Trader ethics

Impeccable words.

Yes, i like haggling my self, so i sell an X item so person says how much?
I say XXX(max price), and then they are like LOL GL WITH THAT (or insert retarded comment).

What about when someone is spamming in Kamadan WTB: etc etc, then you PM them since you have the item and they are set to offline that is the most irritating thing.

I know this makes people rage, myself included, but I believe there is an exception to it.

On days when I find myself back in spamadan trying to quickly scrape some things out of my inventory, for example: random weapons, I will ask for an offer 90% of the time, but not because I'm a sleaze-bag, because I honestly have no idea whats it worth and weapons aren't nearly as quick to PC as mini pets are. Sometimes people throw out a random price(3-10k) for w/e i got and I'll gladly hand it over because that's obviously all its worth to them. But if I'm trying to buy a mini pet and the person tells me to "offer" I just end the conversation there and move on.

Oh oh oh i got a good one!

When people say "undead"

Yeah that annoys even tho it aint anything important, sometimes even when ive said like "WTS unded kuunavang" Someone pm's me asking me "is it Undead?!"

Ok this one takes the cake!

See attached

lol... sounds a bit unfriendly....
but maybe the buyer's name rly was "Go f yourself" xD

Or, just as awesome, when people want to buy "tombz". C'mon. Seriously. I can understand the need for abbreviations and shorter texts, but there is no excuse for idiocy. Except McDonald's, maybe.

or Globes of Ectoplasm

Some people wanna be hardball negotiators.

They use very aggressive language and talk down the seller's item and the seller in order to impress on him the incredibly low value of the item and the very high price asked, which he, the would-be buyer, in his godly light and wisdom and sheer awesomeness, will buy for not its value, low as it is, but for an incredibly 5K MORE THAN ITS VALUE, just so that the seller won't need to be trashed by others in the future concerning said incredibly low value and high price, respectively.

These guys are the best. Seriously. Few things I enjoy in GW nowadays than to troll these morons until they put me on Ignored. Then do the same on my alt acc. Then on my 3rd acc. Then on my 4th acc. Then I PM some friends who I know like this kind of "traders", too, and they repeat the process.

But the sad part is that it works. I had numerous guildies over the past who got effectively robbed of items by such means, and were after convinced of the rightness of their choice and tried to further spread their newly-acquired "knowledge"...


But I also got the other side, when someone was selling, say, a mini Princess Salma, I asked how much, he said 30e. Then, yes, I replied "rofl, gl with that"... Asking for a higher offer in order to have a value from where to negotiate down is alright, but asking for more than twice its worth is... well... I did not bother to tell him of its actual market value, I guessed where that convo was going...

This has been killing me lately. So many people have been asking to see the items I am selling. At first I was cool with it, figuring it might turn into a sale, but it never does. So I have gotten to the point where I am straight up telling people "No, go wiki it if you want to see the skin". I hate to be mean about it, but it is such a waste of time and if people aren't informed enough to know what the skin looks like before they PM me, odds are they have no genuine intention to buy.

The WTS then Offer guys mentioned earlier are a HUGE killer for wanting to trade with players. They waste time like nobody else, and if they ever ask for an offer and I am feeling evil I just give them a ridiculously lower price then work up to something STILL lower and say "That's higher than value but I don't want to waste time", sometimes the idiot falls for it. If you want to sell, get your price in mind.

Of course, the aggressive foul mouthed ignore happy people are bigger morons.

Auction houses would alleviate this so much..all the prices would be visible etc..well, GW2 is coming.

I will miss the non-auction house economy, where you can haggle over items. That's really my most favourite type of trading.

Also, about the sellers who ask for an offer. It's only natural sellers ask for an offer, I do so myself too. Sometimes people offer more than you planned to sell an item for. Also, you came up with the perfect solution yourself. If they ask you to offer, give them a low price. If they tell you GO AWAY STUPID NOOB /IGNORE then you know they're not worth your while, otherwise they'll give a price and you can do some real trading.

What a helpful gentleman you are.

I still think the central issue here is the one I mentioned in my earlier posts. If someone is selling, they (by definition) are offering something in exchange for a certain amount of money. That amount of money (for which you will exchange your item) is commonly called a "price". Without a price, you aren't selling. See how that works?

If someone is just looking to see what they can get for an item, then they are NOT selling. They are doing something else. They are price checking. When you tell someone that you're selling when you're really only price checking, it's annoying because no sale is actually possible. Since no sale is possible (and yet the person claims to be selling), the "seller" is lying. That is unethical.

The price checker isn't the only kind of non-seller out there. There are people out there who also claim to be selling and ask for offers only because they hope to catch an uninformed, overenthusiastic buyer with some $$ to spend (they used to be ebayers, then they were dupers). People who do this are not actually selling. They are setting booby traps and trying to take advantage of certain players. The item they are "selling" isn't available at anything close to fair market value for anyone to buy. Not only is this kind of non-seller lying, but they are lying so that they can try to rip people off. That's unethical. Twice.

how to kill Tooburns
Seller spamming: wts dasfafa shield ...pm offer
5min l8r
seller spamming : wts hbdasksahlk shield c/o 190e b/o 210
5 min l8r
seller spamming : wts asfafafafaf shield c/o150e b/o 210e
the day after
seller spamming : wts fasfhjagf shield 120e

A certain individual has been trying to sell 10,000 party points for 200g a point in Kamadan for several weeks. The points are in the form of frosty tonics which means the seller is asking for 400g per tonic. I paid 180g per tonic (90g/point) last Christmas for around 4,000 points so I could finish my title in a cost-effective manner.

Tonics are a pain in the ass for getting title points whereas spammable stuff like champagne poppers and sparklers are a case of merely clicking away, which is why tonics are cheaper than the 'good' party points. Even still, spammable points cost less than 200g per point in the current market.

Even though it might not be considered 'unethical', it pisses me off seeing this person spamming their overpriced tonics and clearly having no success. I think he/she is hoping for one of those opportunities that Captain Krompdown talked about.

About The "Price Checking" Captain Krompdown was speaking about, I gotta say ive done it also, Ive been trying sell so id myself get bit better idea on value, BUT, When ive done that, i have had price when its not impossible to buy it! Price has just been Way Overprice of its worth, so noneone rly would buy it

Had this happen to me last night

Seller: WTS Unded Dagnar etc etc
Me: 50k for Dagnor
Seller: Ok but I got someone offering 75k for it, Can you match it?
Me: nty, That to much for me you should take that offer.

Now I was almost 100% sure he was lieing to me, So I logged off my 1st account quickly and I went on my 2nd account and offer him 50k again for the Dagnor and I got the same sorry that there was a c/o. So I told him nty again, but he told me he would let me know if the other guy fell through. Two minutes later he pms me "Other guy back down, still want Dagnor?"

Now He really could have had another offer, But I very much doubt it, when your asking me if I will match an offer, somethings not right

Long story short, fake Current offers are super lame

Except you're assuming every trader is a power trader...

When I go to the shopping mall, I don't have to/get to offer because -they- are the professional merchants, and even if they are open to haggling it is very likely they know their prices better than I do. On GW, there are a lot of people like myself who are merely PvEers willing to unload their loot (a lot of us have storage filled with utter crap, since we're more willing to spend time trying to sell that req9 fellblade than that perf 'Seize the Day' insc) before going on to the next VQ.

I personally am guilty of asking for an offer on some of my WTS items. Why? Because most of the time I have only a vague clue of what said item is really worth. And no, Guru nor PCs have given me any clear idea, either. I am not a power trader and prefer to play the game, so I have no intention of sitting hours in a town to do PCs on every moderately valuable item I find.

When it's the other way around, and I see a WTS and get asked for an offer, I just offer away if I know how much I would pay (say, 12k for a keg). Either the seller thinks this is reasonable or they don't, in which case I can decide whether haggling is worth my time or not. How is this a waste of time?

As a noob trader, what I hate most is people who "lolnubglkthxbye" when they don't like my price. With that kind of polite dialogue, it's pretty irrelevant to me whether I indeed am wrong on the price or they're just trying to scam me.

No.

Any person who's actually selling anything, regardless of how often they do it, is offering an item in exchange for a certain amount of money. That amount, regardless of how often you sell items or how much attention to pay to the markets, is still called a price.

In your case, you don't trade much and you don't devote much energy to understanding the markets. You prefer naive and hopefully polite conversation, including some haggling. Super. I'm willing to bet that not every single polite conversation you have results in a sale. Why do some of those polite conversations fail? Because the offers never get to the seller's desired (but maybe unstated) price. If the offers did reach the seller's price, guess what? There would be a sale.

You confess to having a vague/general idea of the value of the items you sell and you lament the ineffectiveness of asking for PCs and using the Guru PC forum. But where did your general idea come from? Clearly there is some other form of preparation that you do undertake before you try to sell an item. That's good. More people need to do that kind of preparation because when someone claims to be selling but they're really just trying to figure out the value of their item, they're actually NOT selling. They're lying. Again, this is true regardless of how often you sell items.

This, in itself, is not a waste of time, but it's also not what I was talking about. You're also presenting a relatively rare case of a buyer who freely offers a fair price for an item (assuming that 12k is fir market value for a keg...I have no clue what a keg is worth). That, for a variety of reasons, almost never happens.

What is a waste of time is when someone claims to be selling an item but is actually only price-checking it. In that situation, no sale is possible and their claim to be selling is actually a lie. Not only is that a waste of time, it's unethical.

You can't assume that every person who's wanting to sell but don't ask for a price, falls into this category:
If they are actually planning to hand over the item, it is selling.
Regardless of whether they know the price or not, whether they have an idea of what the price should be, or if they have no idea and are asking other people to tell them what it's worth.
If they are prepared to hand over the item, then it's not lying.

It may be annoying to you, then so be it. You can ignore them.

Now as for real world comparisons, yes people DO sell stuff with "make me an offer" type pricing. It happens all the time, not in real shops of course. As an above poster already pointed out, those are 'professional merchants'. On forums and classifieds (e.g. gumtree, craiglist, etc.), this kind of thing does happen.

Now as for why someone would want to geniunly sell something but have no asking price in mind, well for me there are two reasons:
1. Firstly, guild wars is not very trader friendly. For a new player, it takes a very long time to get an idea of pricing, what is valueble, what are the 'standard' prices for what items, etc. I would guess that even players who have played for a long time but don't trade much wouldn't know. There is a huge knowledge gap from players like this (especially the newer ones), and people who trade a lot. I could spend time researching and asking for a price, but that reveals what I am willing to accept for the item. Since I am a relatively un-knowledgable person when it comes to trading and prices, I am likely to be dealing with people far more knowledage. In that case, I'd much rather have people tell me what they want to pay, which is 'safer' for me. Is it price checking? Yes. I have no idea what the price should be. But if a few people send me how much they want to pay, then anyone trying to scam me with a much lower price will stand out. As long as I'm actually intending to part with the item, i'm still selling it.
2. In guild wars (+other mmo economies), buyers are sellers and often for the same goods. A lot of people advertise WTB, and list prices. I could spend a lot of time looking over forums, chat, picking out recent WTBs for the item I have... Or I could do a WTS and hope the people who had WTBs for those items would notice. Of course I have no idea what the price is, that's the point of keeping an eye on WTBs.


Now as for your argument that offering an item for sale without a price in mind isn't 'selling', it's just silly, especially in a MMO economy. How many other MMOs have you played? MMOs with proper in-game economies (e.g. auction house type things) design their trade system in a lot of ways (especially for auction systems). In many cases, the systems specifically cater for players who want to sell items, but don't set any price. For example, back when I played CoH/CoV, the way to do this was to put items up for auction at a really low value (e.g. 1g), as long as there were interested buyers for that item, the transaction goes through immediately. The item is sold, I get some amount of gold for it. And as long as I wasn't selling some exceeding obscure item, I'd get a pretty average 'market' price.

Right.


...right. Sort of.

I noticed that you just joined Guru last month. Maybe you're new to Guild Wars. Maybe you're new to buying and selling. You'll find that it's actually impossible to buy an item if it doesn't have a price.


No doubt that it happens...but think for a second about how it works. Does the seller sell for whatever the buyer offers? No. There will not be a sale unless the offer reaches a certain standard. That standard, which represents the amount of money the seller is willing to take in exchange for his/her item, is (drum roll...prepare to have your mind blown!) the price of the item.


You've contradicted yourself here, but I think it's just because you're confused. There's an important difference between intending to part with the item eventually and being willing to sell your item to the person who made you an offer after you told them that you're selling an item. If you tell someone that you're selling an item, it's reasonable for that person to conclude that they have a chance to buy the item from you. If, in reality, it's impossible for that person to buy the item from you (...because you're price checking and not ready to sell yet...) -- even if you have the intention of eventually selling the item -- you have lied to that person.

As you said, you have a habit of price-checking. Price checking is (mostly) for people who intend to eventually sell an item. That's what price checking is for. Price checking is often motivated by the intention to eventually sell. That, however, doesn't make price checking and selling the same thing. Price checking, for the reasons I've detailed several times by now, is not selling. This is not to say that price checking in itself is bad -- the opposite, actually. More people should price check before they go out telling everyone that they're selling an item that they're not prepared to actually sell. Telling someone that you're selling so that you can extract an offer from them when you actually have no intention of selling to them (but only eventually after your price checking is done) is, again (and say it with me!), a lie.

I am new to GUild wars. And i've find it very difficult to sell anything because of the steep learning curve (or at least, time curve) involved in finding out how much things are worth. The only real trading I've done has been with trophies in pre-searing, and (although this may be to do with pre-searing being a 'newbie' area), I've mostly been selling trophy items by watching people who post WTBs.

i.e. I want to sell, but it's not so easy to do a PC for some random pre-searing trophy item. I don't want to post on the forums because that's slow. I advertise WTS without a price. On some days i will get people who give me a price. In which case I start with the person who's given me the highest price and ask how much they want. Often people demand I name a price, in which case I just patiently wait until someone else posts up a WTB.

That may be true, but there is a difference between a seller who doesn't have a price in mind and a seller who doesn't want to name a price.
1. This is a MMO. Low end items worth a few hundred, you don't care very much. Yes, sometimes the seller will just take the first offer and hope that statistically, the random guy offering me a price doesn't know I'm a noob so I'm not being ripped off. And even if I am, it's a few hundred fake MMO gold.
2. The seller knows he doesn't know very much. Better not name a price and have someone take advantage of it, if the price is actually a lot lower than market.

I'm selling the item, it does not mean I have to sell it to the first person who made an offer. There's absolutely no gurantees about that. Even for people who name a price (or more common it seems, for people who name a starting price).

What I mean is, there's no promise that just because you read my WTS post, that I'll sell the item to *YOU*. The person does have a chance to buy the item, if they make me a good enough offer.

Obviously, I'm to decide what offer is good enough, but as I already said:
1. I may have a rouge idea in mind but don't want to reveal it, and don't want to do the research to see what the 'market' price is
2. I may not care very much for a cheap item in a game

There is a huge difference between saying - "I want to know what a fair market value of this item is, then I'll decide whether I want to sell it" and "I defintely want to sell it, but I have no idea what the fair market value of the item is and I cbf doing the research to find out"

Defintely a bit lazy, but hardly lying. And most certainly *some* people are not going to have a chance to buy it. Because if I have no clue how much the item is worth and I realize my own ignorance, I'm defintely *not* going to sell it to the first person that gives me a price. I'm going to wait for a few answers and if those answers are 100g/500k/10k, i'm going to go WTF and not sell. If those answers are more like 900g/1k/1k, i'd hand it over to one of the 1k people.



Edit: I think some people here who are annoyed by sellers who say "you name a price" to prospective buyers in chat, are actually annoyed by sellers who do that and then disappear / go quiet. Which I guess is bad, but only if the said seller ended up doing that to everyone and didn't actually sell the item. If they sold the item to someone else who named a higher price a few hours later, that may be an annoying sales tactic to you but it is still selling.

Of course, I guess there isn't an easy way to know whether a seller does end up selling items they are asking for prices on. Then again, there isn't an easy way to know whether the people posting WTS threads here with prices, actually end up selling to people who say they want to buy. At the end of the day, if you don't like people doing that then just *don't respond* to WTS threads/chat that doesn't name a price.

And those of us who don't object to it can keep going and make the best of a game that has a player economy but provides players with no easy way to find out how much items are worth.

I never bother asking for offers since 99.9999% of the time you will get lowballed. The only way to avoid that is set a price and then haggle if a potential buyer offers a reasonable, albeit lower price.
Kromp, you have way too much time on your hands dude...

This part made me rofl... What kind of sheltered life must a person be living if they are unfamiliar with the concept of buying and selling?! Buying pixels fro pixels is not that different from buying essentials like food in the real world.

As stated previously, you chose not to disclose your value for an item, whether it be fair or not, because you are price checking and not selling. It is a simple economic concept that prices provide incentives and stimulate people to perform transactions. If you do not provide a price, then no transactions is possible. What you are doing is wasteful both to yourself and the other parties involved.
According to you, creating a WTS or PC thread is too wasteful? So instead you are prepared to argue with randomers in Kamadan, exchanging noob insults in hope of deriving a "market price" from all the lowball offers you receive? It's your choice I guess, but like Kromp said, not only is it annoying but it is economically wasteful.

I though we were about to agree, but then I read this:

I never said that you're obligated to sell to the first person who makes an offer. I said that it has to be possible for anyone (including the first person to contact you) to buy the item. If someone is selling, they're willing to exchange an item for a certain amount of gold. If someone is price checking, such an exchange is not possible because they're only gathering information. In other words, if you're price checking, you're not selling.


It sounds like we're going to have to disagree on this. To repeat the main point (again):

If someone tells me that they're selling something, the implication is that I'm going to be able to buy it from them. That is, the person is announcing that they are ready to exchange their item for a certain amount of gold (which, we have established, is called a price). If it turns out that the person is not ready for such an exchange, then the person actually is lying.

It's really a simple point. Preparing to do something and doing something are not the same thing. Maybe in this case, one way of preparing to sell looks so much like actually selling that they're easy for people to confuse. You seem to think that price checking is just one way of selling (that some people don't like). I don't agree. I think price checking is preparing to sell. It is not selling because it's impossible for anyone (no matter how fair or good the offer) to buy the item because the "seller" isn't actually ready to sell. Let's look at some other examples where the distinction between doing something and preparing to do something might be a little easier to see:

1) Is boiling water the same as eating mac and cheese? No. If you're standing in front of a pot of boiling water and telling everyone that you're eating mac and cheese, you're an f-tard. Boiling water may be part of preparing to eat mac and cheese, but if you think that boiling water is just one way that some people eat mac and cheese, you are very confused.

2) Is tying your shoes the same as going for a hike? No. Tying your shoes may be one step in preparing to go for a hike, but if you think that tying your shoes is one way that some people go for a hike, you, again, are an f-tard.

3) Is looking at job ads the same as having a job? No. If you tell a girl that you have a nice fancy job but all you've really done is look at ads for nice, fancy jobs (or even interviewed for one), you are a lying f-tard.

So let's try this again now that you've cleared your head:

4) Is gathering information about the price of an item the same as selling an item? No. When you tell someone that you're selling but you're really just gathering info, you are a lying f-tard.

Thank you for making my point for me. In your example, even when a potential buyer comes along and gives you a fair offer right off the bat, it is impossible for him to buy your item because you're still preparing to sell (and not actually selling). When that first good offer came, you weren't ready to exchange your item for $$. In other words, you weren't selling yet. You were preparing to sell. There is a difference. Someone who was actually selling would've been happy to get that good offer so quickly and the sale would have been done right away.

It's inconsiderate and (I would argue, as I have...repeatedly...) unethical to tell people that you're selling an item when you're not.


This is something that we can agree on. I see people all the time who claim to be selling an item but, when I ask them for their price, they simply say "Taking offers." In that case, I just ask them to let me know when they've figured out a price and I get on with whatever I was doing. That's just fine with me because (despite the fact that they said they were selling) the "seller" isn't trying to perpetuate the idea that an actual sale really is possible when it's really not.

Exactly what I wanted to say. I'm not an uber-seller and when I'm trying to unload a weapon, it's typically not rare or high-end or anything, just a nice staff/sword/whatever that I don't need, but figure someone else might use. When I ask for an offer, I genuinely have no idea what my price should be set at, but I'll take what people want if it's not blatantly low-balled.

Heck, if people are nice, I'll *give* stuff to them.

let's just say, some one wants to sell an item. That item is worth 50e, but since he has no idea of prices, he ask for b/o of 50k. Now, how many of you will take his b/o? or tell him that he is way off on his set b/o?

I tend to agree, i'm sure if this happened and it was a rare item eg a unconditional, or a low req max damage weapon that was to complete a collectors set.

WTS R7 max 15^50(insert sword/daggers here) 5k

I wonder how many people would say here have xxe or just take them for 5k and say thanks.

I ask for offers cause im never sure of a items worth even when its been pc'd, and yes i've probably sold items way below their value because i was prepared to sell at the first good offer ( in my opinion) i get. But ive also paid over the odds for something because its something i really wanted.
But one thing i can say is that even though i ask for offers the intention is to sell the item every time.

1. If the item gets sold, within a responable amount of time after advertising (a few hours in game. No idea how long on forums since I've never used them), then I don't see how it's not selling.
2. I do not provide a price, I've done transactions before. It's not wasteful to me and I don't think it was wasteful to the people whom I bought items off or sold items to.

1. Yes it is wasteful. I don't like using forums to trade. In fact, I think you will find that there is a very large proportion of gamers who never use forums at all. People who can't be bothered, people who don't see the point, and people who just want to enjoy the game without all the other 'meta' stuff.
2. No one said anything about arguing and exchanging noob insults. Perhaps the prices I get are low, but like I've said I've only been here for a short while and haven't done any trading of hugely expensive items. That being said, like any MMO, it is only a small group of players compared to the entire player popularion who are rich and who make up the market for the most expensive items.

And if someone is willing to exchange an item for say, 10k gold, but doesn't say so.

Is the fact that they refuse to reveal the amount equal to them not willing to sell?

I don't think so. You assume that someone who doesn't reveal an amount is not willing to sell. That reasoning in itself is flawed in two ways:
1. Not revealing an amount, does not mean they do not have an amount in mind
2. You are assuming that someone who says "I want to sell item x for price y" defintely means they are actually willing to sell item x for price y. There's nothing enforcing that. Someone could advertise item x for price y, just to gauge how willing people are to buying the item at that price.

At the end of the day, especially in-game (not so sure about forums), there's nothing stopping traders from wasting your time. And any smart guy isn't going to say "oh sorry, I'm not actually meaning to sell that item, I just wanted to see if anyone wanted it at this price". They're going to say "sorry, someone just made me a better offer".

I'll address these one at a time:

Regarding your #1: I never said that not revealing price means that a seller doesn't have a price in mind. That would be a stupid thing to say. Actually, you need to have a price in mind in order to make the choice to not reveal it. Think about it for a minute...maybe longer for you.

Regarding your #2: I never said that declaring an intention to sell item x for price y means that the seller will definitely follow through on his/her word. I said, if a seller makes such a declaration and then doesn't follow through on their word (for whatever purpose, including price checking), then this "seller" is a wasting people's time.

This will be my final response to you, Yaksha. If you'd like to have the final word, be my guest. It seems to me that you are struggling to find some "small win" here. For your sake, I hope you can find one because the battle has clearly been lost. I only hope that, in doing so, you don't attribute false statements to me or try to unearth false assumptions that never were mine.

I believe I said:
Your entire argument rests on the assumption that if someone says they want to sell something, but do not name a price, they are in fact price checking.

If you thought there was any chance they are "selling", then we wouldn't be having this argument. You assume they are merely price checking, and hence "not" selling.

Hence I was making the point that's its naive to simply assume that because someone doesn't name a price.

Out of the people who say they are selling things, some will be geuine and some are trying to waste your time. But whether or not they name a price doesn't tell you defintely which case it is. You assume so, because you are saying "not naming a price" = "wasting your time" (or in your words, "lie" or "just price checking").

I hope that makes sense to you now.

It's entirely possible that *you* always name a price when you want to sell something, and entirely possible that you only buy from people like that. But you seem to have trouble accepting that the reality is that people do otherwise.

I *have* offered to sell an item without naming a price, and have handed over the item to another player in exchange for gold in a time manner (<half an hour). I call that an example of "selling". And not "lying, price checking, and then eventually selling"

I believe based on post #61 from Haggis of Doom that he's bought items from sellers who haven't named a price before. So obviously there are other people doing "selling" like this and in fact SELLING. Or are you going to say that they were in fact not selling because they didn't name a price, and actually they were just "lying" and "price checking"?

You seem to be having difficulty grasping this very simple concept which Krompdown rather succinctly put forth, so I don't blame him for giving up on you. But let me reiterate that asking for offers is a method of price checking or an attempt to extract supernatural profit from a misinformed individual. Either way this is unethical and in the latter case dishonest. The fact that you end up selling is simply a by-product of your wasteful activities, either when you have proved successful in finding an overpaying person, or when you have received an offer satisfying or exceeding the consensual value. Either way it is a lot more elegant and simple to just ask for an offer up front and then negotiate later, and although it rules out the possibility of receiving abnormally high offers it is selling.
You deal with low-end items where the profit margins are minuscule and powertraders do not venture into this market segment. Consequently you haven't encountered the low-balling culture in the highend market which renders your "selling" (pricechecking) methods redundant, and you do not risk a great enough loss to realise the inefficiency of your practices.

I was willing to give you the chance to have the last word but asked you to please not do this. This claim is simply not true.

My argument does not rest on the assumption that a price has to be stated in order for an activity to count as selling. The issue of selling with a secret price is a new one that I've only had to address since you joined this thread. My original point was that selling is impossible if a price doesn't exist. Based on this (simple, self-evident) idea, I've argued that is unethical of traders to tell people that an item is for sale when that item does not have a price. Since selling is impossible without a price, the claim that one is selling an item while not having a price in mind is (and must be) a lie. Having districts full of "sellers" outright lying over and over again is not good for people who are looking to make money and it's not good for people looking to spend money.

Everything was going krompingly until you came along and confused the idea of having a price with the idea of stating your price. In response to you, I made a second point: selling is possible without the price being stated but this is a wasteful, underhanded way of selling. Jason understood this very quickly (and has understood this for a long time before this conversation). You don't seem to understand this yet.

It's probably worth pointing out that the two points do not contradict each other. You need a price if you're selling an item. Keeping that price a secret is a waste of time.

You seem to confuse these two ideas. I said that you're not selling if you don't have a price. Then I said that, if you do have a price but don't say your price, it's probably because you're trying to cheat someone. You mash these two ideas together in your head and understand something that I never said. You seem to think I said that you're not selling if you don't say your price. You publicly (and now repeatedly) attribute your confused idea to me. Stop it. I never said that.

Let me try to lay this out for you one last time.

The distinction between selling and not selling is based on the seller's readiness for action. If the "seller" has a price in mind but keeps it quiet, (s)he is still selling if (s)he is ready to take action (i.e., sell) as soon as (s)he receives an offer that matches the (...secret...) price. This is wasteful and dishonest, but still selling.

If, on the other hand, a person is not prepared to immediately take action, then that person is not selling. If a person is standing around telling people that they are selling but really only taking offers in order to gather information, that person is price checking. This is price checking and not selling because the "seller" is not ready to take action. It is impossible for a transaction to happen at that time. Without the possibility of a sale, the "seller" isn't actually selling, no matter how many times they say they're selling or what their intentions might be for the future.

Please refer to my earlier post where I discuss the distinction between doing something and preparing to do something. Apparently that concept didn't sink in even though I provided examples that a 3rd grader could grasp.


Again, you've made my point for me. You did this in an earlier post, too. In that post you gave an example of how you weren't prepared to sell even when a good offer came along right away. You still needed to sit around and take more offers before you were ready to actually sell. The point is really simple: The process of preparing to sell (regardless of whether it lasts 30 minutes or 30 days) is simply not the same thing as selling.

I know I'm asking you to keep a lot of stuff in mind here, so here's a little summary of the ideas that seem to be confusing you:

1) Preparing to do something and doing it aren't the same thing.

2) When someone is actually selling, they have already finished preparing and are now ready to immediately exchange their item for a certain amount of gold.
a) Exchanging an item for a certain amount of gold is called selling
b) The amount of gold necessary to initiate such an exchange is called a price
c) The price must become known to both the buyer and seller before a sale can occur.
d) The price must be set by the seller.
e) The seller may either announce the price or not.

3) Having a price in mind but not announcing it is undesirable trading behavior for three reasons:
a) It is an inconsiderate waste of people's time.
b) It actually discourages economic activity.
c) It is usually done because the "seller" is hoping to (in Jason's words) extract supernatural profit form a misinformed individual.

This, of course, is a description of non-auction sales. An auction is a different thing and involves a different process.

In this post, I have not falsely attributed assumptions to you. I have not ignored, forgotten, or confused what you've said. I disagree with you completely but I've done you the courtesy of listening and responding to you point-by-point and in detail. I understand that you'll probably want to respond and have the last word. Again, be my guest. I just ask that you show me the same respect I've shown you. Since there's actually no new information in this post, you can think of this as your second chance at having the last word.

For your sake, I hope your next attempt goes better than the last.

...but hey, I'll play your game.

I want to sell a high-end item I recently acquired from a chest. I'm NOT a power trader. This item is by far the most valuable I've ever had.

I spent hours in-game (and days on guru) looking for a valid price check. The range was from 70e to 220e. No, seriously. This means that NO ONE KNOWS what it's actually "worth."

So by your logic, am I NOT ALLOWED TO TRY AND SELL THIS ITEM!?!?!??!

My point is that markets fluctuate, and given recent changes (i.e. HoM calculator) throwing relative values of certain items into a bit of a tizzy (almost ALL other rare skin weapons seem to be dropping in price, as HoM weapons go up in demand, for instance), I would be stupid to pick one of the lowball PC quotes.

But I'm pretty sure this item is NOT worth 220e.

Do I split the difference? Ask for 220, and hope I get lucky? Ask for 70 and hope I'm not throwing it away?

Or maybe, logically and pragmatically, my best option would be to post it for sale and accept offers until I know that I'm getting the most I can for it, without wasting my time or anyone else's?

I guess I don't understand what ALTERNATIVE you propose to someone who really just doesn't know, since...well, I KNOW I've never seen you offer a price check on any of my threads requesting one.

Besides...I can say overwhelmingly, from only a year and a half's worth of experience in GW, that a "WTS" without a price will get a hell of a lot more response than a "PC."

Keep in mind that high percent of those 'offerme-sellers', who don't have a set b/o in mind, use the auction-like system ingame:
XYZ shouts WTS QWER
A pms - how much?
XYZ - offer
A - bb
B - 5k
C - how much?
XYZ - offer
C - 25k

...so if you don't know how much an item is worth and/or the PCs you got have too big amplitude, it's ok to ask for offers in game.
However it gets ridiculous when with items that have commonly set prices, like sweets, party points, most greens, etc.

Well, yeah. I hear you on that. Asking for offers on items with steady prices is a jerky thing to do, unless you're selling in HUGE quantities such that it's reasonable to expect to charge a premium (i.e. a full title's worth of stacked spammable sweets or bottle rockets). And even then, you're asking them to offer something in addition to an understood base price.

But yeah, if I really don't know how much a low-end item is worth, I'll get the best range possible and ask for something slightly above it, knowing full well I'll probably get less. Not knowing how much your high-end items are worth, though, is quite a bit riskier.

Anyway, most of the time if I ask for an offer, I'm expecting to haggle. I'm NOT looking for a price check.

Recently encountered one of those people who low-ball your item(s) and try to convince you that you're selling for too way high like:

"I sold/bought an X last week for Y"
or
"I got a (better than your item) for (less than your price)"

& I don't have a problem with people looking for offers because they're not certain of prices or they're willing to accept highest offer by a certain time.

However I don't like it when they say "offer" and refuse to state a price, when they clearly have an absolute price in mind that they will not consider anything less for, and reject/ignore your offer. Would save everyone time if they just mentioned the price in mind, unless they're trying to see if anyone would happen to over-offer for it.


A. Selling X.
B. How much?
A. Offer.
B. Idk prices, if its affordable I'll buy.
A. Just offer.
B. 20k?
A. lol no. 75k. <---Coulda said this 5 lines ago.

Again it's all about common sense human decency. Just yelling "offer" is frankly pretty rude. My biggest beef with these people is that they act like jerks when the offer is way off. I honestly think a lot of them just do it so they can make fun of people. I think if you are honestly taking offers you can spend the few extra seconds it takes to communicate "hey I really don't know the exact price of this item, so I am taking a few offers and plan on selling it in the next x minutes". The REALITY is that most of these "offer/bb" jerks are thinking more along the lines of "I know EXACTLY what my item is worth but am hoping I'm going to get someone make me a ridiculously high offer."