Winter Pack strategy

[EmperorSteele]

I wonder if it would be possible to keep WO prices artificially inflated during the event by selling them to "yourself" at normal prices during peak hours, so that whenever anyone looks at the "last 5" all they see is the normal selling price. You'd need to be constantly selling/rebuying dozens at a time, taking a loss on your listing fee each time, on the hope that someone eventually outbids you or types an extra 0. I feel like anyone with enough time, money, and boredom could probably pull this off!

Edited November 18, 2021 by EmperorSteele
Typo

[Yomo Kimyata]

4 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

I wonder if it would be possible to keep WO prices artificially inflated during the event by selling them to "yourself" at normal prices during peak hours, so that whenever anyone looks at the "last 5" all they see is the normal selling price. You'd need to be constantly selling/rebuying dozens at a time, taking a loss on your listing fee each time, on the hope that someone eventually outbids you or types an extra 0. I feel like anyone with enough time, money, and boredom could probably pull this off!

I can’t believe anyone would be that dumb.  It would be a pure arbitrage event:  buy pack at 10mm, get 1.2 WOs per pack, sell at ?20?mm each.  I’d do that until my mouse broke.

[Andreah]

6 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

I wonder if it would be possible to keep WO prices artificially inflated during the event by selling them to "yourself" at normal prices during peak hours, so that whenever anyone looks at the "last 5" all they see is the normal selling price. You'd need to be constantly selling/rebuying dozens at a time, taking a loss on your listing fee each time, on the hope that someone eventually outbids you or types an extra 0. I feel like anyone with enough time, money, and boredom could probably pull this off!

Yes. Yes. I think this is a terrific idea and you should definitely try it. Please let me know when you start so I can watch, innocently of course, from the sidelines. I would totally not see this happening instantly and be trying to out mouse-speed Yomo to take advantage of it. 

[iBot]

So I think I mentioned in a previous post about maybe actually opening a few I buy this year.  We'll see.  I also hit on the brilliant idea of "hey why not just bid a bunch at 10m right now on the toons that I don't play that often so they auto buy when the event goes live."  Then then I thought, "well why not just email myself all that info and do it on one of my not so used toons so I don't have them scattered all over the place like last time."  Then, then, then I realized that I'm lazy and don't want to log in all those toons to transfer all that inf around just to then mess around with the AH to get all those packs.  At this point, my brain locked and I"m still trying to recover. 🤪

[Ukase]

I confess - I haven't done this with winter packs, but I have done this with certain goods. And it works, particularly on the weekends when folks are more impatient due to scheduled start times of various iTrials. 

[Andreah]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

I confess - I haven't done this with winter packs, but I have done this with certain goods. And it works, particularly on the weekends when folks are more impatient due to scheduled start times of various iTrials. 

Yes, but it takes one of those goods that not so many other serious marketeers is watching like a hawk. A person could get lucky doing this a few times, but it would not last long enough to turn a profit.

[Ukase]

5 hours ago, Andreah said:

Yes, but it takes one of those goods that not so many other serious marketeers is watching like a hawk. A person could get lucky doing this a few times, but it would not last long enough to turn a profit.

If one tries this - the key is to do so on something you don't mind keeping if it doesn't work. 

 

[Troo]

On 11/6/2021 at 10:46 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

The biggest problem I've been having is that I have a real need for a bunch of WOs right now.  I'm not willing to pay up for them now when I know they will be 60%+ off in a month, and I'm not willing to wait a month.  Decisions!

 

You don't have a stash?

I'll happily take payment on Tuesday to provide you with some WOs today.

[Vanden]

On 11/6/2021 at 1:46 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

The biggest problem I've been having is that I have a real need for a bunch of WOs right now.  I'm not willing to pay up for them now when I know they will be 60%+ off in a month, and I'm not willing to wait a month.  Decisions!

 

Yomo Kimyata right now*:

 

* two weeks ago

Edited November 20, 2021 by Vanden

[Troo]

 

 the Ebil^tm council watching it happen..

Edited November 20, 2021 by Troo

[Yomo Kimyata]

51 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

You don't have a stash?

The only stashes I keep are inventory to upgrade and up sell, finished goods I’m parcelling out at a measured rate, or mass amounts of commodities if I feel like smacking aggressive bids.  Sadly, I’m all out of the WOs I bought last year.

 

Fortunately, the bait in the noob traps remains tasty enough to more than fill my needs.  And I can always save myself almost a half million by buying one of @Hedgefunds Winter Pack listings!

[Vanden]

We're down to triple digits of packs above the seeded packs. Might we actually see the end of player Winter packs before the price drops again in ~2 weeks?

[Yomo Kimyata]

43 minutes ago, Vanden said:

We're down to triple digits of packs above the seeded packs. Might we actually see the end of player Winter packs before the price drops again in ~2 weeks?

I don’t believe they’ve announced that there definitively *will* be a discount this year [Yomo says in a intentionally provocative manner.] 

[Ukase]

Well, I've been slowly selling off my catalyzed winters and making bank. I still have more than I'll use in quite some time. I'm tempted to not buy anymore if they go on sale, but the merits, the boosters, the amplifiers...hard to say no to when the inf can be re-made so easily just by selling one catalyzed Winter-O. 

[tidge]

As I wrote elsewhere, I don't go into the Winter Pack area, but I did have a stash from past years that I had mostly forgot about. I revisited it to equip a new character with some Winter enhancements via RNG, roulette, and market... yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and he brings the goodies (and Inf) via the AH.

[Andreah]

Maybe this year it will be a ~10% discount.

[macskull]

Eh, I'd expect them to still be 10m. These turn into a huge inf sink and I doubt sales would go up significantly if they were only 22.5m.

[Troo]

24 minutes ago, macskull said:

Eh, I'd expect them to still be 10m. These turn into a huge inf sink and I doubt sales would go up significantly if they were only 22.5m.

 

I'm possibly confused, how is it an infamy sink if players can double their investment? Isn't that the opposite of an infamy sink?

[Andreah]

26 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

I'm possibly confused, how is it an infamy sink if players can double their investment? Isn't that the opposite of an infamy sink?

It's because what you sell them for, even if it's twice the original buy price, comes from other players, it's not a net gain to the whole economy. The original seeded packs price does leave the economy entirely. In fact, 10% of the resale leaves the economy too, as market fees.

[Andreah]

55 minutes ago, macskull said:

Eh, I'd expect them to still be 10m. These turn into a huge inf sink and I doubt sales would go up significantly if they were only 22.5m.

True.

 

My ~10% off suggestion, for the alert, would mean they couldn't be resold after the event as-is at a profit due to market fees. :D

[Vanden]

The number of player listings has only gone down about 100 packs in the week since I posted last, so I don't think we're gonna make it to the seeded packs. If people buy and list like they did for the past year, they won't even need to reseed them after the winter event ends.

[Ukase]

They will likely need to. Having nothing else to do with my inf, I intend to buy a ton of them, just for the merits. Gonna buy so many I won't even get to open them all and won't need to buy any next year. Like maybe 100 Billion worth. 

Or maybe I'll just buy all the enhancements on the AH. But that'd be a damn lot of clicking. 

[Sakai]

How many is a 100 Billion worth?

[Troo]

10,000 packs. 200 Billion street value.. but realistically that's a cosmic number of clicks to realize.

 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2021 by Troo

[Sakai]

Yeah no. I have issues opening 100.