Here's an advice if you want something from Calypso: Use the ordering system at the auction! Me and probably others make regular trips to and from Calypso. It is very simple to check for orders and to fill them, and they are very cheap to place as well. For stackables I recommend at least a 5% markup on calypso prices to cover auction fees and pvp risks.
Yes, I agree it is good to try to use that system. For now I believe there is a lot more personal trading going on than use of the auction, understandable but we need to get the auction working and working well if we want to see decent supply and demand on it, and accurate MV reflected. Using the order system will help those traders on planet see that the auction system is workable for them as well, as well as the pilots travelling back with items from other planets.
Just my noobish opinion on this matter ... From what I have seen with auctions, is that most people who have stuff listed for sale are trying to make some good PED, I see tons of MU at 120% or more for huge qty, and 200%+ for small qty. Simple fact is, unless you are an adv player, you will not have the money to buy thousands of anything at few hundred PED, and as a noob, you will not have the PED to buy a few of something at 200-300% MU. This only leads to adv players using auctions and noobs wondering what other way they can get any PED for their loot. What is sad to see is, applying some logic to this, we see the same from people who is trying to sell. The noobs see others listing at 200%+ MU, they are lead to believe they can do the same and have their items sold; all the while their item just sits there, get expired, and fee collected. Talk about leaving a bad taste and not wanting to use the system again. I myself tried a few sells and I got no buyers, so I lost all my fees. At the end, I concluded it is better for me to go TT, but that removes the items from the game that can be used to help the economic growth of Arkadia. We seriously need to derive a much better trading method. jc
Actually thats why I started my import and export service. I ask people to put my in there FL and contact me directly ingame or here and place orders. I manage to get the materials and items for a decent price and with a little MU to cover my costs I am still able to sell under or on going auction prices. Granted it sometimes takes a little time to get the goods at desired prices. Now I rather don't sell in auction since some reseller will get the stuff and sell it overpriced as you can see currently in auction. I am not risking my skin and PED to give a reseller a easy buck. To me they are just a virus for the economy. Another advantage is that I can also sell smaller stacks to the not so high skilled or fortuned users. I try to keep my service accessible for every level and wallet. But I will now keep an eye on the order system since I know that people use it. Regards, Ion
Well you make mistakes and you learn from them. To know how to use the auction properly you need skills and experience, as with everything else. What Arkadia could use is more ore/enmatter buyers that can pvp-trade with noobs. Selling low amounts of 20 different materials on auc is completely useless... But I assume they will get here eventually once the economy starts rolling.
A lot of the problems could easily be sorted if MA let us bid with pecs and not just rounded PEDs in the auction. Rounding things to while PEDs is what bumps the %'s up to stupid heights where people would buy them due to everyone trying to buy at or under market value. I find it incredibly frustrating that I can't buy small stacks of some stuff for reasonable prices through no fault of the seller in auction because of the failings of the system. And with the lack of shops and being able to sell parts of stacks from shops, it sometime takes a fair while for me to restock my crafter with some stuff.
I can understand the frustrations, but it will be the last dead blow to shops. I can say as a shop owner, auction is already a killer. Lucky in a shop you can set prices with PED and PEC. On the other hand, I see some pretty bad maintenance on a lot of shops. This is not helping aether. So actually we are stuck between a rock and a hard place in that matter. And Snape, you should call the ASF for your stack orders Regards, Ion
I manage to sell most stackables within a day of listing on auction without sacrificing too much MU. I have a few principles I follow that seem to work: 1. Batch it up. I generally sell in 100 TT amounts. Any less and the auction fee eats too much of the MU. The larger quantity you can sell at a time, the less overhead generated by fees, but it can be difficult to sell large quantities even at reduced MU. I regularly see a bulk sale sit in auction for a week despite reduced MU. Meanwhile I have sold 100 ped TT or more per day at a higher price, a greater volume for the week than the failed sale at a higher price, even taking into account additional auction fees. So you need to sell in quantities that people want to buy. 2. Check turnover. This was easier when there was one market. I would look at daily and weekly sales history. For stackables with high daily sales then you can risk putting BO a little over MU. For low turnover stackables you need to be very tight with the MU you try for and given the risk that the item may not sell at all, it's worth considering TTing low MU, low turnover loot. Given that most sales are on Calypso, it is difficult to accurately determine turnover on arkadia so while I am still guided by turnover I now rely more on ... 3. Check how long stackables are on auction for a given MU and quantity. If you search for the stackable you are selling and then order by MU ascending, you can generally spot the price at which people are no longer buying. If something has been on auction for a couple of days or more, its probably priced too high. Larger quantities take longer to sell so I pay more attention to offers for around the same quantity I am looking to offload. If all the offers are at MU 120% but have been on for for 2 or 3 days then clearly no one is buying at that price. You will need to drop your price. I almost always set my BO price to be lower than any offer that has been on auction for over 2 days. 4. Try and get your offer on page 1 (sorted by BO) . You don't need to have the lowest price but it really helps to be visible. 5. Set SB lowish. What's the minimum price you are willing to accept, really? Consider that if you fail to sell you have wasted a fee and you still have loot you havent been able to cycle back to peds. For stackables I generally set SB at the lowest value that will still get me more than TT, taking into account auction fee. That's my saftey net. Regards, KikkiJikki
The problems with auction as it is in these early days is what has led me to pretty much stop crafting for now. I still do the occasional small run on something, but nothing like I had been doing. The higher end crafters have big stocks, or regular suppliers they deal with usually, or can afford to pay out 300 ped for a stack of one ore only needed for a bp. I can't, being a small crafter, I concentrated on skilling up and trying to make Arkadia items for Arkadia players to actually use, and when the only thing on auction is a large stack for several hundred ped, just for one of the two or three mats I may need, and none of the private traders I have on fl are online either, my crafting is stopped dead in it's tracks. I have lost a lot this way, since when I do manage to successfully craft something for use and sell it on auction, I try to always list it at or below mu, since the current mu is usually 'taking the piss' in a lot of cases, and my goal is not so much to make a lot of ped but to help get the economy moving. So for me, the little crafter who decides to craft without having planned out a massive session in advance, what is hurting is the fact folks are not willing to put smaller or varied amounts on auction for reasonable prices. Kikki's rule number one is a problem for us. If a noobie miner puts his ores on at 30-50 ped stacks instead of hundreds, I would snap them up when the mood to craft strikes Really it seems to me to be what is each person's goal, to make as much ped as possible, or to help the economy get off to a successful start? Nothing wrong with either goal, and some have both of course, but those like myself who have the economy goal first are suffering for sure.
as said pec bids would end the shops, but the shops needs to be better at matching prices but then we have the resellers taking everything and resell higher on auction which seems to be the case today... So if people use shops more I guess that can probably eliminate some resellers taking everything and make ped reselling at auction. But something we really really need is separate market history from plant to planet now when the auction it self is separated, cant understand wth they didn't do this at the same time should have been obvious to do ffs. Now several times I been undercut on auction with "calypso" prices and ofc then my stuff just sits there. How hard can it be to make the planet your on the default and then universe in a drop down menu in the market history window too????
i suppose that's pretty hard to implement, but i agree on your opinion. they have to implement this in order to improve planetary trading.
Some good thoughts here. I really can't see a valid reason why the auctions are limited to whole peds. It makes no sense to me why MA would set it up that way. Same thing with the fee structure. Really puts a damper on the small lots. Also, a word about reseller bashing—let's keep in mind that people who buy items on Calypso and bring them to Arkadia are just resellers. They do a service by transporting goods from the sellers to the people who need them. Also, someone who buys up a 1000 ped stack, splits it and sells it at 20 ped stacks is also doing a service to the economy. Hobby crafters can now obtain their materials. Now if buyers think the service these kinds of "resellers" offer is too expensive, then simply don't buy... find a different way to get your goods. That's what drives the market. I think our concerns about the evils of "reselling" really stem from our fears that a greedy player will monopolize a certain commodity (buy out all of it) and resell at very high prices. Now, in Arkadia's small economy, I think it's quite possible that this might happen, and it does no good to Arkadia's economy... it only benefits the single individual who holds the monopoly. To prevent this from happening, use the OP's idea--when you believe prices at the auction house are higher than reasonable, use the ordering system and leave the monopolizers out in the cold.
Well.. To sum it up.. We need pec-bidding, we need seperate MU stats for each planet, and the most important and most urgent in my humble opinion is a strong and fair ore/enm trader.. I dont mind TT'ing my loots from (noob) mobs.. my problem is that i have so little ped i am rookie mining atm, but there's no buyer for my VERY small amounts of ores/enm.. I REALLY need someone who will buy my low amounts of things for a reasonable price.. As in i REALLY REALLY REALLY need it.. Ive seen myself tt ores with 140% MU because i had too little to put on auction, no buyers, and no ped to continue if i didnt do that.. THATS whats killing the personal economy of the noob(er) miners, and therefore in the end also the Arkadian economy, seeing as i am watching more and more noobs pop up, and less and less skilled ppl..
