If I see another person lowballing.....

[Zerious]

lol yep. Although I'm guilty of lowballing, but not to a ridiculous extent...

Put it this way, I low ball to bring my haggle down.

[Snub]

Remember, a good knowledgable player who knows prices will never let a lowballer get his deal. They eventually meet near the lower end, if the seller is desperate, since the merchant doesn't need the item and thus doesn't pay as high as the seller insists.

You are absolutely correct.

I need the Glyph Helm of Obedience…. I had bought one for 1.9mil and at the end of the day (last Saturday) noticed they jumped back up to 2.6 mil.
SOOO, I RE-sold the Helm even though I need (want) it. I know in the end this Helm will be under 1mil to purchase. For now I will buy low and use and resell when the price goes up. Eventually I will be satisfied with the cost “under 1 mil” and keep forever.
For the time being I am happy to make a lot off the guy who “needs” it more than my “wants”.

[Snub]

I don’t believe merchants have any positive impact on the PL market.

Rarely do I see a merchants selling lower than the AH, I would prefer to purchase from the AH that’s says “item A = $199,998”.

Before this thread I believed the only reason a person would sell via spamming instead of the AH is:
A)They don’t have the cash to put the item for sale.
B)They are trying to rip you off by over pricing the item.

Or how about this Legal Scam!

Find an item in the AH which has only two for sale… (We will say it cost 3k each for this example)
Purchase them both (6k). Re-sell one in the AH at say 10times the value(30k). Now log onto an alternate Character and spam out selling the item for six time value(18k). It appears to joe noobie you are selling 12k under the market value (18k) but really you are selling @ 6 times over. and going to make 15k per merchant sale.

-Just saying
If you don't know the value of an item -->ONLY buy from the AH, and only buy when there is more than two for sale from different people.

***edit***
I just wanted to add i have never done the aforementioned “legal scam”, i just wanted to post why i don't trust merchants. I feel the above "legal scam" is unethical, it is like monopolizing. Frankly if you do this you are lacking moral values…. It is theft.

[Navygreen]

perhaps some secrets should stay that way. However, the topic caught my eye. So as a benefit to the forumers here who read this thread, welcome to the inside of our minds!

[razerfingers]

Lol calm your jets bro it happens in the real world my grandpa sells stuff for $5 more than he wants prices something at $15 lets say someone looks at gets all ehhhvthen he goes ill go $10 and bingo sold or im looking at this thread wrong lol

[WhoIsThis]

I disagree strongly with this statement. To illustrate stevieoopsie's statement with a PL example, I used to be a Frozen Nightmares merchant, listing a wide variety of Frozen Nightmares items for purchase and buying up the cheap ones I found listed. Now, there is no one actively merchanting all the Frozen Nightmares items. Is this good or bad for PL players?

• Prices of most Frozen Nightmares items are indeed much, much lower than when I was active in this market.
• Sellers/farmers now have a very hard time selling certain Frozen Nightmares items—the items take an order of magnitude longer to sell and sell for much less than when there were active merchants buying the items in CS. I know because I kept a small supply when I left that market, and I'll put up an item for sale now and then to see what the market is like.
  
• Buyers now have a better chance of finding some ridiculously cheap Frozen Nightmares items in CS than when I was buying them up. But some of the Frozen Nightmares items are simply not available in CS with no merchants to provide a steady supply and variety of listings.

(Admittedly, this is a bit of an overstatement since stevieoopsie as well as some other players do have multiple Frozen Nightmares items listed for sale. But they don't buy the items I put up for sale, and they're not trying to provide coverage of all the FN item types. So I think they're selling drops rather than buying and selling FN items in CS for a profit.)

Strictly from the standpoint of buyers, this is highly desirable. Price is the only thing that truly matters if you are a buyer. I hate to say it, but it is a zero sum game. One gold cheaper for a buyer is one gold less for the seller.

Should the Frozen items supply become less than that of demand, the shortage will drive up prices and encourage more farming of the dungeon. Merchants cannot improve supply. They can only buy items and hold them for resale later. This does not improve supply; in fact they must temporarily create artificial scarcity in order to profit, which is a net negative for all non-merchants, who are now forced to pay not only what the farmer, the person who actually did something of value to the community, but also the merchant's margins. Supply can only be improved via farming.

The less merchants make, the more better deal buyers get. It's why merchanting is considered a high risk, but potentially high reward business.

[Singleteddy]

Merchants cannot improve supply. They can only buy items and hold them for resale later. This does not improve supply

I'll disagree because when there are no merchants actively buying items in a particular market segment, players can accumulate drops much faster than they can sell the drops, causing players to have to liquidate. With a merchant buying and stocking items for resale, players can manage to sell goods that would otherwise have to be liquidated, which reduces supply.