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 Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 6:17 am
thats crazy! i noticed that recently also...
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Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:41 pm
It looks like there are times when "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware) goes out the window in the Marketplace. If you put a common item out there for more than its resale value in the shops, and someone buys it, it was their call not to double-check and see they could get it cheaper.
Now, game items...if I can get 5g or more per can from someone who's *thisclose* to completing their Tin Hat, that's a pretty good deal. With the harder-to-get stuff, supply and demand does have an effect.
...and high prices utimately drive down demand, which causes prices to drop. Eventually. smile
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Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:24 pm
Carl Fox It looks like there are times when "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware) goes out the window in the Marketplace. If you put a common item out there for more than its resale value in the shops, and someone buys it, it was their call not to double-check and see they could get it cheaper. Now, game items...if I can get 5g or more per can from someone who's *thisclose* to completing their Tin Hat, that's a pretty good deal. With the harder-to-get stuff, supply and demand does have an effect. ...and high prices utimately drive down demand, which causes prices to drop. Eventually. smile only when the supply of items and gold is finite. if it is not limited then all normal rules of economics as the supply part of the S/D equation is not fixed and so the rules based on it are toast.
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Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:58 pm
Well they istened to the people and decided to throw even more into the community. Of course this means all those million gold items will most likely jump a couple 100k fairly quickly. Donation items will become rediculously priced. On the upside, store items will be much easier to buy.
Edit: Case in point, I just got 50 gold for this post!
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Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 11:35 am
People (whether in Gaia or real life) think that all problems can be just solved with money, which is a sad misconception. I heartily recommend that everyone take at least one economics class in either high school or college. Throwing more money in the economy does nothing but increase the rate of inflation, leading to outrageous prices for those who are on fixed incomes.
Example: it has been shown that when an area sees a rise in minimum wages, prices increase, and people are often worse off than they were to begin with.
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Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 5:59 am
KaguraOfTheWind The inflated prices of store items is just stupidity. Anybody who buys at those inflated prices are either stupid or generous. Now donation items are another story. They used to be cheap, 5k in the market. Then came the Kiki, those were so popular that they jumped to 10-12k in a matter of a day or two. This was also when donation items were beginning to be able to be used in several ways. A few were still at the regular 5k but then came other popular ones like the guitars that shot up quickly. After that, they just began to start in the 10k range. the only things which should inflate are donation items, plus the store items that are no longer available. i don't agree either with paying a huge amount for something that's bug ugly just coz it's rare, but then that happens in real life too. or meaningless memorabilia, like a pillowcase Elvis slept on. or a half eaten cheese sandwich that loooks like the virgin mary!
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Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 8:35 pm
I hate to take a side apart from all the others, but... I actually like the inflation, the "corruption" of the marketplace, the ability for a newb to be a master in a week, and the endless supply of... well, stuff! Being relatively new to Gaia, it's been nice to know that I don't have to rush into anything. What I mean to say is, I've been to a lot of sites that are (though not comparable to) similar to Gaia, and each has had fewer statistics of the previously mentioned things. The result was me getting lost in all the information... If I wanted a pair of shoes, I had to get it THEN- or never. If you're looking for life lessons on Gaia, then patience is definitely the one you're sure to get. No matter what you're questing for, you know if you just wait it out, you can get it. And if you pay too much? Then you send that person a message and say good job for them besting you! It's a community, just like the real world. We all come here to make ourselves look pretty, but we leave with a few friends and some nice free flowers. wink (All that aside, bumping does suck. Seriously.)
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 2:04 am
Well, I suppose it depends on the items your questing for, but as inflation rises, so do the lengths of people's quests. If you're questing for a OMG hat, every time they add more gold into the site the farther away your goal gets. For less popular items, sure, it's easy to go ahead and buy everything you want, but the only people who benefit from the rising prices are those who already have the rare items, and can sell and trade them to get other rare items.
I'm not sure how much it reflects the real world, though, aside from common economic principles.
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:46 am
There's something to be said for convenience with respect to shoppers who are willing to pay more for an NPC store item in the marketplace. Given the available ways for acquiring an item on Gaia--NPCs, the exchange, marketplace, charity, random events--the single point of contact that is most likely to offer what a shopper wants, and the one with the most flexible system of search criteria and selection, is the marketplace.
I know people who shop exclusively on the exchange because it offers better prices than most, but I also know people who shop exclusively on the marketplace because it's just easier for them than to dig through a dozen NPC stores or to browse the exchange for hours on end without finding a store that sells what they want. There's a sense of immediacy for purchases made through the marketplace. Shoppers can be in such a hurry to purchase an item that catches their eye that, before most items became unisex, it wasn't uncommon to hear that someone was disappointed that they weren't able to wear a particular item they just bought--even though each item's gender compatibility is clearly labelled next to the item's name. If they can't even bother to read something on the same line, would they be eager to read through detailed item listings, such as the one that mentions the item's NPC store price?
With regard to the accelerating inflation of donation items, the recent donation items have all been delightfully flexible in the ways they can adorn, so I don't think we can blame people for wanting to have them. Take the Dark Halo, for example: 12 available poses. If you liked only 3 of those poses, and went with the previouly average market rate of 5000g for each donation item, then even if you had to pay 12000g for the Dark Halo, if each pose were to count independently--since they are rather varied--then you've already saved 3000g.
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 7:13 am
Sure, it makes sense that donation items inflate. I have no problem with that. In those cases, there IS a limited supply relative to the demand, and any price is fair game. My original and only confusion was over items that can be purchased for a fixed price in NPC stores -- primarily, I was referring to tokens, which can always be purchased for 1 gold at the casino, but are often sold for 2-5 gold in the marketplace.
I actually took the advice of an early poster here and PMed a few of the people selling outrageously priced tokens in the marketplace (1000 gold for ONE token! I can't believe people would pay that kind of price just for convenience.), and politely asked them how their business worked and if it was profitable. I got an answer from one who said, "Yes, infact, I do just buy token froms the casino and sell them for ten times more in the marketplace. It only takes a few days to find a buyer."
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 2:42 pm
Once again, convenience and haste trump common sense and observation. I actually know a businessman in real life who sometimes challenges his customers to find a better price anywhere else in neighbourhood if the customers believe that the price for his services are unacceptable.
Very few customers will take the challenge and take their business elsewhere. Most customers believe in the confidence of his challenge and just pay for his services to save themselves some deal-hunting that may or may not turn out to be fruitless.
It's true that it's very easy to see whether the NPC stores' fixed prices are a better deal than what's being offered on the marketplace, but Gaia's inexperienced or impatient shoppers haven't historically demonstrated the keenest sense of observation.
As mentioned earlier, there are also generous buyers and buyers who are friends of the seller.
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:26 pm
I'm one of those who actually always checks the store price line. Often if I find an item is only a few gold less than the store, I'd rather buy it fom the store so the gold is removed from the economy.
I have on one occasion though bough an item on the marketplace so cheap that I sold it back to the store and made a profit!
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 8:03 pm
Doesn't that negate your philosophy of removing gold from the system?
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 8:50 pm
I didn't say I wasn't greedy.
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Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 8:25 am
People have a right to waste their pixel gold by buying set-price store items for more than they would cost at the NPC shops.
But I wouldn't call it convenient to buy items for a higher price in the Marketplace versus the shops. We're just dealing with mouse-clicks and page loads. It's not as if it involved actually driving or walking to a different store. Convenience is a valid point only if there's an actual difference between the two options - time, distance, gas burned, etc.
There's no difference between clicking 'Buy Now' at the Marketplace and 'Buy Now' at the shop.
But I guess it comes down to the power of the buyers. Because some Gaians spend the outrageous amounts on store items, people sell them at those ridiculous prices.
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