Quote Originally Posted by zenmetsu View Post
The 50% undercut is not the minimum price that I would want. Hell, some of the stuff I would sell for 20% of the market rate. I sell for a price that I feel compensates me for the time/effort that I spent acquiring the item. Could I just sell for 85%? Sure! It would probably not sell as fast, and where do you draw the line on "legitimate"? 85%? 80%? 75%? See where I am going?

Usually I sell for a price halfway between my desired minimum and the market price. If people undercut me, oh well, I can re-list.

As for profit, exactly how much do you think it costs me per item when I mine/harvest/fish something up? Think about it long and hard.
I have Miner at 50 along with Alch and Armorer, so I do know the costs when you go get the items yourself. Gear obtainment + Travel + Repairs + Time(both in getting the item, and leveling what it takes to obtain said item). Most raw mats take very little besides time to acquire in bulks. However you actually are not making any profit until said costs are taken care of. Just going to use bought HQ 50 Miner gear to illustrate. Said gear is likely going to cost you about 250,000 gil, to be able to mine whatever you want, start adding your travel costs, repairs, and time and the initial cost to be able to mine said items is actually up there a nice ways. Now if you are crafting items, you also have to take into account what you loose by doing said craft, sure it can cost you very little gil to go gather an item, but are you going to synth something whose end product is worth less than the raw mats it takes to make it? Not if you are smart.

The problem with rampant undercutting is that it destabilizes a market. Making it very hard to justify gathering or crafting said items, because they can loose so much value in day to to the point they are no longer worth the investment to obtain or craft. I am all for cheaper goods, but I am not happy about people constantly devaluing the investments behind the items either.