Colored Backpacks, Perceived Value & Pricing Silliness

[GrimwoodCT]

I was all a-twitter for the Wednesday patch.
Despite being a 300 tailor I had never even tried a regular hand made backpack but I was itching to make the dyed ones. Having levelled Permafrost I had converted my extracts, made dyes and bought the materials for the dyed bag.

My first batch of blue and dark blue bags made I launched into my "Fashion conscious? Worried your shoes will not match your bag? Squeaky Vuitton presents the Blue Hand Made Backpack" advertising.

I priced them at 300pp. They sold slowly.
Two people complained bitterly about the price.
Disparaged, I rethought the wisdom of making such a niche item.

Out of the blue I get a tell, "Was it you making those bags?"
Yes, it was me.
"Do you have any more?"
I have 6 blue tokens.
"6k fair for the 6?"
Umm, sure.

Now they are priced at 1200/bag and I can't keep them in stock.
I have preorders for green, red and yellow.

300pp=a rotten deal.
1200pp= fire sale.

"Verrrrrrrrrrry interesting!" in my Sgt. Schultz voice.

[Maevenniia]

lol, people are silly.

[Unapuma]

Same people who buys a 1k misty thicket picnics. Go fig.

[Strokker]

It is the millionaire mentality(yes my own thoguhts on this), where if you take a normal item and set a decent price on it for your labor it isn't going to sell to the people who can afford it at that price. However if you take the same item and make it a rediculous price for the effort then the elite who can and often do want such "Luxury" items will pay that price. I just cannot understand it, but it is that way IRL too.

[Unapuma]

Hmmm... maybe I should dig out my ancient IBM XT with DoS 3.3 disks, no hard drive, tiny 128k RAM and sell it for $10,000 I might actually get them =)

[jaegan]

it's true

I don't understand it either, but Strokker is right about it working in real life. My grandparents used to run an antique shop when I was younger. If things weren't moving much, grandma would raise the price on them. Almost invariable they'd sell soon after. Never did understand it, but it does work.

[Angelsyn]

I don't understand it either, but Strokker is right about it working in real life. My grandparents used to run an antique shop when I was younger. If things weren't moving much, grandma would raise the price on them. Almost invariable they'd sell soon after. Never did understand it, but it does work.

That is often a sign of "speculators" who don't know the market or the items. By running an antique shop, your grandparents set themselves up as "experts" in the field. People new to the field can only trust that the prices will reflect the rarity/value of the objects in question.

If you can convince a "collector" that a baseball card is worth $500 now, they'll buy it... expecting it to be worth $1000 soon.

[Melinia]

A couple of things that might be in play here...
First, some people who have the spare cash to pay 1k for a bag might only search in the 1K + range rather than Under 1k range.

Second: People are stupid. Period. You can put a functioning grill on the side of the road with a FREE sign on it and no one will take it. You put $100 sign on the same grill and someone will STEAL it! Go figure.

At a chain craft store they often have their fabric in there ad. Many people assume if it is in the ad then it is on sale at a reduced price. In actuality they are advertising it at the REGULAR price.
yesterday i was in said store to buy a few short cuts of fabric (knowing they were NOT on sale), there was a woman there buying quarter yard cuts of over 20 different fabrics! I imagine she was making a scrappy quilt but yeesh! Wait til they are on SALE to stock up!

[GrimwoodCT]

I've noticed the cyclical nature of the market on Cazic.

When the bags first came out I was the only person on the server that made them for about a week. Sales were brisk and, after a little experimenting, the prices ranged from 1500-2000pp depending on the rarity of the dyes. I was selling 10-20 bps/day.

One competitor popped on the market (a rather incompetent one) and flooded the market with green backpacks. After realizing that it took some time to farm and make the other colors she disappeared.

The floodgates opened a week later with 10+ sellers were selling in bulk on the server and the prices dropped (on average) to about 1000/bag. HQ skin droppers were over camped, no materials were for sale in the bazaar (at reasonable prices) so I sold my remaining bags and went back to my primary source of plats (while not stalking Vald): GM augs. I profited more in 2 (successful) GM augs than I did with 2 days of making bags but bags were fun, they were cute. You could market them as whimsy.

Now on Cazic most of the sellers have realized that you are not going to get rich on the bags. There are 2-3 sellers now, bag prices have risen, the wolf and bear populations are beginning to rebound, fewer knockoffs/imitations are appearing on the market.

Ahh, the interesting world of EQ-nomics.

[Abazagaroth]

When Ginzu knives were first put on sale at 9.99, no one bought them. They increased the price to 19.99 and they sold like mad.

If something is too cheap people wonder "what's wrong with it?" or "it must not be worth anything".