Jacking up the Auction House Prices

[Tenchi]

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but I'm pissed about it again. For weeks now I've been trying to buy the Blessed Briault; but because I'm a poor mofo I had to keep putting it off till I had enough. Well, three weeks ago it was at 1.8 million gil. Then last week, it was jacked-up to 2.3 million gil. This annoyed me greatly since it was the same time I had enough for the original price. But what they did pissed me off worse, I would see the same name selling the item and then buying the item... this obviously one person pushing the price himself and erasing the earlier AH sells.

So what do I see today on New Year's Eve? Same thing again by Krykichi, jacking the price to 3 million now. Happy New Year White Mages!!! Well, I simply cannot afford it again; but even if I did, I wouldn't pay at that price, out of principle.

Now I am sure this is not the only item in Auction House, I'm sure there are others that notice that certain individuals seem to control a particular item you may want. You cannot say these are gil sellers because that can't be proven; but what is known is that these are people that are monoplizing. So speak up, share your pain... maybe we can track them down and harrass them silly.

And people wonder why it cost 1k or more now for teleports, it's because we need to make gil for our overly-expensive spells and gear.

 

[Btexpress]

Krykichi, is krystophers mule. not a gil seller... 2 things i can tell you about krystohper, is he has enough gil to not care if it ever sells and he won't synth for a lose, so look into the price of the synth mats... find out the materials needed to make it and try to find a crafter, plenty of people here do cloth. people assume NQ should cost less then price to make it because you are either skilling up on the item or trying to HQ it, they sometimes fail to realize the risk involved with a busted synth.

i know paulio, fubio, odon, vang, and jonosapi all have very high cloth look them up maybe you can gather the items needed and save yourself some gil

 

[Rones]

To be honest you shouldn't bother with Blessed Briault. Save your money. Errant body with +5mph will outperform it. If you really want to spend money go for a vermillion or nobels. That piece is just for showing off that people have money to waste.

 

[Tenchi]

Didn't say the guy was a gilseller, just that he's pushing the price up. I also know that it was Undervalued too... they are pushing it up now where they actually make a profit... and if they do, hopefully others will jump in and suddenly the prices will drop again because of saturation. Or at least I hope, I do think the Blessed Briault is worth getting, but not at full price. Since I have never had more than 3 million gil, it will be very long time before a Vermillion or Nobels become an option for me. Most likely I will have my entire AF2+1 gear before I get that amount of gil.

 

[Jemanie]

The Blessed Bri looks nice but its not really that great of a piece, stick with an Errant if you dont got the gil for anything else, its really not that bad ^.^

 

[Xean]

Why is everyone calling people gilsellers all of a sudden? Gilsellers aren't the reason that prices are constantly being jacked up. In fact, gilsellers have been around way before prices bumped up. There's been a sudden surge of gilbuying going on, and as things get more expensive, people buy more gil, and this will continue happening for a while. But gilsellers are not at fault for a messed up AH. If they were, that would have been the case in the first year FF was released back when Emp Hairpin and Lizzy Boots were just 300k and Jujitsu Gi was 200k.

 

[Xean]

Ack, forgot the rest of my post.

To sympathize, yeah it's a pain that crap like that happens. Especially if you're trying to farm the gil for it, and in a week, you go to the AH, and see that you have to do it all over again because the price just jumped and you can't buy it. :/

 

[Codyf]

Gilsellers aren't the reason that prices are constantly being jacked up.

Actually gilsellers are the reason that prices are being jacked up. Gilsellers make gil to put up for sell online. When this happens the places who sell it get lots of gil to sell to people. If gilsellers were not around then these places who sell gil would not have anything to sell to people. Since people have been able to buy lots of gil because of the huge increase in gilsellers they have plenty of money to buy what they need for whatever price they want on the auction house. Therefore meaning that Gilsellers are a very important role in the prices being jacked up because if there were no gilsellers then there would be no gil for people to buy and jack prices up with.

 

[Rones]

Actually gilsellers are the reason that prices are being jacked up. Gilsellers make gil to put up for sell online. When this happens the places who sell it get lots of gil to sell to people. If gilsellers were not around then these places who sell gil would not have anything to sell to people. Since people have been able to buy lots of gil because of the huge increase in gilsellers they have plenty of money to buy what they need for whatever price they want on the auction house. Therefore meaning that Gilsellers are a very important role in the prices being jacked up because if there were no gilsellers then there would be no gil for people to buy and jack prices up with.

No...stop and do some research on this before popping out theories. Gilsellers are not like the government mint. They can not create gil out of thin air. They farm items (which lowers inflation), sell them for gil, sell gil to ige, ige sells gil to rmt player. Inflation needs the creation of money which gilsellers don't do.

 

[Thnikkaman]

The Blessed Bri looks nice but its not really that great of a piece, stick with an Errant if you dont got the gil for anything else, its really not that bad ^.^

If you have money, Noble's Tunic all the way. If not, then yeah, Errant Houppelande. Blessed Briault is only great for Bar(element)a spells.

 

[Ayrie]

Wow, its like a real life gas scare here on FFXI... and the fuel seems to be NM/HNM/God materials. Gilsellers have nothing to do with this recent trend, perhaps ignorant people who will "pay any price" for that one piece of gear they so desperately want and got a recent Christmas bonus or something... but that mathematics work out like this:

1) Demand for items rises (SH, Hauby, Vermillion, etc... all have some sort of rare crafting component only attainable through a NM kill or something very similar).

2) AH cannot support the demand, and when you see "1" of a chase item for sale, you're in trouble.

3) Crafters take note of the ease of sale for their items, or idle crafters will take note that SHs are selling for 10m+ and V.Claws are only going for 7.5... nice juicy 2.5m profit there. So you now have every bonecrafter chasing V.Claws to get on the bandwagon.

4) NM/HNM/Gilselling shells note that they are losing chase materials fast, so they figure its a good time to reap a little wheat and start to see "how much will you pay for it."

5) Crafters keep buying, but they still want the profit too, so the price rises on the cost to craft, and the demand for the item is still there, so they raise the price up to make their money while the money is there to be had.

Really, the only way to stop this sort of spiral effect is to dump on the market, or just not buy at all. Let the kiddies blow all their money and make the bonecrafters filthy rich, but when they are out of money and the populace won't buy anymore cause "13m is way to f'in expensive for a SH" then the supply will grow, you'll see 5+ SHs for sale, crafters will try to unload, cutting at each other to move the gear while the price is still high, settling for 100-200k less than everyone else wants to have it gone. The price topples down to a bottoming point, and then rises again slightly as it attempts to stabilize its final price.

Or, and most likely and, normal people who have this chase gear sitting around will start to try to unload it because "13m is a sweet price for a SH" and there will be a radical influx of items into the stream (taking control away from the mat scalpers and crafters) and they will likely take any form of profit that they can, not at all worried about how much it cost them to secure the materials (hey, I bought it for 8m back in the day, hell, I'll drop it for 12.75, sure). Once again, supply will eventually exceed the demand (once again, once the kiddies burn their money) and the price will start to come back down and it will stabilize.

Of course, I don't at all mean to say that we'll see the Hauby drop back down to 4-5m or whatever it was mid-December, that is probably lost in the past now, but I do suspect that once the price crashes, it will stabilize again in the 6-8m range.

Anywho, I could be completely off target and FFXI on Quetzalcoatyl is entering into its darkest days... but there have been several other price spikes within recent memory, and if this holds true with the pattern, its just a matter of making a little money and waiting for the market to receed.

 

[Anttaru]

Wow, its like a real life gas scare here on FFXI... and the fuel seems to be NM/HNM/God materials. Gilsellers have nothing to do with this recent trend, perhaps ignorant people who will "pay any price" for that one piece of gear they so desperately want and got a recent Christmas bonus or something... but that mathematics work out like this:

1) Demand for items rises (SH, Hauby, Vermillion, etc... all have some sort of rare crafting component only attainable through a NM kill or something very similar).

2) AH cannot support the demand, and when you see "1" of a chase item for sale, you're in trouble.

3) Crafters take note of the ease of sale for their items, or idle crafters will take note that SHs are selling for 10m+ and V.Claws are only going for 7.5... nice juicy 2.5m profit there. So you now have every bonecrafter chasing V.Claws to get on the bandwagon.

4) NM/HNM/Gilselling shells note that they are losing chase materials fast, so they figure its a good time to reap a little wheat and start to see "how much will you pay for it."

5) Crafters keep buying, but they still want the profit too, so the price rises on the cost to craft, and the demand for the item is still there, so they raise the price up to make their money while the money is there to be had.

Really, the only way to stop this sort of spiral effect is to dump on the market, or just not buy at all. Let the kiddies blow all their money and make the bonecrafters filthy rich, but when they are out of money and the populace won't buy anymore cause "13m is way to f'in expensive for a SH" then the supply will grow, you'll see 5+ SHs for sale, crafters will try to unload, cutting at each other to move the gear while the price is still high, settling for 100-200k less than everyone else wants to have it gone. The price topples down to a bottoming point, and then rises again slightly as it attempts to stabilize its final price.

Or, and most likely and, normal people who have this chase gear sitting around will start to try to unload it because "13m is a sweet price for a SH" and there will be a radical influx of items into the stream (taking control away from the mat scalpers and crafters) and they will likely take any form of profit that they can, not at all worried about how much it cost them to secure the materials (hey, I bought it for 8m back in the day, hell, I'll drop it for 12.75, sure). Once again, supply will eventually exceed the demand (once again, once the kiddies burn their money) and the price will start to come back down and it will stabilize.

Of course, I don't at all mean to say that we'll see the Hauby drop back down to 4-5m or whatever it was mid-December, that is probably lost in the past now, but I do suspect that once the price crashes, it will stabilize again in the 6-8m range.

Anywho, I could be completely off target and FFXI on Quetzalcoatyl is entering into its darkest days... but there have been several other price spikes within recent memory, and if this holds true with the pattern, its just a matter of making a little money and waiting for the market to receed.

Good post. Except Bonecrafters are not responsible for the price of the Scorpion Harness. Usually there are more Scorpion Harness than V. claws in the auction house. People as a whole who own SH often sell them more than the Crafter. It's an item that is bought and sold and never thrown away, Kinda like how a piano gets passed on from generation to generation bought sold, or given away.

On another note crafting is about prouducing goods for the ecconomy and profiting (No one would level a craft for nothing, and everything is so expensive). If the SH is 15 million in the auction house, i'd put it up for 14.5 and change to ensure it gets sold first. This is a matter of how much the materals costed and how much the people wrote the price.

If Bonecrafters alone can set the bar for the price of the scorpion harness, and V. Claw was more consistant. I think SH would be cheaper for an increased number of sales and quicker cash flow.

 

[Ayrie]

I never placed blame entirely on the crafted, much like anything superficial in nature... it is only worth as much as people will pay for it. Not a penny more, not a penny less. The problem lies in the fact that to the people who have these items, be them crafters or not, see that it is worth more to the people who want it, this the price will reflect how much that level 57 monk will pay for his pretty little harness.... or the 59 Dark Knight will shell out for a Hauberk.

The crafters are just a part of the problem, I mean... they wouldn't have leveled their respected crafts up that high without the intent of making money.

On the other hand... 18 people didn't just kill Amirkiri without the intent of making money either, and as much money as they can make.

And then again, I don't craft, I do NM/HNM hunt, but I did a bulk of mine back in the "day" lol. I just scope out for these radical spikes and help the "relief effort" and make a little money in the mean time. As Sculli stated in a very similiar thread... this is not permanent, items cannot keep exploding in value, and the spike will not sustain itself. The word "spike" itself implies that there are two sides rising up to make an apex.

People who run their item wares as a business stand to make a lot of money... and the people who panic and run out and pay for it "at any cost" end up triggering these scares because they simply don't understand. I can't fault the crafters for trying to make some extra money, that's what they're in it for. I cannot blame the hunters for trying to pick up some extra money either, otherwise, 1 V.Claw is a lowsy 500k profit or something rediculously mundane like that, depending on how many wanted in on the kill. And in a day where people throw around a million gil as if it were nothing, 500k doesn't go anywhere fast.

It all comes back to the buyer. If you're retarded enough to buy a Scorpion Harness for 13-15 million gil, then the prices deserves to be there. If I owned a deli and knew I could make a living sell $10 tuna subs, guess what? You'd be forking out $10 to eat at my place. I don't care if you think its overpriced because obviously somebody thinks its a good deal, and my price will not change because you are disgruntled. Now if I didn't make a sell in a week or so because people stopped paying it... then I'd have to reevaluate my business approach. And in terms of crafting... you can't add chips and a drink, so the natural response is: lower the price.

Point of my argument: flame it all you want, but until people do something (and in this case that doing something is actually doing nothing) then you can expect to see all these chase items popping astronimically large figures. And the saddest thing is... who knows how much the person standing next to you has, and who knows how much he wants that Scorpion Harness you're waiting for to crash a couple mil.

I say good day! ^^

 

[Daveman]

No...stop and do some research on this before popping out theories. Gilsellers are not like the government mint. They can not create gil out of thin air. They farm items (which lowers inflation), sell them for gil, sell gil to ige, ige sells gil to rmt player. Inflation needs the creation of money which gilsellers don't do.

They suck up a large amount of gil and take it out of circulation, and then when they cut prices, people buy it, re-introducing it into the market at an extremely rapid rate.

15m for a SH wouldn't be so bad if it went up slowly, it's bad because it went up in the span of like what? 1 week? Gil sellers are responsible (in part) for the rapid inflation, if they had never stockpiled all that gil, maybe SH would still be the same price as they are today, but no one would complain since the inflation rate wouldn't of been as rapid.

So they have the same effect as if they really were a mint, it doesn't matter that they didn't originally create the gil, what does matter is that they are introducing gil into the economy that wasn't freely flowing in the economy before, and doing so extremely fast.

 

[Ayrie]

Daveman you are partially correct, they do hold a fair percentage of the money, and a generous supply of materials... but, they are not totally responsible. Real crafters don't have to sustain the problem, or compound it as the case may be, yet they do. Material farmers don't have to add to the strain, yet they do. People don't have to buy the poo for that cost... yet, again, they do. Its a problem that has had many forms of stimulous: be it gilselling specials for the holidays (happy holidays! enjoy your gouged prices!), shortage of materials, people making a buck, and people who have no form of restraint when it comes to shopping.

So to blame this person or that person as the culprit (or in this case, the gilselling community) is about as ignorant as saying "I think I can solo the kirin as thf/war." Everyone has had a hand in it, somehow or another.

 

[Daveman]

I know it's not the only reason, but I think it's at least half the reason for this massive inflation we're seeing, this is happening to every server, so whatever factors are casuing this has to be cross-server, and they're also happening the same time, so it can only be like 1 out of 3 things: SE changing something, Gil sellers cutting prices, Christmas break changing the # of players significantly.

To my knowledge SE hasn't done any dramatic changes, and the population isn't hugely different due to people playing more/less. But we -do- know gil selling sites are having christmas specials.

This all seems like some sort of chain reaction. Half the reasons it's getting worse depend on inflation already occuring (jacking up prices so much, buy low sell high, stockpiling items, waiting to sell items so inflation brings it up even more, etc..). I'm not saying gil selling is the only thing, but it's definatly a significant factor.

 

[Mattaru]

Just a small side note to Rones: Inflation is caused by something like printing off more money, while IGE isnt creating gil out of thin air it can be considered a source of inflation. Because Gil is EASIER to obtain by regular players through sellers it DEVALUES the worth of that gil, which is the same inflation effect.

 

[Cleofis]

Give it a month or so and I can see prices dropping. It's been Christmas and I bet gilbuying has seen a huge surge.

 

[Braydon]

Just a small side note to Rones: Inflation is caused by something like printing off more money, while IGE isnt creating gil out of thin air it can be considered a source of inflation. Because Gil is EASIER to obtain by regular players through sellers it DEVALUES the worth of that gil, which is the same inflation effect.

You missed the boat entirely.

Inflation is caused when money loses it's value against EVERY thing, like when a government prints more money without increasing it's worth. If gil farmers were selling drops to NPC, that would cause inflation. But they sell theri drops on the AH to other players. This actually causes de-flation as there is now more items out there with the same pool of gil.

Now just becuase people pay way to much for things in your opinion doesn't matter. That isn't inflation, thats just simple demand taking over. Hell, look at what XBOX 360's were selling for durring the holidays and what they will be selling for in a couple of months.

 

[Drache]

This shit is why I quit... Have fun wasting your life farming for an item you will never get =D.

(And if you do get it... I hope those hours and hours of killing the same thing over and over again were worth it)

-Drache