In fact, if you have read this far in my guide, I salute you; despite the title of this guide, you are probably not what I mean by a "casual" player.) It is not so much that they do not want to have to buy the recipes and the salvage and go craft them, even though doing so would only take a couple of extra minutes. It is usually more that they do not want to have to bother learning how.

As tends to happen in these situations, a group of dedicated marketeers has arisen to fill this niche, spending their time buying up salvage and recipes, crafting them, and selling them at a markup. It is possible to make a small, steady income in this way, for relatively little work—providing the "value-added" service of crafting Enhancements so that the players do not have to.

It should be emphasized that there is actually nothing wrong with this approach, if the players in question can afford it. Different people play the game to get different things out of it, and time and effort have value to the one expending them. If a player finds his free time is worth spending the extra Inf to buy the Enhancements pre-made, that is a decision that only he can make. This is the same reason that lawnmowing services and restaurants exist—to do things a person could do more cheaply for himself, but just does not want to.

It is also worth noting that in some cases, pre-crafted Enhancements may sell for significantly less than they would cost to craft on one's own, while still earning the reseller a hefty profit. For example, a Level 50 Accuracy IO costs 454,600 for the recipe, and another 454,600 to craft—plus salvage. However, they often sell on the market for 300,000 to 400,000 Inf each—less than half the crafting price. This is because when a crafter has memorized the recipe (by crafting a set quantity of Enhancements), he can craft it without needing the recipe and for a lower amount of Inf, for a total crafting cost of 245,200 as opposed to over 900,000 (and the salvage is so common that it generally does not cost more than a couple of thousand).

Also, it is possible that players working on their crafting badges (to receive the Field Crafter accolade) may dump Enhancements on the market as soon as they craft them for very little money, meaning that bargain-hunters can snatch them up at a considerable discount.

This is another good time to check the list of Common Invention Recipes before you place your bid. Even if you are ordinarily willing to craft for yourself, the Invention Enhancement may be cheaper than the recipe, salvage, and crafting cost put together—and if you place a low bid and wait, it can be even cheaper.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide will help you become more of a "smart shopper" and save you a bit of Influence or Infamy on your trips to the market. If you have suggestions for how it can be updated, please use the "Discussion" link above.

To learn more about the Market, check out the Market Guides & Faqs thread on the City of Heroes official bulletin board.