I had amassed quite a bit of gil, but I was not over the threshold of 8,000,000 which caused people to be flagged.

I was selling 1 item that was selling for 75,000 a stack and 1 item that was selling for 150,000 a stack. It was one of the advantages of being one of the first high level botanists.

Why did I have so many mats? Because SE did not allow a DOL Class to unlock leves and thus I could do nothing but grind, grind, grind. When you are getting 4 items for every 1200 xp, and you need 232,320 to level, that's 193 items. So you figure add 5 items to that, and you have 2 stacks. If that 2 stacks was selling for 150,000 that's 300,000. How long does it take to get 2 stacks? Somewhere around 16-20 mins depending on if there are +1 gather trees in the area you can use with your +2 gather ability (remember that ability is up every few mins and can net you 10 items vs 5).

So, say on the long side 300,000 per 20 mins x 3 for an hour = 900,000 in an hour if you grind on the same item. 900,000 *.95 (taxes) = 855,000 gil for 1 hours work. Game was out for what 5 weeks when they did the ban hammer? So over 5 weeks, 10 hours of farming isn't that insane, but if you weren't spending it, you'd have been banned.

As I am my FC Master, I felt it my responsibility to have a good pile of gil in stock for when housing is released, that is why for me Gil Collection was my priority over say leveling like other people did. As I've just shown, that's 1 totally legit way to have gotten that much gil.

I'm just glad I stopped gathering when I did, would have been the breaking point if I'd gotten banned from being a Botanist Primary Job.