The only thing I find stupid is when material prices are so undercut that it's actually not profitable to put them in the wards.

Silver or on Gysahl got as low as 120 gil per ore. That's less than 12k for a stack of silver considering the tax for putting it in the wards.

If it were to drop any lower one would either have to wait for the market to completely crash or just NPC/use the silver.

Undercutting is only competition until no one is making a profit at all. Lol