Quote Originally Posted by Majidah View Post
I guess its for when an item is sold out and you don't know what a fair price is.
Too bad the history is erased during server maintenances. Oh well, I guess everything can't be perfect, server limitations and all, unless this was designed this way on purpose.

Seems like the current iteration of this is mostly useful so people don't have to wade through the wards to buy something. Now it's just a buy directly from an NPC and you're done. Of course they've added a surcharge onto this for your laziness, but I guess it's just another method of implementing a gil sink.