Ecto Exchange Rate

Ok, I know this is probably a noob questions (which I proudly admit to being)…

What is the gold exchange rate of an ecto? I see people trading with these, but I can’t figure out the gold equivalency. Is the value of an ecto somewhat stable or does it fluctuates dramatically?

Would you be better trading for ectos or gold? I know you can only do a single trade transaction with a max of 100 gold. I am mainly talking about trades that are less than 100K in value. I had someone offer me one ecto for a weapon I was selling. I turned them down because I wanted gold to spend.

How easy is it to convert ecto to gold? Going back to the exchange rate, I see wtb and wts at different ends of the spectrums when in large towns. If ectos are valued at X is the conversion to gold something like X-1k?


p.s. Thanks for letting me ask all my questions on this forum without getting flamed. It is a relief to post on a forum without getting treated bad for not knowing the game at the same level of someone playing for years.

Don't necessarily take my post for granted, as I'm still quite new to the game, but my advice is this: The ecto is simply a rare material. Put at least one in your inventory and go to any Rare Material Trader. Request a quotation for sale price and one for buy price. The middle between those two values should the the value for players of an ecto at that point.

Edit: Shady Guy said pretty much the same thing, so you can at least take his word for it.

Thank you both for the quick reply. It help out greatly.

As you can see from the above posts, the guy was essentially offering you about 7k for your weapon (or whatever the going rate is atm). If you were mostly interested in gold, you could have traded it and immediately sold the ecto to the trader, and the actual amount of gold you'd get would depend upon the current buy price at the trader, if that was enough.

It's the first time I've seen someone admit to being a "noob question".

Ecto generally sells for -1k trader price (others try -500g, it just depends on the person), it changes often so just keep checking. It's the best form of tradeable currency in the game. Very easy to buy/sell. If someone offers you ectos in a trade, make sure its a GLOB OF ECTOPLASM, there's a few scams that are still around with items that have the same picture, but different name. Always double check your trades!

Yes ecto price typically halfway between trader buy/sell price.

Historically (last year or so especially) ectos have been very stable between a narrow band, with only a few k variation.

This should continue, however once GW2 release date is confirmed, you can expect ecto prices to plummet to levels people now would not consider imaginable.

Very few people sell the trader, but when the mad grab for rare pets and such occurs later, there will be a deluge, since few humans will purchase at all.

and Glob of Frozen Ectoplasm can not be turned into normal ecto's and are worthless (same icon but blue)

and anyone who says otherwise is trying to scam and can recieve a ban for doing so. iirc i read somewhere that a guy was "joking" around saying you could thaw out the frozen ecto and get a normal ecto.... he recieved his ban

The supposed "rule of thumb" normally says ecto price = rare mats npc price - 1k which thrilla killa stated.
A good way to get a quick idea of current ecto prices is to watch kamadan/la/toa and see the avg amounts in bulk for 100k - some days its 14e for 100k and a few times 15 for 100k.

If you want to find out what the current ecto exchange rate is go to the Rare Material Trader. Here you can see what ecto is being sold for at this npc and you can also see what its being bought for. PPL generally sell ecto between these values.

Lol? Why would this be the case? As ecto's plummit, people will buy a bunch to get cheap obby armor, and if the player base goes away, and no new influx of ecto's, this would actually result in a steep rise of ecto, and no way to counter it. So your theory is actually false... It might be true, at first, but at a certain point, it will be the other way around.

It looks like, for some reason, the price of ectos is crashing right now. (Of course by saying that I might affect some people's decisions to or not to buy, so perhaps I should be quiet there.) I've seen them going for 6k, where I always saw them at 6.5 at the very lowest.

Guess i'm wondering, why are they so low right now when people are still playing GW1 and GW2 is quite a bit off? Do they have to do go down further when GW2 comes out? If the serious ecto farmers rush to GW2 why would they go down at all? And would demand for obby armor really cause them to go back up?

Figured this is related enough to the OP so I didn't start a new thread.

highest I've ever seen ectos was ~10K each...lowest was probably ~2.5-3.5k when there was permaSF and stuff

But for the most part they are a steady 6.5k-7k (15 or 14e for 100K).

For trading purposes people usually average the rare material trader's buy and sell price or take 1k off the rare material trader sell price (as in selling to players).

Then again at one point in 2005 the server reset and the ectos were 100g or 250g to buy at the trader.