Money Clip to aid in Trading Items

My apologies if there is all ready a thread suggesting this:

It would greatly help with trading items if it were possible to buy and sell a Money Clip at the NPC traders. This item would just be there to ensure that a trade for item had a set value. The Money Clip should not drop as loot.

I think Money Clips should have a value of 25 Platinum and stackable, maybe even have a limit per account so that some one couldn't over run the all ready imposed Limit of Platinum per account.

I hate the fact that most of the time ecto is use for trades involving rare items, and they as any thing else in the game change value.

so is this some kind of a checkbook?

ooh, an item with fixed price for selling/buying expensive items sounds pretty smart, as long as the trader buys and sells for the same price ^^
/signed hehe

The closest thing that comes to mind are lockpicks. The generally have a pretty fixed value of 1250g.

How would this be any better than ANET simply removing the gold limit ?

Kind of like a check book, but more like a gift card that has a set limit.

Well lock picks do not have enough value to trade with, this would be a dedicated item that is not used for anything else, purely for trading and allowing more stable trading items. I think 5 Money Clips (assuming they are worth 25 platinum) is much easer to trade then 100 lockpicks. You also have two version of lockpicks, so how do you ensure that the trader is using one type over the other?

Well removing the gold limit would be better. But are they going to remove the limit? And besides this could play into the game play, removing the limit just removes one more blance control that ANET has done so much to enforce.

What exactly does the gold limit do for the game economy ?

People already bypass it by trading with ectos, meaning that the only effects I can see are:
- Scams involving items over 100k and people attempting multiple trading sessions.
- A minor gold-sink when ecto is bought/sold at the trader. If the ecto just moves from one persons storage to another where both use it to store wealth, then we don't have the goldsink. And the goldsink can be easily replaced by reducing the merchant price on items and/or the amount of gold that drops.
- Keeping the value of ecto up. There are people who only want ecto for trading purposes, meaning more demand. More demand means higher price.

So unless someone can show me something else that the gold limit does that is good for the game, I view it as a very stupid thing for ANET to of implemented. However there is a problem in removing, or bypassing, it:

If the gold limit is removed, or ANET provides an item with a decent fixed value and identical buy/sell prices at the merchant people will stop wanting ecto for anything but item crafting. So they will cash out their stocks of ecto to the more reliable means of storing wealth, thus increasing the supply. Other people will see the price dropping and panic, cashing out their ecto, meaning the price crashes faster. Suddenly the remaining ecto is only worth its merchant value and a large portion of the wealth in the GW economy is gone and people will whine about it. We are also talking about a sudden removal of a large portion of the wealth in the economy, so the prices of a lot of things will likely drop due to the sudden deflation.

So while I view the gold limit as a stupid idea, simply removing it will likely cause ANET a lot of problems. Any method that provides a better store and/or transfer of wealth than ectos do would have similar effects. A gradual increase of the gold limit and adjustment of the ecto drop rate would lessen these effects, but not remove them.

No, the gold limit is there because there is no item in the game (my opinion and the developers) that is worth more than 100k.

The 1500e + armbraces bids are due to perceived value.

But when people use ectos, there is the risk that ectos will drop in price and they will lose money. Or that it will go up in price and gain money, but it is rare that anything goes up in price anymore.

Game designers are too busy working on GW2 to add things like that. What I was suggesting is a very practical way of trading given the current stuff we have. And I don't understand how trading 5 money clips is much easier than 100 lockpicks, unless you really don't want to type "100" in that trade thing. Two versions of lockpicks? Was that added in the past 15 minutes since I logged off?

That is true, I am sure they are working on GW2, but the release is in 08 09? Adding a trade item can't be that hard.

If I am not mistaken there are two types of lockpicks one that cost 1500g and one that cost 1250g. They are both the same except the 1250 breaks more offten, at least that is my experiance.

Hm... a way to easily bypass the 100k limit... hm...

NO.

/signed

the 100K limit went out of date in 2005

/notsigned

The whole reason for a 100k limit is to prevent this. If a.net is going to allow you to trade for more then 100k at a time, then they will just raise the cap a character can hold/trade.

Not a bad idea, but don't count on it happening.

Please link to where a developer said this. Note that in the game you can trade 100k PLUS items. It would be a trivial change for a dev to make it so you could only trade for money or items and not both.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with 'percieved value'. If you can find someone to buy it for that price then that's what it's worth. And if you want to buy an armbrace then I think you're going to have a hard time convincing someone to sell you one for just 100k regardless of your opinion.

With the recent changes (armor, weapons, drops, etc) gold has more value. So the 100k is relatively more now.

Ways to allow higher prices will make prices... that. Higher.
GW must be equal for both those that play with one character one hour a day and those thay play six hours.

Increasing the gap between commom market and 'high end' market does nothing for that.

The lockpicks from merchants/discount merchants are identical. You might THINK that they break more often, but the chances of retaining are the same.

You're kidding, right? I gotta add this one to the Urban Legends thread.

If the 1500e + armbraces is what the item is selling for, then that is its value. Even if you think it should be worth a different value. If ANET wanted to do something about that, they can simply alter the drop rates to bring its price down. But since ANET hasn't altered the drop rate, then I can't see how anyone can justify saying that ANET feels the price needs to come down.

As for the gold limit keeping the prices down, we have had it here for over two years. Since there are items valued at way over 100k, its clear that the gold limit isn't working at keeping prices down.

Well you may be right there, but I would like to refocus on the topic of the thread. Lock Pick does not have a set price, wheather you buy it at 1500g or 1200g you still sell them for only 750g at the merchants, so to use them as a trade item you would lose (750/450) gold for each one bought then traded.

A Money Clip should have the same set price reguardless of buying or selling at the merchants.

IMO, nothing is worth more than 100k, except maybe the uber-rarest crystalline in the game... nah, still only 100k max

rare item prices have really taken a huge hit since you can buy inscriptions and stuff, and since farming has become incredibly mainstream, hardly anything is worth anything.

the only thing worth over 100k is over 100k

Why is your opinion here worth anything ?

Lets assume that ANET somehow manages to prevent any item selling for over 100k without touching the supply or demand of the effected items. What would happen to items that currently trade for over 100k ?

Since the items are rare enough as is, I doubt the quantity supplied would change much. Maybe a slight decrease. Lets assume no change.

Quantity demanded would go up because we have more people who are able to afford the item.

So we have more people who are willing and able to pay for the item, but the amount up for sale hasn't changed. Meaning that there are more buyers than there are sellers, meaning a shortage in supply. So what happens then ?

1 - Price goes up till quantity demanded is reduced to match quantity supplied. This can't happen as the price is capped at 100k.
2 - People bypass the cap then proceed with option 1. Prevented by the initial assumption but this is what happens in game.
3 - Supply increases to bring quantity supplied up to quantity demanded. If this was a possibility, it would of happened without the price cap as people try to farm the more expensive skins. So I'm ruling this out.
4 - We have a shortage which means that even though several people will have the gold to pay for the item, only the lucky few get it while the rest miss out.

I don't see how number 4 is a desirable situation. But that is the only situation I can see happening if you manage to impose your opinion about what an item is worth without actually changing the market value.

If you played with an items supply or demand then you actually would be changing the market value so this doesn't apply. But given that ANET has kept those items selling for over 100k it is clear that ANET disagrees with your opinion about what they should sell for. So again your opinion is irrelevant.