Buying and selling inteligently?

Like anyone who plays GW, I'm sure we all get our fair share of gold drops and stuff. What really frustrates me is I am completely out of the community loop when it comes to pricing and everything. I don't want to sell them to the merchant because I know they're worth more, but I get so much gold stuff, inscriptions, mods and the like on a daily basis I don't want to go and bother the price check every little thing.

I was wondering if there might be some sort of rule of thumb to go by, like sell everything that isn't req9. I always feel so uncomfortable trading with other players because I know I'm bad at it, and they always tell me to offer to them, and if its too high they ignore me and if its too low I'm ripping myself off. Does anyone else have this problem?

No, because I price check everything.

As a rule of thumb - if it doesn't come out of the zchest, or the end chest of uw, fow, urgoz, deep, or any of the hard to run dungeons -- it's probably not desirable. Only super rare things are sellable in higher than r9. Even super rare items can be unsellable if they're non-insc and have crappy or no inherent mod. And as for mods - non-perfect mods are junk. The only ones you can maybe sell are forget me not 19%. Anything else is junk.

Is that true in all cases? No. But you wanted a simple answer.

Here. Feel free to go and ask your price check questions there(with the PC sub-forum rules in mind).

Go to forum and it tells most prices

post in the - price check - part if you're not lazy enough, or if you feel lucky to get a response.

Use the search function in Ventari's Buy and Sell forums to get an idea of the price range. Use the Party Search where all WTS and WTB are shown, try to look at prices for the items you want to sell. Don't worry about lossing money, it's only virtual.

I have to argue with this point of view in a major way. It all depends on how much time it's worth to you to make 10x merch price for every req 9 and 10 item you find, and how much storage space you have.

Ok, I know I'm biased, as the Auction administrator, but I have also financed 31 sets of Elite armor plus pretty much anything else I want to purchase, mostly minipets and dye, and have a comfortable balance in storage for things like lockpicks, boardwalk tickets, etc., by simply selling on the auction and setting prices at an affordable-for-everyone level (normally around 10x merch for starting bid). This allows me a steady income, time to play, and allows users who aren't able to afford high end stuff get things that they want without breaking the bank.

Of course, it takes time to post the item on the auction, and time to do the trade when something sells, but it's not like spam selling in trade chat for hours. And of course on those occasions where I do get a rare skin drop, I price check the current market value of the skin, generally finding one on the auction and seeing what people are asking/paying currently.

I honestly avoid the sell forums like the plague but shhh don't tell the Ventari mods!

One thing about using the forums for price checks, it can oftne be annoying as people will often edit their opening post and take out what prices their items were going for.

In an example, someone might post something such as "WTS Armbrace. S/B 100k+20 ecto B/O 100k+30 ecto" and then once it's sold, replace their post with, "Auction is closed." Sure, armbraces can be considered to be a somewhat common item but for the not-so common, it can be a pain to run into such a situation.

I guess people don't realize just how annoying that can be...

Its not hard to know what the rare skins are. Anything else sell as unid.

Intelligently*

Well, yes. I was trying to give a quick rule of thumb to someone who seemed to not want to go through all the research. Anytime I get a drop I'm not familiar with, I usually search the auctions, then the sell lists, and so on to see if it's worth selling. I like to think I'm a decent seller - only financed 16 sets of elite armor but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Most of my cash comes from stuff I sell for 5-10k and mods!

Buhahahahaha you lose! i already told them xD

Price Check everything you get. Then see if the extra money is worth your time or not to put on the auction or to just merchant it.

Thanks everyone. Ill try to use the PC more often, it just feels embarrassing knowing I'm asking when I assume it wont be worth much more then a platinum or so. I have to be possitive and not think that others are going 'Man what's wrong with this guy, why didn't he know better?' behind my back when they see the items I'm wondering about.

1) Sell many things at once, so that you maximize data collection. You can generally juggle three different lines of trade spam without making the spam filter mad. Separate the W T S in the spam of the two items you are least interested in selling so that people see the item you most want to sell (generally the most valuable one) in Party Search.

For each item you sell:

2) Price it higher than you think you should and NEVER violate this rule. You'll probably need to haggle down a bit anyway to close the sale. If you're 5-10% high, people will PM you what they're willing to pay.

3) If nobody responds for a while (10-15 minutes), stop and go do something else. Come back later and reduce the price a touch. Don't start selling new items. People will be tuning your spam out by that point.

4) Iterate 2 and 3 until people start talking to you.

5) NEVER take the first offer you get.

6) Play multiple bidders off one another. Lying is optional here, but it usually helps. The guy you're talking to is probably lying to you about what he's willing to pay anyway, so you need not feel TOO bad.

7) If everyone and his mother PM'd you shortly after you spammed, you underpriced the item. Withdraw the item and come back later at a higher price.

Follow these rules religiously and you'll figure out the price eventually. It helps to have some data already, as it shortens the amount of time required for this system to work. Auctions and High End are relatively good sources. Finding a price on Sell is usually like finding a needle in a haystack, and the 50k-100k stuff usually sells in-game anyway. For common items and item mods, watching spam in Kamadan AD1 is helpful.

PCs are only as good as the person supplying you information. PCs are time efficient, but unless the person giving the PC has sold the item in the last couple of days, they're probably off a bit. PCs can save you time but will probably cost you money in the long run. Which is more important to you depends on your RL situation and how much you dislike selling.

Thats interesting, I have avoided the auctions like the plague since the software was updated and started showing non existent items etc and was still as slow at responding as before, but shh dont tell the auction mods.....

All sound advice there. I'll add a few points to it.

2. Take any PC with a pinch of salt. See what others are selling at and then gauge the interest in said item. If someone has been spamming the same item for less then your PC the chances are you will need to drop your price.

3. Learn when to cut and run. If your asking 100k+10e and the best offer you've had all day is 100k, cut your losses and take the 100k.

4. Selling is all about minimizing the time you spend standing around. Working different areas expands your potential costumer base.

5. Learn what items can be sold where. Spamadan should be avoided if you're selling low value golds. Ascalon can be used to dump minor 1-10k items.

6. Always check the WTB forum. Look back past the first couple of pages.

7. Some items are pretty much unsellable. When you've had an item for a few weeks it's time to drop the price by a large margin. Obviously if the item was a drop then a vast amount of the gold you make is profit anyway.

8. Always ask guilides and alliance. This can save you a lot of effort. NEVER spam guild/alliance chat though, that is extremely annoying.

9. Never buy to resell if you don't know the value. Many times I've seen people buy items then resell them a few days later making little to no profit.

10. Generally I never bought to resell unless I could make a +30% profit.

11. Guru and ingame prices vary a lot.

12. Losing money is all part of trading. Anyone who says they made a profit on every sell is lying.

13. Buying the new flavor of the month weapon is a waste of cash unless you resell.

14. All farmable weapons lose value. Never keep these items as investments. Only items worth keeping are rare items that no longer drop.

15. Never buy low req weapons to keep. Sell the low req, and keep the higher req for use. More profit this way. Not to say you can't buy a few nice skins to keep, just sell the majority for max profit. I had a lot of cash, I rarely kept anything below a req10.

Trading requires little time once you're up and running. Most idiots think it's about spamming all day, but that is far from the truth. Easiet way to make money in the game bar none.

And you don't realize just how helpful this can be.

As a seller, it's very annoying to have people repeatedly pm you in-game asking if you are still selling an item. By clearly stating that your item has been sold and/or removing the name of the item, it greatly decreases the chance of people spamming you.

As a buyer, it can save the buyer from possibly wasting time on an item no longer available if the thread's title or post clearly states that the item has been sold.

That's what they are suppose to do so people won't post in it. If you're looking for a price check, we have a specific forum for that.

Tell the truth Wyn, it's only because you're the auctions admin.