4* only recently started selling. Primal weapons were more popular. In fact, the crafters who hit 4 star first also ended up quitting the game first or stopped crafting, at least on my server.

Which begs the question, do you want to make a lot of big investments with small profit margins or small investments with large profit margins.

As an example, there are items that costs less than 10k to craft buying all mats from mb and sells for 100k on the board quite regularly. That's 850% mark up.

On the other hand, using you buy all the mats on the board 500k MC, 1050k Sealant, 150k rest. 1.7million for an item that you can potentially sell for 3million which won't sell any time soon at around a 76% mark up assuming you made it HQ.

Now granted it can take 13-14 crafts to make the same gross profit but on the other hand; you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. So was 4 star worth it? Not when other markets are a lot easier to exploit and move a lot quicker.