How the Auction House Works

From the Paragon Wiki:

At Wentworth's we use a 'secret bid' auction. To make a long story short, you set the price for your item, but the Buyer does not see it. The Buyer bids what he wishes to pay and if he meets, or exceeds, your requested price he will receive the item. You may even receive more than you asked for! In order to help the Buyer with a bid, there is a history of how much that item has sold for in the past.

If multiple players are selling an item for different amounts, the person with the lowest list price will sell first as long as a bid is higher than their list price. Thus, if a lot of people are listing an item for 100 inf, someone who lists the same item for 10,000 inf may never sell it even if people are paying 100,000 inf for it. Likewise, it's possible for someone who lists an item for 100 inf to sell it for 100,000 inf while someone else who lists the item for 10,000 inf only sells it for 10,000 inf.

I'm trying to understand how this works with multiple listings/orders.

Hero A lists a Luck Charm for 3000

Hero B lists a Luck Charm for 2000

Hero C lists a Luck Charm for 500

Hero D bids on a Luck Charm for 4000

According to the wiki, Hero D receives the item sold by Hero A (If I understand it correctly).

If Hero D bids 2005, is it correct that the sale would go to Hero B?

No. The lowest seller sells to the highest bidder. So in your example Hero D would buy the luck charm from Hero C. Note that this means the market will always clear, so at any time the highest buy bid will be less than the lowest sell offer.

In your example Hero C would be the successful seller for ANY bid, unless it was less than 500.  The lowest seller that is under the bid price gets the sale.

So it's basically a loss to bid anything more than 1inf?

So it's basically a loss to bid anything more than 1inf?

Not sure I understand. In your example, if you had build 1 inf, that would’ve been lower than the lowest sales price © and you would’ve gotten nothing

Oh, I have this backwards.  If someone bids at 1inf, and someone comes along and offers to buy at 1000, the sale completes

but if someone bids 1inf, and then someone else bids 5inf, the person bidding 5inf gets the sale. 

Also, is it a bug or intention that when you bid, the total number of bids for something like a recipe is the total of bids for all levels of that item?

Going back to your example -

Hero A lists a Luck Charm for 3000

Hero B lists a Luck Charm for 2000

Hero C lists a Luck Charm for 500

Hero E bids on a Luck Charm for 1

Hero F bids on a Luck Charm for 1000

Hero F gets the Charm, because his Bid was over Hero C, and Hero C gets the Sale.

Hero E gets nothing, and at 1 Inf will likely to continue to get nothing (c'mon man - you gotta spend a little to get a little)

Lowest sales price gets the highest bid OVER the sales price...

EDIT:  Sorry I may have misunderstand the terms here - Alternate Setup

Hero G lists a Luck Charm for 1

Hero H lists a Luck Charm for 5

Hero I bids 10,000 for Luck Charm

Hero J bids 5,000 for Luck Charm

Hero G gets the 10K Bid

Hero H gets the 5k Bid

But now the history at the market will start show lower and lower bids being excepted, so next time people will see that the last bid was 5K, so the price goes down for everyone

Oh, I have this backwards.  If someone bids at 1inf, and someone comes along and offers to buy at 1000, the sale completes

but if someone bids 1inf, and then someone else bids 5inf, the person bidding 5inf gets the sale.

No. The seller with the lowest sell price will get the sale. The downside of listing items for 1inf is that you're only going to get a fraction of the possible sale value. People tend to leave low-ball buy offers up for items so if you list something for 1inf then you'll sell it immediately at whatever low-ball offer someone has left. Putting higher sell offers in is important for ensuring you get a fair price for your items.

Now if you don't care how much you get and just want to sell it quickly then undervaluing it is fine but in general you shouldn't list stuff for 1inf.

For example let's say I'm selling an enhancement that generally sells for 2.5million-3million. If I list it for 2.2million then it'll sell quickly and probably within the 2.5-3million range although I might get a bit less for it. If I list it for 2.5million then it will probably sell but will take longer. If I list it for 3million then it's going to take quite a while to sell since I'll probably need to wait for a bump in the price on the weekend (when more people are playing). Now if I list it for 1inf it will sell immediately but I'll probably only get 1.5-2million for it (maybe even less).

Also, is it a bug or intention that when you bid, the total number of bids for something like a recipe is the total of bids for all levels of that item?

Intention. The market was changed in this version to use bracketing for a LOT of things that are similar in order to increase fungibility. In addition to all levels of an IO sharing a pool attuned IOs share a pool with non-attuned IOs and all salvage of a given rarity share a pool.

These might be some helpful guides -

"I can't afford enhancements." A simple guide for making money at lower levels - https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3135.0.html

How to Make Millions on the Market in Minutes - https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3161.0.html

Adeon - sorry I don't mean to keep double posting...We just keep answering at the same time

Ok, thank you for the help.  I think I understand it now.

I have a recipe that has been up for weeks, and every time I look, the sale numbers are dancing above and below the price I listed.  Got me curious as to if I was missing something.

Posted to keep. Thanks to all that informed.

I have a question about the AH:

Is there a limit on the number of transactions you can have active at any time?  I keep getting stuck at 4.  I posted 4 items to sell and when I try to post a 5th, it doesn't get posted.  Instead it goes to the Stored tab.  Am I missing something, experiencing some kind of weird bug, or is that just the way it works? If I leave an item that I tried to post in the Stored tab, will it automatically post to the AH when one of my other items sells?

There's a limit but it's something on the order of 200 transactions I think.

I have a question about the AH:

 

Is there a limit on the number of transactions you can have active at any time?  I keep getting stuck at 4.  I posted 4 items to sell and when I try to post a 5th, it doesn't get posted.  Instead it goes to the Stored tab.  Am I missing something, experiencing some kind of weird bug, or is that just the way it works? If I leave an item that I tried to post in the Stored tab, will it automatically post to the AH when one of my other items sells?

There is a limit, it's listed on the first tab but you should have something like 170 slots so you shouldn't be running out.

I'm not sure why you're having issues, have you tried listing it from the stored tab? When you put an item on the market it always goes to the stored tab, it doesn't move to the selling tab until you list it.

 

I'm not sure why you're having issues, have you tried listing it from the stored tab? When you put an item on the market it always goes to the stored tab, it doesn't move to the selling tab until you list it.

I'll have to play around it some more later and see if I can figure out what's going on.  Here's how I've been selling:

1. Drag the item onto the bottom portion of the AH window

2. Enter a price

3. Click Post

At that point, it usually goes right into the Selling tab.  Unless I have 4 items for sale already, then it just goes to the Stored tab and clicking Post from there does nothing.

Ok, so one possibility I can think of is do you have the inf to pay the listing fee?

More than enough.  I had 12.5 million inf and was trying to sell an item for 2 million.  It's possible I accidentally typed too many 0's when setting the price, but I don't think so.

If anyone's interested, I figured out what was wrong, sort of.

I don't know why, but sometimes when I click the Post button to put something up for sale it just doesn't work.  It's not a matter of how many transactions I already have going.  I click the Post button, I clearly see that it was clicked, yet nothing happens.  I've found three solutions or workarounds that clear it up and get it working again:

1. Click the Reset button in the upper portion of the /ah window. Pretty sure that's just supposed to reset your search criteria but regardless, clicking it usually lets post things again when the button stops working.

2. Take the item I'm trying to post back into my inventory, then drag it to the /ah and try posting it again.

3. Just. Keep. Clicking. Post.  Spamming the button works too.

Again, not sure why click Post doesn't work sometimes.  My first thought was that it was just lag, but if that were the case wouldn't the game eventually catch up and post my item for sale?  I've also not been experiencing any other symptoms of lag when this happens, so. . . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I thought I knew how the consignment house worked and that thought lined up with what has been stated in this thread.

Then I put a long term low ball bid out on the ATO Assassin's Mark: Recharge/Chance to Recharge Build Up (Stalker).  The last five were 

8,000,000

8,000,000

10,000,000

9,000,000

8,000,000

with seven available so I put in a bid for 7,000,000 and went back to playing.  A day later the history then read (pic attached)

10,000,000

5,000

5,000

5,000

10,000

(with none available)

Then a little while later (took a pic but forgot to do screenshotui)

5,000

5,000

10,000

10,000

10,000,000

(with one available)

currently it reads

9,000,000

8,000,000

8,000,000

8,000,000

5,000

(with two available)

What is the scenario where someone was able to bid 10,000/5,000 and it was a winning bid over a standing bid for 7,000,000?

I've seen that same issue on multiple other items, and I'm sure any of the market regulars could chime in with many other examples. I thought that maybe the AH was randomly dropping the last three zeros, but given the scenario you present, that idea doesn't hold water. My only other thought is that somehow the bid histories get crossed with other items.

Yeah unfortunately this is a recurring bug. It seems to just be a display bug, as in those transactions aren't actually happening it just displaying bad historical data but we're not sure why. In general putting a bid up for 1inf will result in the correct numbers being displayed so it's probably a caching issue of some sort.

I do plenty of marketeering but don't see this exact bug, doesn't mean it isn't a thing though.  I had a similar guess on the zero truncation but agree that it is unlikely to be that either due to the amounts shown unless they are completely broken entirely. 

I've tried the "1 inf" trick and know when to use it to fix THAT issue, thanks though!

Can someone else look at the history and tell me what they see maybe?  I see the same exact history on this and my wife's account.  It currently reads (as of 4:25pm Pacific, July 7th)

9,000,000

5,000

5,000

9,000,000

8,000,000

This is using separate accounts on separate computers. 

I guess in the end if it truly is "broken" it doesn't matter what anyone sees?

Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying "y'all are wrong!" I'm more interested in what the exact bug is.  It is not the "put a bid to fix the display" bug and it seems to be, whatever is wrong, consistent across multiple PCs and accounts. 

I'm seeing:

5,000

16,000,000

10,000,000

5,000

5,000

With one for sale.

Out of curiosity I bought the one that was on sale, upping my bid in increments of 1million, resulting in me buying it for 12million (so it was listed somewhere between 11 and 12). I then relisted it and it sold for 7,222,229. The last five list updated with both transactions.

So I'll admit I'm even more confused now. There's definitely something weird going on.

Thanks Adeon!  It's fishy for sure but odd that it's, for the moment, restricted to just this IO.  Unless anyone else is seeing it elsewhere?