Undercutting.

[Buff_Archer]

I've undercut myself several times over when I wanted to push other sellers out of the market, or at least ensure that they are unable to sell any of their inventory without taking a major loss. I only do this when it's not an unprofitable endeavor on my part of course.

When I first post something for sale, I look at historic prices and what's out there. If something comparable is for sale for 15,000 in Gridania and that's in line with historic prices, then I might post it for 15,000 in Limsa, for the sake of keeping prices up and having a slight separation of markets based on the buyer's paying tax vs. not.

But if someone puts up a 'wall of items' at a price where it's clear my stock is going to stagnate and they're just going to resupply it... at this point it's more like a 1v1 game of chess and rather than simply sell my stuff at their new much lower prices... it's much more fun to flip the board in the air and send all the pieces flying.

Example: when 2.4 hit I was selling easy low level HQ crafts for low level Rogues to people who obviously had Gil to burn, for 15k Gil each as fast as I could craft them. And right then it was worth at because that's what people were willing to pay, and because they could get that item as NQ from a vendor, and because I was spending my time crafting vs. indulging in the new content. So other sellers and I coexisted in that price range selling items nonstop until suddenly they stopped selling. One player posted like a wall of 8 items at 2500 each vs at the 15000 each they were selling at just fine. It no longer became worth my time to craft these, and no point in buying out the 2500 ones because they'd get resupplied anyway.

So, I decided to take my unsold items, and revenge-craft a few more, to show the major undercutters what happens when they want to take me on. They had their wall of items at 2500 each, so I posted a couple for 2250, some for 2000, some for 1750, some for 1500, and on down with a couple at 1250 and 1000. This meant that they wouldn't sell a single one of their items without beating my very lowest price at any time, and would have to either move their entire inventory really low at less than half of what they were getting at the start, or micromanage their sales based on when my lowest priced item at any time sold. And I just moved on to other things satisfied that I'd still make a profit while minimizing theirs. Whenever my lowest-priced item sold they'd still have a slightly higher lowest-price to beat.

[Stihllodeing]

Some people like to stagger prices in an attempt to manipulate the market into selling items for a lower price. I was doing this with some food item a while back. It wasn't even a top tier item and it was selling for 1000 ea. on average. And this was an item I could buy from an NPC merchant for, like, 19 gil or something. So I bought a few 99x stacks, sold them in stacks of 10 staggering down in increments of 100 to normalize the price because the price was obscene, inappropriate, and taking advantage of desperate buyers looking for convenience.

That's impressively smart. I've noticed this before as well, but have never been proactive enough to do anything about it.

Kudos to you. I feel like I should try harder now to be honest.

[kidvideo]

I always undercut myself, especially if there's no one else to undercut.

[Kiroh]

Yes it is, it offends you. You would have not made this thread if you weren't yet another person who thrives off a free market but hates it when it's being free.

Omg, get out of my head you mindreader you! D=

This thread is not about undercutting itself, its about people who undercut themselves, even through it doesnt make any sense, no matter how hard they try to explain why.

This is exactly the point of the thread. I saw something silly on the market boards that didn't make sense to me because the market board gives you all the tools you need to never have to do it.