Whats with the bidding??
 

What happened to set prices? Seems everyone is only "taking offers" on stuff now - and drawing out sells for months!

Because they know if they drag out the auctions as long as possible, people will get desperate and just bid higher until they finally get what they want.

A lot of kunark items don't really have a market value yet. This is especially true for sebelis and howling stones items. Taking offers on items is the start of setting market value on a particular item.

Personally that's why I started taking bids. This approach isn't all that great with items that aren't 1) in high demand; or 2) have a wide price range; or 3) items that are dropping in price rapidly (long sales).

Save for those three things, it really is a good way to maximize the profit on a sale. For simplicity sake I went back to just quoting the "buyout" and making note of any other offers.

If the buyouts are set properly (i.e. the max an item will sell for), then it's a pretty good way to sell things... its just... slow. I came up with a couple tweaks to my personal selling system and i'll probably be giving them a try here soon. Namely, much more rapid pace timers on my auctions... probably around 30 mins to an hour.

IMHO - this is what auction is all about - bidding ;)
you can't expect to determine true value of an items, until you put it on open auction and let people demonstrate with their cash how much they want it.
Supply and Demand ;)

the prices will eventually settle down to be more static

Or people could honor historical prices during this same timeframe back when Kunark was first released. Unfortunately, since everyone knew what to expect when Kunark dropped this time around and people have had a tremendous amount of extra time amassing platinum, the server is flooded with it. Therefore many more people are willing to spend more than originally on live EQ at this time. Great for people with toons since the server opened. Not so great for the rest of us. ;) Maybe if the GM's crackdown more on illegal plat, the prices will start to fall off since there will be less to spend serverwide. /shrug

It is what it is though for right now.

It's definitely annoying... but people can do as they wish, I guess. I'd pay more right now that I would three days from now, personally.

Its not a matter of what determines the market value on an item, but a matter of who. The wealthiest players who buy items will have the most impact on the value of an item, that is because they will pay top dollar for something because they have the funds. This sets the initial market value. This in turn makes alot of items more expensive than the
"desired" price range.

This is exactly why I prefer getting offers as opposed to listing direct prices! The change in prices for Kunark items fluctuates so damn much that I would prefer the customer to throw a number out there instead of overcharging or undercharging.

Granted, I do have a rough number in mind for how much I might want to sell an item. This number is derived from RECENT reasonable Auction Tracker and EC Tunnel Forums prices. I think that's about as fair as you can be when trying to sell something, right?

That said, if someone offers a little more or a little less than that then I'll go with it. Someone is only going to pay what they are willing to pay anyway. If a lot of people start offering the same price for something, then I know that it's time to lower my minimum expected profit for it.

Long story short, the economy is crazy. Prices change everyday. Do some research and start making some fair offers.

think outside the bun