How to estimate item prices (real money and/or gold) der=0>

[SmasheR]

Yeah exactly! I remember those troll listings and I was like: WTF. But on the other occasions I really spotted some extremely good items (for the beta) tht were like 500,000. I assume that the closer the item is to a perfect then the higher price will be and the more usefull the item is for someone (some cool axe for barbarian for example) the higher will be the price. The trick will be to estimate as closely as possible what is the good price for an item so that you can sell it properly. I know that in future there will be some estimated prices for legendary items like it was in Diablo 2 where you had the FG prices on some forums and you could guide your transactions by comparing the prices on the forums with what you got. I mean the REAL DEAL will be to have your own mind and evaluate the items by yourself, without anyone telling you for how much to sell your stuff. For example you will have to see clearly who is trolling and settings prices way to high or who is a noob and puts to low price (then of course you buy it and sell higher). But that depends on your knowledge of whats usefull in the game and what people need and that will be sculpted by the gamers, by the community and after a while after the game is released we will know whats the usefull stuff and what is not. I want to trade from the early begining fo the pure fun of it. I think the functionality of AH is great and it might be a great fun to use it. Thats why I truly want to master it and of course to do that I will need a lot of gaming experience. I am planning to play a lot at least in the begining at see what happens. I believe community will shape the prices nd it will give us idea of how we should estimate our prices. We should base our decisions on our experience and on our cleverness because sometimes we could earn a lot of gold on good transactions. And of course if you are a good trader you can make some real money but that will happen only after hell difficulty is mstered and we achieve inferno difficulty where the real looting will start. I believe the prices will drop quicklu in first few weeks after people complete the nightmare, hell difficulty and the starting gear will not be so expensive. And that will be the great start for newcomers I think. The real trading game will start on higher levels, and again I believe the market will set the prices and cautious observer will be able to estimate prices for himself.

The reason I make this topic is because I imagine myself finding some rare item. And then I dont want to be fooled around like I was a noob and sell it for too little gold and later feel bad because of it. I want to know the real value of items so that I can make a good buisness... xD

[Enlil]

Never ever ever calculate average price for anything! There is only one price you care about, and that's the maximum price that someone would pay you once you list the item, which is generally more or less the maximum price anyone paid for said item, and often (but not always! Usually for items with high demand, and less often for items in low demand that take longer to sell but still have good value for some classes/levels/builds) is also some number lower than the lowest buyout price you see currently listed.

No matter what, you never actually care about the prices listed by the "trolls". Sort by price or filter by maximum buyout price and they shouldn't matter.

Yes, but the point is you should be able to look at the listings and see easily an average price for the sword you have with similar stats.

for example

$10
$11
$12
$9

Then you can take the average of that for the items worth.

[galzohar]

No. Then you can tell that the price is most likely less than 9$, since if it was higher than 9$, the 9$ auction would have sold out already. Of course assuming the sword is in enough demand rather than be a niche item that is only needed by a select few players (yet rare enough to still be worth $), and that the auction had been up long enough.

The 12$ auction is basically someone saying "9$ is cheap, it probably didn't sell because the auction isn't up long enough but people will buy both this, the other 2 AND my 12$ one", or simply being stupid. In order to say the former, one needs a very deep understanding of how to value the item, to the point where he knows so much that the currently listed prices provide little extra information for him anyway.


So in short, don't do averages on prices you see on the AH. They're meaningless, and worse - They're deceiving!

[Enlil]

No. Then you can tell that the price is most likely less than 9$, since if it was higher than 9$, the 9$ auction would have sold out already. Of course assuming the sword is in enough demand rather than be a niche item that is only needed by a select few players (yet rare enough to still be worth $), and that the auction had been up long enough.

The 12$ auction is basically someone saying "9$ is cheap, it probably didn't sell because the auction isn't up long enough but people will buy both this, the other 2 AND my 12$ one", or simply being stupid. In order to say the former, one needs a very deep understanding of how to value the item, to the point where he knows so much that the currently listed prices provide little extra information for him anyway.


So in short, don't do averages on prices you see on the AH. They're meaningless, and worse - They're deceiving!

Best thing to do is undercut the lowest one, so your item sells and the others don't.
Bidding on your item can always go up if you start below average with a fair buyout price.

[galzohar]

Most people don't bid.

[jwfcp]

never take the current market at face value. you need to pay attention to it for weeks to get a good feel for what is valuable. I expect that as you progress, the +exp modifier will be trivially small in comparison to how much exp a mob gives, and that all of normal, and maybe nightmare will be easy enough that people can get by on straight up +dmg.

recognize if noobs are buying mats for more than theyre worth, stop crafting and sell yours marked up, or even always have a stack listed at some hiked up rate. recognize if people are spending crazy amounts of cash on gold, have a healthy amount in reserve to capitalize on this. recognize if items are being listed for less than the mats they disenchant into would sell for.

at the high end, dont undercut, for wasting a day of one of his ten precious slots, he will return the favor and undercut you. the buyers will notice and hold off, waiting for a retaliatory undercut war to lay a bargain in their laps. if your item is better, list it for more, the concurrence of the market will create the image that your item is worth as much as you claim it is- more money is good right? this is the high end, that one super nice item you get may be the last time you see an item so good, savor it, treasure it.


edit: good point galzohar, people buy what they need now, a buyout is essential, a low minimum biid is just you ripping yourself off.

[semakka]

Most people don't bid.

You right here.

BUT...a trader ALWAYS must think in 2 ways :
-sell NOW my crap, so i set a buyout price
-there i some cheap crap i can bid on and sell later for profit

If you have the item...set buyout price.
If you don't, and there is a cheap bid...by all means, bid on it.


And because

Most people don't bid

., most people are poor

[SmasheR]

You should bid and set buyout price. The bid and buyout price shouldnt be that far from eachother so that you cant be ripped of and the buyout price should be slightly higher than what you think the item is worth.. in my opinion.

No. Then you can tell that the price is most likely less than 9$, since if it was higher than 9$, the 9$ auction would have sold out already. Of course assuming the sword is in enough demand rather than be a niche item that is only needed by a select few players (yet rare enough to still be worth $), and that the auction had been up long enough.

The 12$ auction is basically someone saying "9$ is cheap, it probably didn't sell because the auction isn't up long enough but people will buy both this, the other 2 AND my 12$ one", or simply being stupid. In order to say the former, one needs a very deep understanding of how to value the item, to the point where he knows so much that the currently listed prices provide little extra information for him anyway.


So in short, don't do averages on prices you see on the AH. They're meaningless, and worse - They're deceiving!

Thats exacly my point! You should be able to estimate prices by yourself, without anyone telling you whats worth what. And that will be shaped somehow by the market, by people selling and buing and we will see what the demand for some item is. An in-game experience will give us the sense of things and then, if we are smart, we will be able to make profit on our transactions. Im sure that in the first few weeks prices will be changing dramatically, until certain amount of people will flood in and unlock higher difficulties - then tha market will be "stable" for a while and people will loot higher diffictulties, still providing some difference in prices from day to day, but I believe that starting gear, as we might seen in the beta will be much cheaper, because there will be a lot of higher end gear in the game.

Im curious whats yout take on rare items. My basic strategy for early selling is to craft them and search for something good. It is basically hard to hunt for rare items (maybe its not the case if you have high mf), but you can always find some spare and unnedded magic items that you can salvage and have crafting materials. Then you play the game like this: you craft as many copies of one kind of item and search for good stats. If you are lucky you can come up with something really good, I can give you guys a link to a guy who was actually doing this on a scale that was almost absurde, but it will give you the idea. I think you can benefit from what he was doing, by doing it yourself. I know that later crafting costs will be higher, but crafting maybe give you steady income and you will not have to depend so much on the drop. Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWX9ULk3E3s

What do you think about this guys? Before I saw this movie (and I played open beta just for 2 days) I was doing the same thing, but on much smaller scale with wands and I was selling all them in the AH giving some random (propably too high) prices. Later I recognized my prices were too high because I saw people offering much better wands at the same price, so my prices werent competitive.

But as you see stats in craftsman are also random so that you can come up with something exceptionally well that will make the price of the item reward you for your items. You could buyback crafting materials and have much gold left. Because if you hit the jackpot so to speak with certain item you will be well rich. Do you think, guys that will be viable strategy in the game?

And what do you think about magic find? I heard opinions that actually gold find will be better, because you can buy stuff with gold, and actually gold is real dollars on AH (its REAL MONEY). So what do you think? With GF you can maybe stockpile your money little longer, but with MF (and especially witch bunch of friends equipped in decent MF gear) you might also hit the jackpot, find something exceptionally rare. But then again, if you are not lucky GF will give slower, but more steady income.

And what about the gems? Are you gonna sell them on AH or try to level up your jeweler, and upgrade your gems, and then sell them or maybe keep them? Thats also very interesting, as I think (like for me in D2) gems can give you steady income as gold doeas.

What you guys think, I put some ideas here to ponder xD

[Azzure]

Buying / Selling equipment is going to be extremely interesting. I fully expect to see people listing UBER items for much lower than the "market value" but its all subjective because it's a player driven economy. So realistically you're going to have experienced Diablo 3 players rummaging through the AH (myself included) searching for items that are "cheap" and buying them.

Like any skill, it requires practice, hard work and experience. Accurately valuing randomized items is amongst the most challenging thing you can do in this game, and is something you will never stop learning.

The amount of what I call "contradictory listings", are going to be enormous. Contradictory listings are items (gear) that are listed at varying costs, contradicting the value of similar items with similar stats. For example, 1-h sword with 55 DPS, 50 Str, 10% attack speed for $5.00 and than a 1h Mace with 60.5 DPS, 48 Str and 10% attack speed for $4.10.

This is the nature of a randomized item system with millions of players listing millions of items. You could spend 24 hours a day for a month rummaging through these listings for bargains. The potential, if you're good at it, is enormous.

[SmasheR]

Yes, I am looking for potential in it. I will be spending a lot time playing the game and on the AH because I want to understand the economic. D3 is my "little world" which I want to care for like a little pet and so I want to be good/competetive trader. I wish we, on this forum could play together and talk about prices so that we could become really good at trading. I am not so much interested in actually grinding myself and making the best p v p character, because I dont have theese kinds of ambitions. One thing I know - once I am a good trader and finally get the set of best items the p v p will be just sort of "for fun thing". The trading will make me the master of the game (because practically anyone who has hands and head can play D3 and somehow thrive) and I want to master trading first (because as I say anyone can kill monsters and play for hours but not everyone can trade well, and by trading well we can be better than others, more than through simply clicking on monsters to kill them). So intelligence vs brutal force is my standpoint as an approach to this game xD for fun!

So.. anyone here interested in playing together in the future to talk about gear and prices and stuff? it might be fun xD