Keep cool or cash in?

[Felix]

So you buy the Diablo III at launch, you play and reach the endgame and woohoo, something really good drops for you. Now lets say it looks like a 30$ item on the RMAH, as it is when you look.

How will your item fare, 6 months away. It may increase many times in price. Like if you found a DII coldskiller with 45 life, at the start people didnīt want to pay premium, later on such an item was very costly. And it can be sold 6 months later for 150$. Only a few who will buy but they will pay.

Or it might be an item that looks very good, but into the game it has become more common, or is not the optimal item for a certain popular build. And it can be sold for 5$.

What will you be doing with your first valuable finds, when you know the market hasn't settled and prices haven't been determined yet.?

[The Lord of Darkness]

It depends on need. If my character needs it, I keep it. If not, then it is going into the stash for the RMAH later.

I'm not really playing to make a profit. If I do make a profit great, if not, no big deal.
I don't see the market really taking off at launch because people (myself included) will hoard gold, items.
It will take a few weeks in my opinion. Of course I could be completely wrong.

Sure there will be people posting junk at launch but it really isn't worth it since people will be weary about buying at launch. If a seller can find a sucker to buy at launch, more power to him/her.

[Felix]

If a seller can find a sucker to buy at launch, more power to him/her.

This is the aspect of the RMAH I don't really like. People (grownups) will be scavenging for good deals, and if kids put up something on the ingame AH, and doesn't know the price, it will be picked up quickly and sold for real money. Now many will say that this is the market mechanics, and the last sucker isn't born yet. But in reality, it's grownups stealing candy from a baby.

It could get real ugly, with some people trying to pressure others into selling for cheap ingame gold. Whispering and bullying and teaming up in order to make some kid sell a very valuable item for some cheap gold.

[Karpalo]

It depends. We will learn a lot of the itemization very quickly. As a thumb rule for this genre i would say that perfection goes up over time and mediocre goes down. That's the law of nature in diablo universe and you can use that for speculation. Life skillers from D2 is good example or enchant defense %. Back when i started enchant defense was pretty much what ever stat, now it's apparently a big deal.

[Karpalo]

This is the aspect of the RMAH I don't really like. People (grownups) will be scavenging for good deals, and if kids put up something on the ingame AH, and doesn't know the price, it will be picked up quickly and sold for real money. Now many will say that this is the market mechanics, and the last sucker isn't born yet. But in reality, it's grownups stealing candy from a baby.

It could get real ugly, with some people trying to pressure others into selling for cheap ingame gold. Whispering and bullying and teaming up in order to make some kid sell a very valuable item for some cheap gold.

It's a free market system. Nothing has so called list price before players get conditioned for it.

[Ayewyn]

Really, the only reason an item would ever go up is if they made a change (nerf) to the item and the old version was better. At that point supply is cut off and it is a limited item. Short of that every item will depreciate over time, so the sooner you sell it the better. As for me, If I found a $30 item I would sell it without a 2nd thought. In my eyes that's a week's food bill, and the boss just dropped groceries.

[sirwhere]

The Diablo economy has a linear supply of items, so their value will tend to drop in time. The marginal value is probably logarithmic, meaning it gets harder and harder to get better stuff, though it will eventually be found (and later superseeded). This hints at cashing out as soon as you find something good.

We've seen it happening in D2: good items, like rares/set/uniques, lost value to common stuff like gems or crafting runes as the season progressed.

[Karpalo]

The supply doesn't meet demand at the very top. In D2 terms when you got enigma only way up from there is perfect enigma. The more there are people with close to optimal gear the more the optimal gear will cost. It's kinda backwards what it would be in normal world, but that's how it works.

Maybe it could be compared to art auction. The more there are billionaires around the more that Van Gogh will cost.

[Lebmark]

This is a good question and difficult to tackle as there will be forces pushing towards both directions. As a rule of thumb, as has been mentioned, you want to hang on to perfect/close to perfect gear and dump the rest. Perfect gear will lose value as well, but at an extremely slow rate when compared to average viable gear. Why then would you want to hang on to it? Barring black swan type events (market flooded with dupes or hacks for example, or who knows maybe introduction of new items or changes in drop rates by Blizzard) the market value of very rare item depends on short term fluctuations in supply in demand. Unlike in more common items, these fluctuations will dwarf the rate at which the average price will decrease.

For example, if you found a giga rare powerful sword and the last similar one or two has sold for $100... sure the average price might be $95 next month... however there might come at any time this desperate buyer who is willing to pay $200 for it, or this newbie who lets it go for $50. What I am saying is for very powerful items you want to depend on short term supply and demand fluctuations rather than longer term market trends to make call.

TLR
- Mediocre viable gear - sell.
- Top perfect/close gear - sell if you find a buyer willing to spend on the upper end of the wide variance range.

[galzohar]

There was already a thread about it... But overall - Selling early will generally be better than selling later if you know the price, since over time the market will saturate and item value will drop.

Think D2 new ladder season - For example, a Titan's and a razortail are like winning the lottery the first day, but after that people just can't seem to get rid of them.