Low Balling expensive items

I just bought up 6 Oasis Canopy Beds that were very heavily discounted. I decided I wanted to switch from primarily selling Mounted Bookshelves (which typically sell for 40,000) to selling Oasis Canopy beds as I've been leveling up my crafting jobs. It's been taking me a very long time to raise the mats needed to craft 15 of these beds!

Anyway, I checked the market board and found 6 up there at a price range from 65,000 to 90,000! The Undyed Woolen Cloth alone should bump it up to much higher than that. Plus the other mats that are all timed nodes.

Anyway, I took the risk and bought them all up and bumped up the price. I'll soon have the mats I need to craft 15 more and I'll list them at the same price. The low ballers got their wish- their beds sold. But now the price is at a much more reasonable amount.

The thing with mats cost is that the mats cost is 0 for anyone who wants to put the time in to acquire them. Are you sure the investment is going to be worth it? The item doesn't appear to sell frequently and in less than 3 weeks people will be able to world visit to get better pricing on items. It looks like there are some of those beds selling for 10,000 gil on Gilgamesh.

I haven't paid a dime for any of the mats. I've gathered them all. I've gathered the crystals, fleece, logs, gold, jade, Raziqsand, and Borax (the only item I'm still working to get). I've been gathering it all. I've bought nothing from the market board.

And It's still taking a very long time for me to make just 15 of these beds. The crystal requirement alone is high enough that I have to stop and go farm more. I finally just borrowed some from the company chest so that I could finish up that portion. I replaced them the next day when my shard crops bloomed.

Time is marketable. Time spent gathering has value too. Anyone who doesn't think so is doing it wrong. And people can post these beds for 10k all day long. I'll keep buying them up and reposting them for much much more. There really isn't much risk in doing so. If someone buys one of my beds right now, I recoup all the money I spent reposting those 6. If no one buys them and I repost them at the original price, I break even and get back my money.

And that's just the 6 I reposted. I still have 15 more coming as soon as I get all the Borax I need.

And these beds were always intended to be a long term project. For fast money, I sell mounted bookshelves. They cost 10,000 in mats plus some lumber that's very easy and cheap to gather and craft. There isn't much effort in that. I can easily make 10 an hour without breaking a sweat. Each bookshelf sells for 40,000. It's easy money. Occasionally, someone will do massive undercuts, but with bookshelves, it's easy to crash the market with 30+ bookshelves at cost or below and the other person will back off. Bookshelves are pretty risk free and sell quickly.

Yeah the low balling items is getting way to common. I understand people wanna sell their junk first and fast but come on.. If the item is selling daily for upwards of 20/40k why would you ruin your own profits by dropping the price down to 8/10k each. It honestly makes no sense .

Your not helping the market, your not helping yourself. If anything your setting up someone to over take the market and buy those cheap items to resell for max profit. If you wanna sell something fast, sell it to an NPC. Eventually crafters and gatherers will just stop selling certain items because their value on the board is lower then if you sell it yo the NPCs..

Because not all items sell daily. I have a few items up for sale that sell maybe 3-4 a month. And from time to time I clean out bags, especially one of a kind items and dump them on the market just to get rid of them. But that probably only accounts for 5-10% of the total market. If Uber Chain of Whipping is selling for 50K and sells 10 a day, I am not going to lowball it.

As someone who made millions (!!) by selling housing items let me give you still an advice - Be careful. Housing items don't sell as good or as fast as HQ food for example. Some items like windows sell better because people tend to use more of them instead of like your beds. I wish you best of luck with your selling procedure and I hope you will sell all you want. But keep that in mind :) Look up the sell history. If there hasn't been any major sells in beds then this probably won't rise in the future.

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Originally Posted by Nanami_Naniwa

...Housing items don't sell as good or as fast as HQ food for example.

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While this has been true for quite some time, the coming data center split coupled with the finally on-again house destruction will FINALLY open up a lot of new housing plots. On Coeurl there has not been any available for weeks. Not a single one.

I recently toured some houses for some ideas, and was amazed/appalled at how many totally empty houses there are - on the order of 50-60% it appears. Personally I have been somewhat stocking up on building mats when I find some really cheap.

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Originally Posted by Nanami_Naniwa

As someone who made millions (!!) by selling housing items let me give you still an advice - Be careful. Housing items don't sell as good or as fast as HQ food for example.

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Boy this is the truth! I tried to break into the housing item market once and spent months frustrated as hell and lost a good 5-10 million gil in the process. I was happy to go right back to my food crafting after that lol! It may not sell for as much as furniture, but at least it's solid steady gil.

Also, don't forget OP that mat value is relative. It literally never would've occurred to me that undyed woolen cloth was even vaguely expensive and would make a bed worth more than the prices you listed. Same for gold, jadeite, and spruce lumber. The ebony would give me pause for the borax, but most of that I can collect via retainer over a couple of days without breaking a sweat.

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Originally Posted by Windsun33

I recently toured some houses for some ideas, and was amazed/appalled at how many totally empty houses there are - on the order of 50-60% it appears. Personally I have been somewhat stocking up on building mats when I find some really cheap.

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As a decorator, I am horrified by that percentage. Absolutely horrified.

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

Yeah the low balling items is getting way to common. I understand people wanna sell their junk first and fast but come on.. If the item is selling daily for upwards of 20/40k why would you ruin your own profits by dropping the price down to 8/10k each. It honestly makes no sense .

Your not helping the market, your not helping yourself. If anything your setting up someone to over take the market and buy those cheap items to resell for max profit. If you wanna sell something fast, sell it to an NPC. Eventually crafters and gatherers will just stop selling certain items because their value on the board is lower then if you sell it yo the NPCs..

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Hold on there... You're mistaken if you think something is wrong with this.

*You* spend more because you buy the mats.

*They* may not. If they farm them themselves then they have 0 upfront costs. Thus they can sell cheaper than you and still make a profit.

I can, if I want, undercut the market with silver bars by mining my own silver ore.

This isn't bad for the economy. That is how an economy is supposed to work. A healthy (capitalist) economy is built on the concept of reducing prices by fostering competition.

If company A finds a way to reduce the costs of their supplies they can sell a product for a lower price than company B which cannot.

If you craft an item that your purchased the mats for for 65,000, but the mats cost 45,000 your profit is 20,000.

If I gather the mats myself, I can sell the item for 45,000 and make 2.25 times more profit than you do.

It sounds like the problem here is you. You're unable to reduce your overhead and thus finding it hard to sell. There are strategies you can use. You *could* for example buy all the cheaper items then resell them for a higher cost. (Buy low, sell high) or you could gather the mats yourself to lower your costs and increase your profits.

The choice is yours.

its an competitive free market, there's no rules or guidelines and not everyone is going to go down by 1 gil every single time just to undercut each other. but if someone is dropping the price there's a good chance they'll still going to make a profit by doing so. (mats are unlimited so it all comes down to what their time is worth)

I undercut hard because usually the price of the item is greatly inflated, and since I already gather ore, I can sell it cheaply to make a profit. Also my cheaper prices provides an alternative that is more suitable to people leveling their crafting classes for the first time who are often tight on gil. Also that gathering from old-content nodes are still more relevant to the average player than whatever node from the latest expansion as most early crafting involves old-content mats. I done this in other MMOs as I know what the market is like.

I win because mine sells faster than the guy who sells theirs for a more premium price, the crafter wins because they can buy their mats on a budget and they can feel free to undercut the others who are selling for a premium.

I see things this way

Cat A Has 10+ Items for say 20K gil
Cat B has 10+ items that they're trying to gouge 45K+ gil for the same item.

Cat A will guaranteed sell all their items before Cat B Sells even 3 of their items
Cat A will continue to sell their items at affordable prices and sell their items faster and continue to accrue profit. Cat B will also accrue profit however CatBs merchandise will remain on the shelf longer because Cat B is too blinded by huge prices to make items affordable and thus more appealing. meanwhile Cat A will have acheived far more wealth far quicker and not only surpassed Cat B but continued into areas of profit that will continue to allow them to expound upon thier little empire while Cat B will only think they're making a killing.

Yeah i agree the undercutting is getting bad again... Finished up my first lv80 crafter an I don't have a use for the tier 8 materia yet.. So figured I'd sell it.. 600k was going price.. People were constantly buying at that price according to the logs too.. Came back 4hrs later to send out retainers.. People had undercut the price down to 100-200k for tier 8 crafting materia..

I wouldn't trust market history too much as the prices fluctuate especially for something that others can obtain with the same effort and time.

As what people also tend to do, myself included, is take the lowest price currently on the market board as a benchmark. Anything higher is basically fool's gil.

Sure this can lead to things spiraling too fast downward but the market will always correct itself to some extent. And much of the fluctuation of prices tend to be just brief flashes in the pan, that whoever does so is not playing for the long term unless they choose to make this a daily habit.

If you are getting pushed out because of lowballing, you either: A) Adapt, B) Stick to your guns and hope your item sells for the listed price, or C) You stop altogether.

As here is what market history really tells you: The amount the item averagely sells for. So even if lowballing occurs, the item is likely to just bounce back to around that price range, and the lowballing is reset.

Lowballing isn't nearly as bad as the ppl who buy all of certain items that are not common, like hairstyles and what not that average around 1m give or take, put them back up on the mb for 10m and then use alts to buy 2-3 of them and immediately put them back on the market for 10m each again, resetting the price to 10m so they can heavily profit. We have at least 1 person on Sarg that does this often.

All the reset transactions take place within minutes of each other so its obvious what they are doing

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

Lowballing isn't nearly as bad as the ppl who buy all of certain items that are not common, like hairstyles and what not that average around 1m give or take, put them back up on the mb for 10m and then use alts to buy 2-3 of them and immediately put them back on the market for 10m each again, resetting the price to 10m so they can heavily profit. We have at least 1 person on Sarg that does this often.

All the reset transactions take place within minutes of each other so its obvious what they are doing

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Very true, especially on ones that take more effort to get/make than other items. Which is also where lowballing is also a positive effect on the economy. As when people try to highball an item, they also slow down the sales to a more glacial pace, where an item may have sold in a short amount of 0-4 days is now more akin to a month-by-month basis.

I've been farming ovim fleece from the billy and nanny enemies for the past week, and made some good gil, but recently I've seen people tanking the price.

People are free to post items at whatever price they want to sell them at. The lower they are priced the faster they will sell because people are more willing to make a snap-decision to purchase something if they feel that there is a savings to be had. This is the same general principle that is used in the real world when businesses sell items at a discount (put them 'on sale').

It sounds more like the complaint is "I don't like when people undercut me because it means either I have to relist for less or my listing won't sell because people always go for the cheapest listing."

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

Yeah the low balling items is getting way to common. I understand people wanna sell their junk first and fast but come on.. If the item is selling daily for upwards of 20/40k why would you ruin your own profits by dropping the price down to 8/10k each. It honestly makes no sense .

Your not helping the market, your not helping yourself. If anything your setting up someone to over take the market and buy those cheap items to resell for max profit. If you wanna sell something fast, sell it to an NPC. Eventually crafters and gatherers will just stop selling certain items because their value on the board is lower then if you sell it yo the NPCs..

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Then you should walk the walk and buy the higher priced items instead of the cheaper ones. If you think lowballing is bad for the market, then reward those that sell high by only buying the highest listed prices for the items on the market.

Id just like to point out that its a mistake to consider mats "free" just because you gathered them yourself. Consider that if mats go for 100k and the finished items goes for 75k (just made up numbers as illustration) then you lose 25k if you use your "free" mats to make the item when you could have sold the mats for more. Its your game to do with as you will, but just something to consider.

True to a certain point, but it's also dependent of demand for that mat, time to sell, retainer space and other factors.

If the mats go for 100k and your finished item goes for 100k, but the mats are slow sellers and take up 6 retainer slots alone while the finished item is a steady seller and takes 1 slot, it might be more worthwhile. Think of it like condensing the mats you gathered and selling bulk in one go per transaction. It lets you move them faster so you can put more items on the mb and sell what you gathered at a faster rate.