Friday, May 8, 2009

Opportunity knocks



These two screenshots illustrate a fantastic money-making opportunity, albeit a cyclical one. We see Crystallized Fire selling for a minimum of 2.98g per, but in a stack of 7. (!) Then we see Eternal Fire selling at a minimum of 14.9g per, but in stacks of 5.

For those that don't know, all characters can turn 1 x Eternal Fire into 10 x Crystallized Fire. Some very basic math tells us that Crystallized Fires are extremely overpriced. If I had 70g, this would be a no-brainer. Buy the cheapest per-Eternal Fires, down-convert them to Crystallized Fire, then list for, oh, about 2g each.
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to show that bit of "advanced algebra" ;) where I realize how profitable these can be.
1 x Eternal Fire = 14.9g
Convert that and ...
10 x Crystallized Fire = 14.9g
1 x Crystallized Fire = 1.49g
Seriously. 1.5g per Crystallized Fire. When they're listing at 3g minimum.
The kicker is, nobody wants to buy 7 Crystallized Fire. Nobody needs 7 of them. People need 1 or 2. So what do we do? List single Crystallized Fires.

What is the buyer's corollary here? Check both Crystallized and Eternal Markets. In this particular market, at this particular time, you should look for a single Eternal Fire to break, use what you need, and Auction the leftovers, singly, at a profit to you but well below the 3g market price. You might end up having more money after you buy mats than you had before.

I found that the single Eternal Fires were listing at ~17-18g. Still a lot of room for profit, but I was wary of using almost 90% of my on-hand cash to play in a market I only had 2 days worth of scans. I held off for a day or so, bought at 17g, listed at 2.4g (in singles!), and promptly got undercut by one of the Fire market players with his own singles.

Next time: Is there enough volume in Crystallized fire for both the undercutter AND my fires to sell?

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