Do you track supply and demand in your niche?

[Ukase]

I was just curious. It's no secret that there are some market plays going on with uncommon salvage, pvp IOs and LotG 7.5%, and probably other areas I don't really look at routinely. 

Below are some screenshots over the past 3 days, in the AM upon my logging in. 
Obviously, there's a key metric missing - # of sales in the past unit of time (week, day, hour) These would be useful, certainly, but I think the AH has quite enough to do as is, even though I'd love to see it. 

How much attention are you paying to demand when you slap your 100's of Achilles Heel debuff procs in the market? 
I sometimes find myself tempted to make 4-5 SGs with nothing but storage and buy all the LOTG's in game - just to clear out the old inventory from folks that may never play again. That's quite an inf-sink, and it's not like I wouldn't eventually use at least most of them. 

But..1000 slots, rule of 5...I think 5k would be as many as I'd ever need. 

It's interesting to me, as over the past three days, the # of the LotG's have increased by about 100 each day. Bidding seems to be close to the same. Granted, it's just now the weekend, so demand should pick up a little bit, I'd think. 

Do you ask yourself how many players are making new characters each day? Are you taking note of the various server loads to get a clue? Or do you just slap 'em in, and hope for the best? I generally sell my lotg for about 6, and hope they overbid and I get more. 
I read that somewhere in here is someone who stated they still sell them for 7M and while the sale isn't instant, they never have to wait for more than a day. I wonder if that's still the case. Obviously, these screenies are just one moment in time in the morning, and in the evenings they may sell for 2x what I'm looking at. No idea. 

What's your process in assessing demand? 



From July 7

 

July 8

 

Today, July 9

[Yomo Kimyata]

Of course.

[Spaghetti Betty]

I'm no Yomo, but even I can see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch when the market is fluctuating in interesting ways. I don't have the attention span to sit there and lord over the market, but when I do have inventory to sell, I'll make small mental notes of a few key items and their subsequent resources. With the flux that's currently going on between LoTG's and uncommon salvage, I've also had an eye on ATOs. If current demands are because people are coming back for the summer and making a ton of alts, then looking at those at least tells me which ATs they're making more of and which ATOs I can siphon off the market for cheap (Kheld ATOs are always a huge win for me. Also, RIP Khelds) and convert for my own purposes.

 

PVP IOs are behaving much in the same way. The usual procs are hella inflated at the moment, or at least they were the last time I checked. But Experienced Marksman is still easy to plunder. They don't know yet.

[Yomo Kimyata]

11 hours ago, Ukase said:

I was just curious. It's no secret that there are some market plays going on with uncommon salvage, pvp IOs and LotG 7.5%, and probably other areas I don't really look at routinely. 

Below are some screenshots over the past 3 days, in the AM upon my logging in. 
Obviously, there's a key metric missing - # of sales in the past unit of time (week, day, hour) These would be useful, certainly, but I think the AH has quite enough to do as is, even though I'd love to see it. 

How much attention are you paying to demand when you slap your 100's of Achilles Heel debuff procs in the market? 
I sometimes find myself tempted to make 4-5 SGs with nothing but storage and buy all the LOTG's in game - just to clear out the old inventory from folks that may never play again. That's quite an inf-sink, and it's not like I wouldn't eventually use at least most of them. 

But..1000 slots, rule of 5...I think 5k would be as many as I'd ever need. 

It's interesting to me, as over the past three days, the # of the LotG's have increased by about 100 each day. Bidding seems to be close to the same. Granted, it's just now the weekend, so demand should pick up a little bit, I'd think. 

Do you ask yourself how many players are making new characters each day? Are you taking note of the various server loads to get a clue? Or do you just slap 'em in, and hope for the best? I generally sell my lotg for about 6, and hope they overbid and I get more. 
I read that somewhere in here is someone who stated they still sell them for 7M and while the sale isn't instant, they never have to wait for more than a day. I wonder if that's still the case. Obviously, these screenies are just one moment in time in the morning, and in the evenings they may sell for 2x what I'm looking at. No idea. 

What's your process in assessing demand? 



From July 7

 

July 8

 

Today, July 9

 

I guess I owe you a better answer than that.

 

I'm generally not going to toss 100s of an item on the /AH unless I feel pretty good that I can sell it by the next time I log in.  Specifically, my Achilles Heel alt gets logged in about once a week!

 

I do ask myself how many players are making alts, and occasionally I will lock down a market to get an idea as to how many I can expect to move in a day.  I'm happy to say that it feels like there is more demand nowadays than there was a few months ago.  But the real issue is going to be supply, since there is an infinite amount of it.

 

Let's look at LotG, which I have to accept some blame for.  Now for a long time, I have been heavily involved in what I call the defense complex.  I generally have the lowest cost to create just about anything through recipes like Karma or Serendipity or whatever.  Yet I cannot stop anyone from making profitable LotG recharges from any random lvl 25 recipe in bulk.  That's random, and I tip my hat to those people because it's frankly mind numbing work that gets them what they want --  inf!

 

The macro event that is causing me the most grief, however, is the hang up on opening super packs and claiming items from Character Items.  

[Ukase]

5 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

But Experienced Marksman is still easy to plunder. They don't know yet.

Isn't it fantastic that each Experienced Marksman recipe uses the same ingredients? 

[Ironblade]

I wouldn't say that I "track" supply and demand.  I would say I briefly observe it.

 

Most of my money comes from buying trash recipes and converting to something useful.  A couple weeks ago, I noticed someone was buying my usual recipes at about 2-3x what I had been paying, so I just stopped.  I could have bid higher or moved to some other recipes but that would have been too much effort.  I spend VERY LITTLE time working on making influence.  In the past couple days, it seems back to normal so I'm buying again.

 

Regarding the LotG +recharge, I never even look at those.  I buy cheap recipes and convert to get the ones I need and stop once I have 15-20 to put in base storage.

[Bionic_Flea]

I don't keep a log or spreadsheet and I don't really have a niche.  I mainly craft/sell/convert my drops.  Sometimes I buy super cheap recipes or crafted set pieces to play converter roulette, especially on characters I consider finished.  

 

Despite not keeping a list, I do have a sense for the going rate for many items and I do look at the bids vs offers and make adjustments. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[Andreah]

I don't continuously track supply and demand for my niches. But I do now and then do a deep dive on one or two. For a week I will check the numbers on a couple for about a week, and try to get an idea of how many of whatever I'm looking at are actually selling.

 

The numbers listed for sale and for buy are not particularly interesting for most things, since the buy offers may be far too low and the sell offers far to high to ever actually move -- they may as well not exist, and I can't determine how many there are like that.

 

It's also possible quite a few of those entries have been listed for ages, or by players who've quit and will never return.

 

[tidge]

The two things about my (past) niches I would pay attention to was the ratio of supply to demand, and of course recent sale prices. If the supply suddenly outstripped demand, it was usually a sign that someone else had moved in... and if the sale price lowered, that was the indication I was being undercut.