Degrading Market

Since I like to take it slow I leveled my Miner en Leatherworker pretty slow, which I find ok. I usually level the first 2.5 levels with leve's. Then Craft/gather for 2.5 levels so I can sell everything on the market. Last time I had a huge chunk of ice crystals which sold pretty well on the market. Put them up for sale in small stacks. 2 days later I go check, and I am the most expensive seller all of a sudden ( only sold 2 stacks). I lower the price ( not lower then the lowest seller but no one buys my stuff if someone is cheaper, even if they sell stacks of 500 or something).
2 days later, same thing happened. This keeps happening, with people vastly dropping the price since they want to sell faster and faster imo. I also think botters/hackers have a huge role in this problem but its ridiculous!
Price of the crystals are no 33% of what I sold them first for. And the same happens with my Girlfriends toon that tries to sell wildfowl feathers of midland basil. 1 moment, price is ok (nothing too high but I try to see what is in demand). Next thing BAM huge price drop.
Is there anything that I as a player can do about it to make sure the market doesn't jump from 1 end to the other?

Your first problem is you called your character a 'toon'.

But not really anything we can do about the undercutters. If you have a huge gil reserve you can try and corner the market, buy out the under-cutters and re-list at a higher price.

Figured as much. Shame, don't have any kind of that money. Otherwise I would try to boost the market! Even if I did though, people would undercut it again.

Square-Enix could easily solve this problem by introducing minimum prices, because this messes up the games economy. I'm a weaver. miner and botanist and I can sometimes only sell my wares at a big loss. Some people sell stuff that's easily worth 500 to 1000 gil of materials for less than 10 gil. How is this an incentive to go and gather / craft stuff. It doesn't pay, even worse, it costs money to dabble in the Disciples of the Land / Hand.

And buying up all the lower priced items isn't really a solution either. I tried doing that with cotton coifs. I bought all of them that were on offer below 1000 gil. Now I'm stuck with 30 or 40 cotton coifs in my inventory, and a few days later there's 50 more people selling them for 1 to 5 gil.

lol lots of ppl buy vendor trash and sell it marked up for profit. crafters and potential buyers know no difference

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Originally Posted by SinThaSizah

What he said

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I recommend only buying up a market if its hit rock bottom. For instance I recently flooded Mythril Ingot market, as I macro'd a crap ton and wanted to sell them.

After mine sold, the others in the market went into a frenzy of undercutting. They must of had a good balance before I showed up, because they went just absolutely but, selling HQ lower then RQ. Originally I sold about 1000 ingots at 444-666 per. After they sold, the others went as low as 50 per. I bought 600 at under 100 per.

Relisted for 555 per and sold them all by the next day.

i say endure it, when housing hits a lot of them will get a wake up call(i hope)

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Originally Posted by Zeronic

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I've experienced the same scenario as you, but I've manage to come out with a hefty profit over the weekend. You're probably pricing it too high.

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Originally Posted by SinThaSizah

Square-Enix could easily solve this problem by introducing minimum prices...

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How do you determine the minimum price value? How do you even know what should be the right minimum price? What happens if the market is saturated with that item and the real value is now below the minimum price?

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Originally Posted by SinThaSizah

Some people sell stuff that's easily worth 500 to 1000 gil of materials for less than 10 gil.

And buying up all the lower priced items isn't really a solution either. I tried doing that with cotton coifs...

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Then why do you even bother crafting that item if you know that people are selling it at 10 gil? If you don't then why didn't you do a price check before crafting to sell?

As for your venture into cornering the cotton coif market, do you know the supply and demand of cotton coif beforehand? Or are you simply just buying things because they are cheap? Did you realize that ppl are crafting many items to level up their crafts, and early armor pieces are easily obtainable from quest reward...it's a classic over supply and low demand and you've just walked right in to it.

There's already a minimum price.

Marchant's will buy anything in any quantities at a set price. That classifies as a minimum price.

If you want a legal minimum price... No.

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Originally Posted by SinThaSizah

I'm a weaver. miner and botanist and I can sometimes only sell my wares at a big loss.

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A "loss"? What kind of loss do you have from selling items harvested through mining or botany?
And if you're selling weaver items at a loss, stop making them!

Either crafting is fun for you or it's not. If you're not enjoying it and you're doing it solely to make gil, then you shouldn't complain if other people have different ideas as to how to make gil. They want to make gil for themselves, not for you.

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Originally Posted by Rainth

i say endure it, when housing hits a lot of them will get a wake up call(i hope)

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Second thread ive seen you say this in, im not sure I understand what it means. When housing comes in, people will be even more desperate to sell their items BEFORE yours.

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Originally Posted by SinThaSizah

And buying up all the lower priced items isn't really a solution either. I tried doing that with cotton coifs. I bought all of them that were on offer below 1000 gil. Now I'm stuck with 30 or 40 cotton coifs in my inventory, and a few days later there's 50 more people selling them for 1 to 5 gil.

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Free hint: trying to corner the market in a mid-level equipment item that gets handed out by every third quest is not intelligent.

Trying to corner it at a price twice what it costs to buy it from the NPC vendors is even less intelligent.

It's the way that market capitalism works.... Sucks to be the little guy, doesn't it?
On a related note, and not directed at anyone in particular, I wonder how many people complain about undercutting in a video game, yet shop at Wal-Mart in reality, a company that actively undercuts and harms the real-world market in the same way, every day. Just a thought.

Always entertaining to read threads like these. I always wonder how I continue to make gil using mostly the same strat. Its because half of the sellers on the market are clueless.

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Originally Posted by dragonflyseksparade

Always entertaining to read threads like these. I always wonder how I continue to make gil using mostly the same strat. Its because half of the sellers on the market are clueless.

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You're giving them too much credits...IMO, more than half of them are clueless...

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Originally Posted by Wazabi

You're giving them too much credits...IMO, more than half of them are clueless...

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This is why I'm able to resell items bought from npcs at a premium for about 2x-10x the original price, usually 4x.

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Originally Posted by Zigkid3

This is why I'm able to resell items bought from npcs at a premium for about 2x-10x the original price, usually 4x.

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STOP UNDERCUTTING ME I WANT TO SELL IT AT 20X THE PRICE OF VENDOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/sarcasm.

lol...I was selling Hard Leather at x10 for the first week.

I was selling cinnamon at 20x the first week. bought for 4g each and selling at 80g. and same thing for undyed hempen cloth. Now I've move to undyed cotton cloth at 3x. Though I'll admit the market is starting to stabilize more now. Just waiting on getting a level 50 leatherworker soon.

First of were they "Crystals" or "Shards" if they are crystals well that's part of the problem. People don't buy as many crystals since you need like 5,000 shards to level and im not even sure you need crystals to level 1-50 crafting. Thus people only buy them to craft things for profit or for themselves being there mostly used on higher level items.

With that being said if 500 crystals are 70gil per and 20 crystals are 150 gil per (just an example) I would still buy 500 crystals being that I know id use them and well now I don't need to buy them for a couple weeks.

Solution to your problem of them not selling would be to charge 70-80gil and have them sell nearly instantly to the person who just need enough to make a particular item.