Marketer's Rollcall

[Psyphon]

So I know that in this game, I spend more than is probably a "common" amount of time on the market. I think I turn over 7-ish billion per day (in both directions combined), bare minimum, with at least an hour (if not more) doing game-market related things. Most of the people I talk to don't crack 100 million a day (at least not consistently. I'm not bragging (I wish I could do this in real life, but I'm not nearly that cool), but I'm curious if there are other players out there who pop out 500+ large transactions a day (I'm talking 10 M or more each). I've never really looked into this marketing thread, so I'm not sure if I'm covering ground that's already been discussed, but I truly am curious. Who out there runs the Auction house? Any major players to be spoken of, or is it just a massive pool, with no-one really guiding it?

Edited March 16 by Psyphon

[Glacier Peak]

There's always a bigger fish. 

[Psyphon]

40 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

There's always a bigger fish. 

Oh heck yeah there is. I'm actually at a personal 3-4 year low in liquid assets in this game. Just blew most of my wad, for various reasons. I'm sure 75% of the player base is better off than me right now. So I'm certainly no big fish. I just don't see a lot of chatter about people playing a long game in the market, in the general chat discussions in-game. Most the time, it's just someone who found a hot market item, trying to advertise to everyone else, how to use his get rich quick scheme. So I was wondering if there is any significant number of people in the player base that play the market end of CoH almost as hard as the actual game.

[cronus]

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/39215-if-i-had-a-trillion-inf/

[Yomo Kimyata]

20 hours ago, Psyphon said:

but I'm curious if there are other players out there who pop out 500+ large transactions a day (I'm talking 10 M or more each).

 

Do you mean 10mm or more profit each (which would be very impressive!) or 10mm in capital each?  Don't forget the /AH vig; if you buy something at 12mm and sell it for 15mm you are only clearing 1.5mm a trade.  Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad profit, but you can make something for under 300k and sell it for 2mm for the same profit with a lot more volume and a lot less risk.

[Andreah]

I profit a billion or two per week, depending on how ambitious I've felt.

[Andreah]

6 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad profit, but you can make something for under 300k and sell it for 2mm for the same profit with a lot more volume and a lot less risk

There's an old adage that says something like: "You can make a lot more money trading wheat than gold."

[kito]

About the same as andreah I get on average 1-2 billion a week depending how much I log on or do market stuff. When I get to 10 billion. In email I start giving it away till I have 5 billion left and then save again till 10 if I ever get to 20+ billion I give it away to an SG or a Costume contest prize pools having more then a few billion always feels like hording.  

 

I think my record when I really tired was about 50 billion in 1 week I was just jumping into every MSR/hamidon that popped up while contently restocking my ah. That was in the first few months of the game when things where selling for alot more and vanguard marits where worth alot more.

[UltraAlt]

On 3/15/2024 at 9:44 PM, Psyphon said:

Who out there runs the Auction house?

 

[Ukase]

So, the key word here is consistency. I will have days when I "invest" a couple of billion, maybe 3 billion. And the returns are not huge, from a traditional ROI perspective. At least, not by my standards, because there is competition. Years ago, I foolishly/generously wrote a guide of sorts which still needs major editing, and shared it with folks in my SG, and few other folks through Discord. Some of the "students", if it's even them, have learned the lessons well. But, I think I have deeper pockets to squeeze them out, as they seem to stop competing when I get more aggressive. 

Then I realized, I have enough. I'll never be able to spend it all, if I keep earning reward merits and use them. I mean, if I just kept the merits and continued to make new alts and play them to 50+3 t-4, I suppose in 1000 characters, it's feasible to spend it all, but I doubt it. So, when I think about this, the desire to spend more than 30 minutes crafting/converting dissipates when I think about the opportunities to slap some Kronos GMs around instead. (and make more merits, lol) 

There are days when I make a billion+. But it's not every day because the traffic on the server isn't the same every day. Characters getting created and played, rather then just sitting in a day job aren't the same each day. There is ebb and flow. 

There are probably 5-10 invention enhancements that almost every player that doesn't specifically avoid invention enhancements will use - and I don't routinely deal in any of those. 
I don't sell Luck of the Gamblers, Perf Shifters or Miracles - except when I run out and need more for my base. 

When a character needs a miracle proc, I'll buy 10 cheap recipes and make 20 of them. I slot one, sell 9, and stash the rest in my base for the next 10 characters to grab. The sale of the 9 lets me recoup all the costs, so it's generally a small profit. Not even worth the time! But, for me, just like in real life, it's not how much money did you make, it's how much money did you save? 

In real life, I don't earn much. But, I do save almost 40% of my check by avoiding useless expenses. Meet friends at McAlisters Deli? Seriously? You want me to spend 10 bucks on a sandwich? Are you nuts? Come to my house, I'll feed you guys for less than that. 
Same thing in CoH. 
I avoid putting my inf in marketers' pockets, if I can. 

My niche used to be pvp IOs. Still is, to a degree. But my days of buying ALL the recipes I can for 25% of the current rate the crafted IO sells for are over. I'll put in a bid and craft and convert as need be to make my desired %. If my recipe bids are too low, and I only get 3-5 per day, instead of what used to be about 300 a day, I'm good with that now. More time to play. 
Heck, with the competition in the market place going on now, the "lesser" marketed IOs are selling for half of what they used to, effectively making all of us 2x as wealthy. The need to push for the collection of these funds is far, far less than it was when I started in 2019 or 2020, whenever HC opened its doors to all of us. Back then, dealing with the market was super fun and interesting. Now, it's more of a hobby, something I do when in the mood - not a need to fund my new alts. 

Now, I literally give away billions every week. I gave 23 billion away two weeks ago...meant to just give 20B, but I made some mistakes and forgot how many emails I'd sent. (said player uses the funds for costume competitions) I don't even miss it. 

And Yomo has even more than I do. Pretty sure there are players who make me and Yomo look like small time chumps, but they spend all their time marketing, no time playing. (or next to no time playing, at least, not in the clobber bad guys for xp type of playing) 



 

[Ridiculous Girl]

Maybe a 1000 of those enhancements sold are generic IOs, the rest are IO sets. i have my niche, and it is casual crafting. i'll craft first thing in the morning, while drinking my coffee and put 70 up on the market. i might do another 70 in the evening after playing, while i am just downtiming and ready to log off for the night. i get a return of maybe 5x from what i invested in materials. i put aside about billion a week or two, it depends.

 

I could probably craft a whole lot more, but then that just takes away from playing.

since i am a chronic altoholic, i have lots of baby alts to feed, this keeps them well fed. 😎

 

[TheSpiritFox]

I kind of built my entire play experience to churn out money. I power level everything I actually care about, get it entirely purpled and boosted, and then its done. No spending money on SOs or even generic IOs, no spending money on anything until its able to earn on a 50 scale, then I go play it. 99% of my play experience is on level 50 characters, even just going run a DFB cause they need bodies generates a couple million. 

 

Converter crafting used to be my primary income, probably between a half and a billion a week. Every single merit I ever earn goes into converters. Converter crafting is down lately. Downnnnnnn. LOTGs were 3.8 million today wtf is happening?! So I had to adjust and lately I'm working mostly with more limited quantity IOs. Farming produces purples and pvp IOs and I've had to get into flipping which admittedly offers some very temporary holes that can be taken advantage of, occasionally. 

 

Gonna have to start opening super packs again, ugh. 

Edited March 25 by TheSpiritFox

[Ukase]

17 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

LOTGs were 3.8 million today wtf is happening?!

I can't speak for every transaction, but I was selling a lot of stuff, and one of my lotg's got lost in the shuffle and was listed at 2.7m by mistake, as I was kind of zoned out, distracted. So, at least one of the cheap ones was my fault. 

[TheSpiritFox]

11 hours ago, Ukase said:

I can't speak for every transaction, but I was selling a lot of stuff, and one of my lotg's got lost in the shuffle and was listed at 2.7m by mistake, as I was kind of zoned out, distracted. So, at least one of the cheap ones was my fault. 

Its definitely not just you, it stayed at 3.8 for hours before I stopped watching it, all sales at the same price. The influx of players has added a ton of very unpredictable actors to the market.  Rare IOs are down to half or a little more than half of what they were 6 months ago. Makes sense, a bunch of new players are listing things to make money which they do not yet have to spend on builds so only one side of the market has grown really. But its kicked converter crafting in the teeth. 

 

On the other hand I've picked up over 200 purples for 13 mil each in the last few days and flipped most of them into armageddons and sold them for 25 million so I'm up over a billion in the last 48 hours. I really need to stop tossing influence at costume contests I can't keep tossing a billion or more a week at these, my income cant sustain it anymore lol.

[Ukase]

2 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

I really need to stop tossing influence at costume contests I can't keep tossing a billion or more a week at these, my income cant sustain it anymore lol.

A few weeks ago, I gave away 23 billion. It's a sizeable amount, but - I think it's a nostalgic, yet good way to distribute wealth. 

My only issue with it is my tastes are not aligned with the majority. I was a judge for one of Cosmic Council's CCs a couple of years ago. We had a panel of at least 5 judges. I think it was 8. Everyone picked their top 5, ranked in order of preference. Only one of my top 5 was on anybody else's list, and that was just one other person's. 4 of my favorites didn't make the grade for anyone else. None of my choices made the cut. 

As for the new players influencing the market, that's fine. It'll stabilize in the weeks to come. 

[TheSpiritFox]

6 hours ago, Ukase said:

A few weeks ago, I gave away 23 billion. It's a sizeable amount, but - I think it's a nostalgic, yet good way to distribute wealth. 

My only issue with it is my tastes are not aligned with the majority. I was a judge for one of Cosmic Council's CCs a couple of years ago. We had a panel of at least 5 judges. I think it was 8. Everyone picked their top 5, ranked in order of preference. Only one of my top 5 was on anybody else's list, and that was just one other person's. 4 of my favorites didn't make the grade for anyone else. None of my choices made the cut. 

As for the new players influencing the market, that's fine. It'll stabilize in the weeks to come. 

Yeah I agree with that. Random costume contest rant but there was one a couple of weeks ago where one of the top 3 was someone who had a goddamn default costume on, with an added high collar cape, head piece, and auras. I was so pissed, this was a costume that it took someone under 10 minutes to throw together and it won out against some genuinely awesome costumes. 

 

I might just have to start doing my own costume contests from now on. Given that the average contest has a prize between 100 and 300 million for first I could totally bankroll just my entire own. Advertise it as my supergroup and not tell anyone that my supergroup is literally only me until they show up 

[Andreah]

I sometimes go to other people's Costume Contests and hand out person prizes to the ones I like. Or just give every contestant a superpack or a prismatic. 

 

You really can't depend on other people to spend your money wisely.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Andreah said:

I sometimes go to other people's Costume Contests and hand out person prizes to the ones I like.

I have no idea why I never thought of this. Imagine! The first place winner gets something like 100 Million, and I give the one I like 1 billion. Now that's my idea of fun! lol

[Andreah]

9 minutes ago, Ukase said:

I have no idea why I never thought of this. Imagine! The first place winner gets something like 100 Million, and I give the one I like 1 billion. Now that's my idea of fun! lol

Well, I personally am careful not to publicly "show up" the host who organized a contest, but there's no rule saying you can't give your own money away!

[kito]

3 hours ago, Andreah said:

I sometimes go to other people's Costume Contests and hand out person prizes to the ones I like. Or just give every contestant a superpack or a prismatic. 

 

You really can't depend on other people to spend your money wisely.

 

Thought I was the only one who did this. The issue I found with costume contest is when you have more then one judge the winners are often bland. Not because the judges have bad taste just different and the none person who might be on every judges list even if it's number 10 on the list will just get the most points overall.  

 

So ya started showing up and giving inf to the top three I liked never told anyone and did not wate to see who wins. I just liked them and they put work into there costume and wanted to win inf for that work never saw the harm and never will.

[Bananiac]

On 3/25/2024 at 10:11 AM, TheSpiritFox said:

...

LOTGs were 3.8 million today wtf is happening?! So I had to adjust and lately I'm working mostly with more limited quantity IOs. Farming produces purples and pvp IOs and I've had to get into flipping which admittedly offers some very temporary holes that can be taken advantage of, occasionally. 

...

 

I am a very (VERY!) casual craft-convert-marketeer and hardly make 20-25mil a week, but consistently enough to keep my developping horde of Alts supplied with IOs they need.

So the backside of the current market with the price deflation that we see for many of the higher value items is this: Equipping one of my many 50ies is down to about (depending on the amount of WIOs, purples and Hamis etc, of course) 250-350Mil, where it usually was 450-500Mil "in the good old days".

 

So I have been making quite a few new builds for many of my toons sitting at lvl50 waiting for some attention, and getting them at quite the bargain, I think.

 

And it also helps many of the returning and new players who are not swimming in Inf to equip their dearest toons at more affordable rates. Which is a service that I am happy to support, in a way...

[Aeroprism]

Even when I'm away from the game, I read this part of the forum semi-regularly because I'm fascinated by how you guys do things. I don't have your smarts or your business acumen so I admire you guys a fair bit.

I'm in kind of the same boat as Bananiac there: Converting and selling for reasonnable funds and yes, the profits have been lesser lately.  I came back to Homecoming maybe a month ago and I was surprised how basic conversion is not as lucrative as it once was. It's still enough for me though, It keeps my alts well geared. I think that I have maybe... 3 billion tops in INF waiting to be spent.  Everything else is in the form of ATOs, Purples, PVPs and Winter-Os stashed in my base. I sell almost nothing these days, if I have everything I need, I don't need that much inf.

 

3 billion is a drop in the ocean compared to most of you but I like to think that I'm doing ok for myself.  It's all a matter of perspective: I had a thought for you all the other night, I was in a lowbie team and someone suddenly said "Wow! I just got a [Very rare salvage I can't remember the name], my inf problems are solved forever on that character".  A prismatic something...

 

I /AH'd it out of curiosity, it's a thing that sells 3 Million. 

To that person, 3 million was a fortune, it made their day.

 

To me, 3 billion is "enough to feed my alts forever"

And you guys give out billions in the two digits.

CoH: the market.  A great game within an excellent game.

 

That said, I wouldn't dislike the idea of upping my game, just to see if I have it in me but I have no idea how to do any of that beyond basic conversion.

[Ukase]

On 4/15/2024 at 8:04 AM, Aeroprism said:

but I have no idea how to do any of that beyond basic conversion.

There's not much to it, really. But it's not for everyone. It can be very tedious. 

For my SG, maybe 2-3 years ago, I shared my screen with more than a few folks, showing exactly how I would take a level 1 with zero inf to a billion in short order. After about 30 minutes in, I only had one player left listening. It's just not that interesting to most. I mean, who doesn't want to type /ah (or whatever macro or bind they use) and see all your listings have sold? And then to get that notice that you can't get your inf because you would exceed the cap?  (I am fairly certain this is a new feature but no idea when it was installed, as I'm pretty careful about not reaching it.) 

Look for @dahle on youtube. His video is dated, but still applicable. Or, if you're more of a reader, go through Yomo's guide. All good stuff. 

I think the worst part is learning that losses are part of the process. Like..recently, I made like 100 of an item that was typically selling for 3-4M. Now, they're selling for 1-2M. I am not real clear on what happened, other than someone clearing out their stash and selling them cheaply. I'll wait it out, see what happens. But burning another 200-300 converters to change them all into something that will sell for my desired price..well, it's annoying. 

Had a challenge lowbie trying to make it to a billion, starting at zero. Went to winter packs, seeing they were selling for 18-19M, non-superior. Had some crappy luck on more than a few packs. (and some good luck) but overall, my average was closer to .8 than 1.2 enhancements per pack. Lost a good bit. 

There's ups and downs in the market. Just have to ride out the valleys and aim for the hills. 

[Aeroprism]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

There's not much to it, really. But it's not for everyone. It can be very tedious. 

For my SG, maybe 2-3 years ago, I shared my screen with more than a few folks, showing exactly how I would take a level 1 with zero inf to a billion in short order. After about 30 minutes in, I only had one player left listening. It's just not that interesting to most. I mean, who doesn't want to type /ah (or whatever macro or bind they use) and see all your listings have sold? And then to get that notice that you can't get your inf because you would exceed the cap?  (I am fairly certain this is a new feature but no idea when it was installed, as I'm pretty careful about not reaching it.) 

Look for @dahle on youtube. His video is dated, but still applicable. Or, if you're more of a reader, go through Yomo's guide. All good stuff. 

I think the worst part is learning that losses are part of the process. Like..recently, I made like 100 of an item that was typically selling for 3-4M. Now, they're selling for 1-2M. I am not real clear on what happened, other than someone clearing out their stash and selling them cheaply. I'll wait it out, see what happens. But burning another 200-300 converters to change them all into something that will sell for my desired price..well, it's annoying. 

Had a challenge lowbie trying to make it to a billion, starting at zero. Went to winter packs, seeing they were selling for 18-19M, non-superior. Had some crappy luck on more than a few packs. (and some good luck) but overall, my average was closer to .8 than 1.2 enhancements per pack. Lost a good bit. 

There's ups and downs in the market. Just have to ride out the valleys and aim for the hills. 

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer me.  I understand everything you say here and it kind of reassures me that I'm more or less doing everything ok already, just on a smaller scale than most.

 

I guarantee you though, had I been there when you explained things, I would have lasted the whole screen-share session. i have deep appreciation for people who take the time to properly explain things and I love complex systems.

 

I already read everything Yomo wrote. That dude is fantastic. If only I was smart enough to understand half of what he says 😉

 

I'll try new things, see where they take me.  But for the most part, I don't really need a fortune in my treasure chest. I love the market game so much, all my alts play it so, they never need a rich parent 🙂

[Troo]