Low Balling expensive items

[Kytrin]

As someone who made millions (!!) by selling housing items let me give you still an advice - Be careful. Housing items don't sell as good or as fast as HQ food for example.

Boy this is the truth! I tried to break into the housing item market once and spent months frustrated as hell and lost a good 5-10 million gil in the process. I was happy to go right back to my food crafting after that lol! It may not sell for as much as furniture, but at least it's solid steady gil.

Also, don't forget OP that mat value is relative. It literally never would've occurred to me that undyed woolen cloth was even vaguely expensive and would make a bed worth more than the prices you listed. Same for gold, jadeite, and spruce lumber. The ebony would give me pause for the borax, but most of that I can collect via retainer over a couple of days without breaking a sweat.

[Gariored]

its an competitive free market, there's no rules or guidelines and not everyone is going to go down by 1 gil every single time just to undercut each other. but if someone is dropping the price there's a good chance they'll still going to make a profit by doing so. (mats are unlimited so it all comes down to what their time is worth)

[Whalaqee]

I undercut hard because usually the price of the item is greatly inflated, and since I already gather ore, I can sell it cheaply to make a profit. Also my cheaper prices provides an alternative that is more suitable to people leveling their crafting classes for the first time who are often tight on gil. Also that gathering from old-content nodes are still more relevant to the average player than whatever node from the latest expansion as most early crafting involves old-content mats. I done this in other MMOs as I know what the market is like.

I win because mine sells faster than the guy who sells theirs for a more premium price, the crafter wins because they can buy their mats on a budget and they can feel free to undercut the others who are selling for a premium.

[kidalutz]

I see things this way

Cat A Has 10+ Items for say 20K gil
Cat B has 10+ items that they're trying to gouge 45K+ gil for the same item.

Cat A will guaranteed sell all their items before Cat B Sells even 3 of their items
Cat A will continue to sell their items at affordable prices and sell their items faster and continue to accrue profit. Cat B will also accrue profit however CatBs merchandise will remain on the shelf longer because Cat B is too blinded by huge prices to make items affordable and thus more appealing. meanwhile Cat A will have acheived far more wealth far quicker and not only surpassed Cat B but continued into areas of profit that will continue to allow them to expound upon thier little empire while Cat B will only think they're making a killing.

[Baxcel]

Yeah i agree the undercutting is getting bad again... Finished up my first lv80 crafter an I don't have a use for the tier 8 materia yet.. So figured I'd sell it.. 600k was going price.. People were constantly buying at that price according to the logs too.. Came back 4hrs later to send out retainers.. People had undercut the price down to 100-200k for tier 8 crafting materia..

[Whalaqee]

I wouldn't trust market history too much as the prices fluctuate especially for something that others can obtain with the same effort and time.

As what people also tend to do, myself included, is take the lowest price currently on the market board as a benchmark. Anything higher is basically fool's gil.

Sure this can lead to things spiraling too fast downward but the market will always correct itself to some extent. And much of the fluctuation of prices tend to be just brief flashes in the pan, that whoever does so is not playing for the long term unless they choose to make this a daily habit.

If you are getting pushed out because of lowballing, you either: A) Adapt, B) Stick to your guns and hope your item sells for the listed price, or C) You stop altogether.

As here is what market history really tells you: The amount the item averagely sells for. So even if lowballing occurs, the item is likely to just bounce back to around that price range, and the lowballing is reset.

[AnimaAnimus]

Lowballing isn't nearly as bad as the ppl who buy all of certain items that are not common, like hairstyles and what not that average around 1m give or take, put them back up on the mb for 10m and then use alts to buy 2-3 of them and immediately put them back on the market for 10m each again, resetting the price to 10m so they can heavily profit. We have at least 1 person on Sarg that does this often.

All the reset transactions take place within minutes of each other so its obvious what they are doing

[Whalaqee]

Lowballing isn't nearly as bad as the ppl who buy all of certain items that are not common, like hairstyles and what not that average around 1m give or take, put them back up on the mb for 10m and then use alts to buy 2-3 of them and immediately put them back on the market for 10m each again, resetting the price to 10m so they can heavily profit. We have at least 1 person on Sarg that does this often.

All the reset transactions take place within minutes of each other so its obvious what they are doing

Very true, especially on ones that take more effort to get/make than other items. Which is also where lowballing is also a positive effect on the economy. As when people try to highball an item, they also slow down the sales to a more glacial pace, where an item may have sold in a short amount of 0-4 days is now more akin to a month-by-month basis.

[jarlmcqueen]

I've been farming ovim fleece from the billy and nanny enemies for the past week, and made some good gil, but recently I've seen people tanking the price.

[Llethander]

People are free to post items at whatever price they want to sell them at. The lower they are priced the faster they will sell because people are more willing to make a snap-decision to purchase something if they feel that there is a savings to be had. This is the same general principle that is used in the real world when businesses sell items at a discount (put them 'on sale').

It sounds more like the complaint is "I don't like when people undercut me because it means either I have to relist for less or my listing won't sell because people always go for the cheapest listing."