A massive issue with current markets and how to really fix it.

[HurtigeKarl]

Have you ever been to an auction before? How often does a car up for auction go from 20,000 to 20,001, to 20,002....? you don't. you'll see it go from 20,000 to 20,500 to 22,000 to 22,200. there will be jumps. yes, some people will undercut by a gil, but there will be people willing to make bigger jumps which will force everyone else to do the same.

You even contradicted yourself when you said that the casual sellers will continue to list at 16,842. If that is the case then the lowest price will be set by the casual sellers at 16.8k and no one would even bother to buy the 39k+ ones because the 39k+ ones that you said are the lowest postings, are actually not the lowest postings.

Casual sellers can list at 16842 to be on par with dungeon-grinding income-wise. Of course, if they are dumb and aim for far higher profit margin per sale rather than looking at their profit per time invested, it will lead to situation where they try to compete with the 1-gil undercutters at the higher prices but utterly fail at doing so. Then they come to forum and complain about how people are undercutting them.

Let's say the casual sellers as a group only post a total of 4 times per day at 16842. That wouldn't meet the total demand of 10 per day at the price range of 3000-50000, which leaves 6 sales for the 1-gil undercutters to charge far above the equilibrium price.

How can you test that the 1-gil undercutters are at that point charging above equilibrium price? Well, put a bid at 35000 gil and watch how they like cockroaches start 1-gil undercutting you.

A major point is that the sellers are not the victims at all in the current system. They are those who benefit from this system, both the 1-gil undercutters and the casual thinking players.

The victims are the customers. Well not every customer, because sometimes a player puts a bid below equilibrium price, but in most cases they are.
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As for auctions: that's why well designed auctions either officially or unofficially implement a rule stating that the increment of a bid should at least be X% of the opening price or Y% of the previous bid. A such rule would encourage people to act now rather than later, analagous like having Z% of inflation encourages people to "use" their money now rather than let it rot in their home.