Pro Tip: Selling Shards (TL:DR, Huge Stacks = Bad)

Are you a shard farmer? From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Farming shards has the be, hands down, the worst thing to do in this game, outside of YoKai FATEs. That being said, please keep in mind general concepts of tiered pricing when selling shards. Selling shards in lower stacks, i.e. x50-x200, at a higher price can bring you triple the profits than low tier, high stack quantities.

Example below. You'll notice that there are stacks of absolutely absurd quantities of shards on my Market Board. People don't buy that. You'll notice that even at a low tier pricing, people are spending more for lower stacks. Follow this concept - this game will love you. Shards are not a finite, expedition-driven item set, so people aren't going to be desperate enough to spend 500mm in gil for their low-level crafts.

Example (Part A) - High stacks that are ridiculous:
http://i.imgur.com/i6hvq0X.png

Example (Part B) - What people are actually buying:
http://i.imgur.com/2p1vHxj.png

I always sell in smaller stacks as know very well people will not pay 400K for shards when they can buy some for much smaller amounts

Its just common sense.. Say you have someone who isnt leveling their crafts, but looking to craft just one or two items.. They aren't going to need 5k shards.. so if theres an option to buy a lower quanitity, closer to what they actually need, they're going to jump on that..

But hey, let the people sell them in the huge amounts. It just lowers the playing field for us that sell small amounts :D

I quite often buy the big stacks at low prices

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

I quite often buy the big stacks at low prices

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I will say, in at least one rare case, I've bought between x500-1000 shards when the Blood Pepper market crashed (so I could make the primal minions). But that was a very, very rare case. There's a difference between big stacks and stacks of 9,900+. A huge difference, actually.

Might be different on your server but on ours often stacks of 2k+ sell. I recently bought 9k of earth shards and fire not so long back. They were both way under priced now if I find I don't need some I will sell a few back. Even then only if I am desperate for gil.

Also if you don't like the big stacks at lower prices buy them and split them down and resell.

Huge stacks is pretty much the ONLY way that I buy my shards. They typically sell for less per unit than smaller stacks do, and as a prolific crafter I KNOW I'm going to burn through them all in due time.

I'm not opposed to having smaller stacks available, as well, but by no means should folks stop selling in bulk.

I look at those pitiful stacks of 100 crystals and think to myself, "Yeah, that'll last an afternoon. Maybe."

I NEVER buy shards in big stacks for one simple reason: bots.

When you see big stacks of them, or even worse, several big stacks by the same seller, at least on Goblin, they were farmed by bots.

One FC in particular who is entirely made up of bots, which I can't name because we don't wanna hurt the cheaters' feelings...

Bots who I have reported for freaking months now, and yet, here they are, still farming (mainly) wind shards near the Sylph village...

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Originally Posted by ValarianHeartbreaker

I NEVER buy shards in big stacks for one simple reason: bots.

When you see big stacks of them, or even worse, several big stacks by the same seller, at least on Goblin, they were farmed by bots.

One FC in particular who is entirely made up of bots, which I can't name because we don't wanna hurt the cheaters' feelings...

Bots who I have reported for freaking months now, and yet, here they are, still farming (mainly) wind shards near the Sylph village...

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I couldn't care less who farmed them as long as it wasn't me.

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I look at those pitiful stacks of 100 crystals and think to myself, "Yeah, that'll last an afternoon. Maybe."

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Yep and that is a big maybe lol

I buy large stacks of at least 5k. It's usually cheaper and I craft a lot. I can burn through 5k without even trying. Sometimes, if I buy a stack of 9,999 for half the price of the smaller stacks, I'll just put up a few smaller stacks at the higher price and make most of my money back. Please don't stop selling in large quantities.

I could take a day or two to sell 100 shards at 250gil. Or~ I can sell 1,000 shards in an hour for 50gil each. In a literal sense I make more money by the latter method. Why? Because people who are looking to buy in bulk will seek out the cheapest option. A greedier player may simply buy me out while stocking up to make a larger profit with a slower sale, or a one off crafter who just wants a few shards will buy mine because they are a reasonable number of items for a reasonable price. I am going to always pump out more money than price gougers because those same people are in my potential customer demographic.

I've read a lot of feedback about how some users like to buy in bulk, and the last response was regarding selling in bulk.

For those of you who farm/sell shards, why did you choose to do that for gil instead of other methods (e.g. crafting, gathering tangible mats, etc.). The return is just so poor, so I'd honestly like to know.

I'll only buy shards in small quantities if they're greatly underpriced. Otherwise, its just not worth it for me. I can easily blow though 2k in shards in an afternoon if I'm doing some serious crafting, and its not worth the time/tax market to get small bundles.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I look at those pitiful stacks of 100 crystals and think to myself, "Yeah, that'll last an afternoon. Maybe."

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More like a minute.

I think it really depends on how people play. I for myself don't craft at all and I let my retainers farm windshards solely for selling on the MB. Here on Cerberus, stacks of 500 to 1000 pieces per stack sell really well.

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Originally Posted by Greydor

For those of you who farm/sell shards, why did you choose to do that for gil instead of other methods (e.g. crafting, gathering tangible mats, etc.). The return is just so poor, so I'd honestly like to know.

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Well, I haven't for a long time, but when I did, it was because I was looking for something I could keep selling consistently for quite a while. With most crafted or gathered items, if you want to sell a lot, you'll have to diversify between lots of different items, because for any one of them you can too easily flood the market so that none of your stuff sells any more. The demand for shards is so consistently high that that isn't an issue. (This is also why bots favor shards, of course.)

At the time, I also couldn't yet make as much from crafting as I can now that I've leveled my DoH to 50. Being able to consistently HQ intermediate crafted materials makes those a good gil source, and an easier one than shard farming. But I was still fairly low level (though I don't remember quite what level) back when I was making money gathering and selling shards, so my options were a bit more limited.