The Market: Confusion

[Sir_Swallow]

Hey all,

Recently I looked around the market board for the first time, and I find myself really confused as to how the economy is supposed to work. I would like to be able to buy gear for glamour patterns here, since I am getting close to 50. I have to ask whether there is anything shady I should look out for when using the market. I have seen things like swimsuits going for 100,000 gil, and others going for less than 10,000; I've seen lvl 35 gear priced from 200,000 to 2,000,000 for the same piece! Why are the prices so inconsistent (and so high)? Maybe I should just lvl weaver and craft my own gear...

[AreciaRhi]

Glamour is true endgame so it's always expensive (especially on small servers). Palace of the dead helped bring some fashion to Eorzea lately by dropping lots of glam items.

But over all yes. You may want to level some crafts. Good luck in your fashion fantasy!

[Atoli]

Like Arecia said, many consider glamour the true endgame. The fact that the materials for that lvl 1 glamour gear are usually incredibly hard to get at release of the recipe (and need a fully leveled+geared crafter) means that isn't just in the mind of the players either, it actually IS an endgame activity. Luckily, some patches later it usually eases up, especially since Palace of the Dead got released we now can get nearly all formerly hard to make glamour gear from there, dropping the price on the market board significantly.
The ones that are still expensive are those that are not yet obtainable that way so people still have to make them the old-fashioned way^^

Other than that, you can also use ANY gear for your glamour needs, not just the gear that is specifically for glamouring. So if you have a nice set of boots for, let's say lvl 35, just normal combat boots that look great though, you can glamour those as well, not just the lvl 1 ones that have no stats^^

As for things to look out for:
If an item is fairly expensive in your book, look it up online to see if 1) it is not maybe available somewhere else (because players often do sell gear that NPCs also sell for a way higher price)
and 2) to check which materials and crafting level are needed for it. If it is easy to make and the mats are cheap but it is still sold for a crazy price, someone is trying to make money off of those that do just accept any price.

What is also helpful is the sale history, that little circle with several horizontal lines in it in the upper right corner of the window in which the various sellers of the item you want are listed.
It shows for how much the last 20 people bought said item. If they all paid 5k and now the only one available is 500k, chances are, the price will soon become normal again so put it on your wishlist and wait^^
(but sometimes, the price just goes up from there if the item is no longer relevant and barely anyone crafts it, or if the materials for it are limited, like for example from seasonal events, or from content no one runs anymore, like Diadem, so in that case, the price may just keep rising and rising).

Also, just in general, it is a player-driven community. Supply and demand are everything. If there is something incredibly rare, people are willing to pay crazy sums for it.
For example, the falcon minion went for 120 million(!) Gil a few weeks back. If someone is willing to pay that much and the item is rare, it is not surprising the seller puts it up for that kind of price.

[Niwashi]

... incredibly hard to get at release of the recipe ... Luckily, some patches later it usually eases up ... dropping the price on the market board significantly.

This is actually one of the possible reasons why you'll sometimes see wildly different prices for the same item. Somebody put it up for sale back when it was still new and rare (and therefore very expensive), but it didn't sell right away and after a while it became more widely available, so the normal price dropped dramatically. If that earlier seller doesn't go back and update their price, their MB posting will be left there still listed at what's now an exorbitant price. They may have chosen that price back when it was the going rate.

(I think I have a couple leftover postings like that, actually. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to fixing them.)

[Teiren]

Listings only last for 14 days, so when you see something utterly ridiculous like 120 million for something, it's just because someone's hoping someone will misclick it by mistake somehow.

I'm interested in what items Swallow wants that could somehow be priced for so much. Please share specific items with us, and we can probably explain why it's like that. Another factor is that each server will end up differently because of population.

[Dzian]

Listings last 14 days yes but it's 14 days from when you last used a summoning bell. Not 14 days from when you put the item for sale.

I can go weeks without touching my sales listings just ding the bell send my retainers on a venture or grab some mats for a craft and be on my way. Just using the bell resets the 14 day count for that retainer.

I don't monitor my prices that closely because its not worth the hassle, everything sells eventually. If I've put cordials up at 6k each for example and people undercut to 3k just leave mine at 6k. They'll sell in a few days once the undercutters have finished there lil price war.

same with materials. I might list 4 of 5 ingots individually at 10k a pop and then put a stack of 50 up at a unit price of 7k each.... you can bet the next person to come along with 1 or 2 ingots to sell is going to put them up at 6999. when they could easily put them up at like 9k and still sell the m faster than my stack of 50. so I tend to just leave my prices for weeks at a time.

[Teiren]

Oh...really? That's silly. Well, it's always nice to learn something new. I guess that game message about "now selling" items every time you dismiss the retainer really is like refreshing a web page.

Anyway yeah, I agree about pricing. I've learned that unless your price is completely out of whack, like 2.5x or so of what you're seeing normally, it really will sell if it's an item people want such as Cordial.