power selling

well, ive been fondling around the forums and found alot of threads about power selling and its an easy way to make money if you know how.

well, ive decided, farming just isn't for me, im not lucky at all, drops really aren't much and its just a HUGE mess for me. but power selling, i wanna give it a try.

so can anyone tell me some basic ways on how to get started?

like:

what to do?

how to do it?

what i need to do in order to?

etc etc so fellow gw players i ask in a favor to explain this to me

ty!

Fondling hahaha.

Anyways you should have a decent amount of money to start off with so you can buy multiple things but it's not really needed (100k being decent, you could go with 20-50k).

Basically you stand around in one of the trade towns..Eye of the North, Lions Arch, Kamadan (all dist 1) and look for people selling items for a lower price than what they're worth. To do that you will have to know the prices of nearly every popular item.

Then you sell it for the price it's actually worth (or near to that price, but above the price you bought it for so you make money).

Basically it's like farming, without doing much..because you sit around for hours.

Yeah, it's just buy low - sell high

Power trading also takes a lot of patience. If you are a person that has little patience, this is not for you. Like garethporlest said, you basically sit in a town for hours doing nothing but watching the trade channel for good deals.

If you need an exemple, i have one :

+26k

Minipets are good because they hold their value relatively well without major pricechanges (slow decrease in price).

Powersellers are the scum of the earth, as they inflate prices and live off other people's hard work while contributing nothing.

I spit on them.

Let's all give 3 Hurrays for the most contructive reply of the year

Well, lets just hope you never need any specific items/mod upgrades... because the powersellers are the ones who keep the price relatively constant or high if you ever want to sell anything ingame.

Btw... you dont actually have to sell cheaply to a powerseller you know. They buy from players who want to get rid of items fast and want storage space mostly.... btw, I think theres one under your bridge, so you might want to look out for him.

Shakkara please remember to keep your responses polite.
Anger leads to trolling/flaming - trolling/flaming leads to mini bans as Yoda would say!

I agree with Rushin Roulette that power traders (I might be considered a low-end one myself) serves a purpose! Many people don't want to bother to much with trading - they just want to play the game! So they invest their time in getting the items - just as the traders invest theirs in trading the items. Both things yield a profit!
I've had several guildies begging me to sell their items for them, offering me 50% of the profit for my time and effort.

To answer OP:
Before you start, you need to know the marked - hang out in the buy/sell section to get a feel for the prices.
You also need to learn which items are in demand and which are not - only experience can teach you this.
Don't kid yourself: trading takes time,- but if you're good at it it can be very profitable!

You must really hate shopping malls...

Or, do what I do - be on good terms with friends that are power traders.

Then, when you get semi decent loot, run it by them, and they'll give you fair estimates. Then either they buy the stuff for fair price minus a markup and sell it on, give you a good price on items, or point you to whomever will be interested into items.

And I can play the game without the usual district #1 nonsense.

the smell of jealousy surrounds you

As I've said before, power trading, for the most part, is relatively dead.

Given the steep plummet in most item prices, it is very difficult (and time consuming) to make any type of profit that warrants the time investment. In short, you can probably make more money by simply playing the game (especially without heroes or henchmen) than you can make by trying to game the buy low/sell high game.

although i agree with him i would have stated it differently

It's not dead, it just got much harder due to more sharks roaming the districts, especially since the influx or invention of green items where suddenly more people infected themselves with the gold fever.

You need like....300k to power trade. Start saving boy.

You could always scam people.

Power trading isn't dead, but the market was redefined by the decline of the prices of objects in the middle range (old 100k-ish stuff). If you want to power trade today, you need excellent networking skills and a MUCH larger bankroll than you used to, because the only objects with high profit potential are the items that sell for well over 100k. Acquiring those items and turning a profit is about:

a) knowing who has stuff and who will pay high prices for stuff
b) having the liquidity to buy anything at any time if the deal is right
c) establishing a reputation for b) so that high end items get offered to you before hitting the open market

A few months ago, you could simply make money trading on the mid-range stuff (Gloom Shields, Zodiac stuff, Aatxe, Kuuna, Bone Dragon, Lich, Djinn, etc.), and by trading in those items be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of occasional undercosted opportunities in the high-end markets (req 8s, Gwen, Mallyx, etc.). It paid a lot better than even the most abusive farming ever did (call it 50-100k/hr invested).

Now, since you're basically waiting around for the good high-end opportunities but the mid-range revenue stream has dried up, the profit potential is vastly lower. It may pay better than the typical 15-20k/hr. farm in the long run, but it's much more boring (since you're usually a buyer just watching trade spam roll by) and you'd have to make a lot of trades to determine whether or not it actually pays better.

Now, for the established players in the market, I assure you it still plays quite well.

Dead? No

Profitable to the non gold buyer? No

Too much bought gold/duped braces floating around for a new player to ever make it in trading.

You could make a 'living' off low end items, but true high end stuff will always be out of your reach.

Actually, you need nothing at all to powertrade.


Step 1) Get something for free from someone. Quite a bit of people out there that are giving away lower-end greens.

Step 2) Sell that item for some money. Might take you while to find someone willing to buy it, but there's always someone.

Step 3) With that money, you buy something that's being sold for less than what it's worth. Sell this back to someone for slightly more than what it's worth. Might take you while to find someone willing to buy it, but there's always someone.

Repeat Step 3 ad infinitum.


Years of non-stop trading later you will be the richest player in Guild Wars.


As for me, thanks, I'll pass.

Gotta love ignorance

Think about it, without power traders you be stuck in kamadan for half an hour trying to get 25K for your weapon when you could get 15K on the spot , power traders help those who hate to trade.

Exactly. For someone that is trying to get into the power trading game, the mid-range level is where they would normally start, which is all but dead.

It's very difficult to start in the high-end game (both bankroll and knowledge-wise), so the OP may be out of luck.

Low req 15^50 crystallines(tyrian)/no negs are the only true high end items left. All the inscription stuff is mid table. Crystallines/Reavers etc are ok for the l33t people, but no true high end stuff.

I think I'll just repost my comments from the last thread on this sad topic:

Wow..how closed minded can you be?

Trading etc is part of any MMO.

Wow... how naive can you be?

Exploiting ignorance is part of any power trading.

Ignorance is not an excuse. They have all the info available to them if they choose to look. If they don't look, they are fair game.

I wouldn't say it's fair but again it's just in game gold.

The "spit" comment refers to scammers I think. Someone in Kamadan was wanting to buy a scythe and I had a gold ancient req9 scythe with no great mods. He didn't have enough money so he's like how about scythe for scythe and his was a green +30hp of some sort. I decided not to rip him off and told him to just use the one he already has since it had much better stats than what i was about to trade him. the extra 10-15k I could've made I thought was not worth ripping off a new player.

I'd love for you guys to explain by what you mean by "ignorance".

If there is any reference to "market value" in your definition, I'd also love for you to define what you consider to be "market value".

discuss pl0x.

I is not seeing it.

Ignorance..

They have access to this forum, or any other GW forum for that matter. Any player can get an item PC'd. Players have access to the knowledge of their guildies/friends etc

There is no reason why a person should not know the current going rate for any item. Hell, go to a trade center and watch the spam...

It is no ones responsibility to hold the hands of the newbies, they learn as they go. If it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside by helping the newbies, then carry on. However, it doesn't give anyone the right to judge people who don't.

/end rant

If you got this far <3

Got from wikipedia.

Ignorance is a lack of knowledge.

Market price is an economic concept with commonplace familiarity; it is the price that a good or service is offered at, or will fetch, in the marketplace; it is of interest mainly in the study of microeconomics. Market value and market price are equal only under conditions of market efficiency, equilibrium, and rational expectations.

Anything else you want to ask without searching wikipedia?

So, you're saying that power traders exploit ignorance of microeconomics factoring in market efficiency, equilibrium and rational expectations?

Hmmm...I would say 99.999% of the players in the game would qualify as being "ignorant", and, as a result, 99.999% of the trades that occur in game involve exploiting ignorance.

If you aren't talking about a lack of knowledge of microeconomics, I'd love for you, Chthon or Antheus to better clarify that point than taking a textbook explanation from wikipedia...

Power trading like thousands of ecto is pretty much over now.

Not enough high end items.

People more knowledgable now.

Too many people doing it.

If you hate power trading. Great! Thats one less person doing it.

While your trying to buy that nice weapon or armour through just playing the game or farming which both suck, I am sitting on thousands of ecto which have taken me barely any time to make.

I love remembering my old trades like buying an item for 60k worth 3.5 million, or 120k item worth 2.5 million. Have fun farming at 15k an hour though =)

Anet dont ban you for power trading so it is not a problem.

Auctioneer mod in WoW.

Auctions there are considerably simpler, but also much faster.

Since there's a lot of activity, auctions move fast. Using auctioneer mod, it's possible to quickly scan entire auction house, and get automatic suggestions for under/overpriced items, based on sales history and median sale and b/o prices.

Many players do not use auctioneer, hence creating wide discrepancy in prices. These are the "ignorant" ones.

In GW, there is no fast moving auction house, so prices fluctuate much more drastically (or remain very stable, but overpriced).

The ignorance here doesn't imply stupidity - but for majority of players it's very hard to keep up with current market prices. Obviously, most know that crystalines are worth a lot, but what about more common rare skins? Dwarven and summit stuff plummeted since GW:EN, yet it can still fetch some cash.

Even the price check forums for mods, one of the more stable markets has many prices way off.

Real life example: stock market. There, laws exist that control insider trading (ignorant vs. in-the-know).

Profits made from non-resource based commodities rely on knowing more than the other. In perfect market, power trading cannot exist, since everyone knows the true value, and the supply. All prices instantly settle around the perfect supply/demand ratio, hence no profits can be made, assuming steady supply.

Pure trading, without own supply relies on making best use of understanding of the market itself, completely abstracted away from actual mechanics of supply and demand of resources themself - traders are not concerned with those, their efficiency will merely be reflected by how well they observe the changes in them.

It's not an excuse. But it's the core principle behind power trading. Ignorance here would be better termed as uninformed. It doesn't imply stupidity or incompetence. For someone, the 5k made may be a fair price, even if the item will be resold for 5x the amount - the original seller is uncapable (for whichever reason) of selling for higher price.

This obviously doesn't cover scams (frozen ectos, birthday presents, ...), but trading unided items is not scam.

Its ebayers that you hate OP not traders...its just that many of the cheaters pretend they are traders or "retired" traders and give them a bad name. Legitimate traders dont buy minis and Crystalines for k's of ecto lol. But yeah, Herb is right of course, the economy isnt active enough to make it worth the time anyway

Herb, I customized the req9 crystalline, 1600ecto just wasn't enough for me...only paid just over 800e for it, so no great lose.

Power trading ^^^ not buying a Stygian for 100+40 then reselling for 100+60

I'm bad for only giving the guy 800e and then trying to double/triple my money?

I am saying you should go on wikipedia and change that definition if you think you can define the two terms better.

Did I even mention anything about how power traders presence affect the market efficiency, equilibrium and rational expectations? If I didn't, why did you say I was saying that? I am saying that you can find those definitions easily and you don't, instead begging the question and ask others to define them for you; stop putting words into people's mouths.

The lack of "reasonable knowledge of relevant/pertinent facts" is ignorance. Specifically the lack of the knowledge that they could themselves sell the item for significantly more to someone else (or buy the item for significantly less from someone else) and find that other trading partner faster than they obtain the difference in any other way.

To an extent, you're right, but I suspect that you take it too far.

Time is money. Specifically, in GW, X time is worth however much gold you could farm in that period.
If I can farm at a rate of 1k/3min (doubtful but pretend I can), and if I sell you my weapon for 15k, then go farm for half an hour, and you spent the same half an hour time finding a buyer for 25k, then I end up in the same position I would have been in if I had spent the half hour finding the 25k buyer myself -- 1k/3min gold/time. That situation is just fine, presuming I like farming more than trade spamming and you like trade spamming more than farming.

But that's not what power merching is about. Power merching is about you buying that item for 15k then selling it off for 25k faster than I could farm the 10k difference. Power merching is about taking that 10k that I could get from another buyer and putting it in your pocket. Ultimately, power merching is about putting the "customers" in a worse position than they would be in if they found their own buyers/sellers and cut you out of the loop. It's a fundamentally parasitic exercise. Dress it up in whatever rationalizations you like, but you can't get around that simple fact.

And that brings me back to ignorance. Why on earth would I trade with you if I knew I could find a better price for myself (and do so faster than I could farm the difference)? I wouldn't. No one looking out for their own best interests would. Presuming I am looking out for my own best interests, the only way that transaction would happen is if I DID NOT KNOW that I could find a better price for myself (and do so faster than I could farm the difference). That is ignorance. And its presence in the power-merchs "customers" is an absolutely necessary precondition for power-merching.

Calm down, this is just a game.

Anyway, if someone wants to sell me something for a less value then it is worth because they can get rid of it faster, thats not my problem. If they don't take the time to find out the real price of such item, thats not my problem.

So why is it bad to buy things at low prices again?