Duping and the possible effects?

[Jercules]

Something I have been noticing lately has gotten me a little concerned regarding my future as a tradeskiller that sells his wares slightly above cost.

I see people in the bazaar selling tradeskilled items in the 400s or 200s quantities way below cost. While I am willing to believe this is a person desperate to unload his cargo, I have to wonder if this is a duper undercutting the honest tradefolk and basically screwing over everyone who worked for their items.

I am not very well-versed on the whole duping thing, and am willing to admit I may be way off on this but all research I have done has left me with no other estimation for the gross numbers I see in the bazaar.

Jercules

[Cantatus]

This topic isn't limited to just Pottery, so I'm moving it to General.

[ancarett]

I've talked to two bazaar types undercutting me by a landslide. Both of them were selling off stuff made while skilling up for the fershlugginer Aid Grimel quest and one was quite candid that he just wanted to get this stuff off of his mule as fast as possible while making a little money.

I suppose there could be duping of tradeskill products out there, but I'd think that people would more likely dupe a few of the higher price tag components for a really high profit up front than the hundreds of Halas 10 lb. Meat Pies, Misty Thicket Picnics, etc. that I see on some bazaar traders at 4 plat each.

[ickabod bonecrusher]

Massive amounts of items on a trader is not a "pointer" to a DUPER.

I do not Dupe and to be quite honest have no idea nor want to know how they do it. many times when i need some quick cash ill go out and farm a specific item (tea leaves mammoth and wolf meat ect.) and gear up for a production run. sometimes i will make upwards of 2000 misty picnics or qeynos tea and dump it onto my trader ill spend around 1500 plat to get the componants not farmable, and set the price for a fast sale... if the tea is selling for 15 to 20 plat each (which in my opnion is way over priced) unit ill price it at 10 to 12.

most of the time the people that buy the mass quantities are other traders who in turn mark it up and put it in thier stock. i will see so and so purchased 20 qeynos afternoon teas (repeat 10 or 20 times)

i check so and so's trader and there is the tea he just bought from me listed for a price of double what i sold it for. it is an example of supply and demand. if they get sutck with 1500 units of tea that they over price. well there is not much i can say about that except good luck getting rid of the stuff. i have alot better things to do than try to sit around and wait for over priced stuff to sell, if they want to play that way good for them, and shame on the people that pay the inflated prices.

so if you see someone with 1500 units of something do not accuse them of dupping the items... as i think about it, it is more likely than not, you are one of the people that are over pricing your wares and trying to **** the general population so lower your prices to a resonable price and quit adding to the inflation of the server.

[Anubsin]

i have to say in tailoring and JC (my 2 highest tradeskills GM JC and 150 Tailoring) many many ppl will sell stuff under cost by 1k or more just to get more then the vendor sells for for instance acylia studded masks cost roughly 1k to make and sell for 10p each in the bazaar but his is 9p more than the vedors pay you for it and considering that this is a main route for tailoring there is alot of competition.
if they were dupers why even bother with finsihed products when often time the smallest component sells the fastest and in the highest quntinty, like spiderling silks (10p) selling at half price (5p) just to move 1600 (8k for them) then they can do the same with metallic liquids(3k) or blue diamonds (400p) (200k per 1600 at half) remeber they only need to buy one to get an unlimted supply so you wont see them selling the same thing more then once after they sell 1600 metallics or blue diamonds there done there is nothing they cannot afford, also with the blue d's they sell well to the vendor so they can be nearly instant billionairs (dunno how duping works on eq but know of duping from past games) without anyone being the wiser.

[Akishka]

Wow Ickabod, why make everything so personal? I don't think it was the massive amounts that was concerning this guy, its the massive amounts well below costs. So, while I understand that 200 items x 5 pp profit each adds up a lot (made a ton doing leather padding this way), 200 items x 15 pp loss just doesn't make a lot of sense. Its a reasonable question.

For the record, I would have to agree thats it probably somebody just desperate to unload the stuff they are skilling up on. They get that next fix of pp and its on to the next level, even if they are doing it at a loss. To figure it out, watch the trader. Do they have a supply (with possible reserves in the bank if they have a full trader) that runs out and then they move on to the next item? Or does this same trader always have insane amounts of items up, at a loss? Keep in mind too that when you are figuring losses, if its a farmable item, they may not actually be paying as much for the item as you are and thus can sell for a lower amount than you thats still making a profit.

[Silound]

I'd be more concerned with the guy(s) who has 1500 of uncommon/rare foraged item X (namedly Tuft of Dire Wolf Fur for me) and I buy about 500 every other day from him, how does he manage to restock 500 tufts in 2 days? I smell a forage bot (or a couple) there, because there's no way he sits there and mashes forage all day and night to grab at most 20 per hour and still gets 500+ to restock his trader.

[Amaruk]

prices

Lots way below price to make just means they are trying to clear their inv. Bertox has a perfect example in the form of Solstice Robes. Assuming you do all the farming they cost around 450-500pp to make with no fails. People in the bazaar sell them for 45-50pp with 20 or more listed. I found 30+ sold to a vendor for 15pp each not long ago. Someone was dumping them and decided the bazaar was too slow for them. Then there are the people buying the sacred silks from me for 90 or so pp each. Had someone buy 371 of them at that price and not blink an eye.

So don't worry about duping on most items. Its when large numbers of rare items showup at once that you should look at it.

I'm just annoyed with the guy selling Haversacks for 5500pp each when average was 7-8kpp. He has around 20 tokens a week and restocks it whenever he gets low. Nobody else can really sell haversacks as a result.

[Draggar]

I'd be more concerned with the guy(s) who has 1500 of uncommon/rare foraged item X (namedly Tuft of Dire Wolf Fur for me) and I buy about 500 every other day from him, how does he manage to restock 500 tufts in 2 days? I smell a forage bot (or a couple) there, because there's no way he sits there and mashes forage all day and night to grab at most 20 per hour and still gets 500+ to restock his trader.

I don't think it's one person, maybe he has a guild of foragers backing him up. I can park by druid in The Great Divide for hours, spamming the forage key and get very few (his foraging is at 105).

But, duping is only good for the duper, he gets the cash. It kills the economy for everyone else.

[scarbrowed]

I'd be more concerned with the guy(s) who has 1500 of uncommon/rare foraged item X (namedly Tuft of Dire Wolf Fur for me) and I buy about 500 every other day from him, how does he manage to restock 500 tufts in 2 days?

I used to buy from someone like this. He said he would bride his children with candy to sit and forage for him for hours. Not exactly a forage bot. He would get huge amounts of tufts and tea leaves. But I couldn't even talk him into getting me some yew leaves. Oh well.

[jeger]

He said he would bride his children with candy to sit and forage for him for hours. Not exactly a forage bot

Great parenting (not talking about you doing it, I understood this was someone else... just the idea)...

Our kids hang out with us on raids sometimes (they're 8,7 and 5 years old respectively)... and the 5 year old is a great cleric... she sits in for me (supervised of course) in cheal rotations moderately often. However, they're always supervised, it's for short periods of time and we interact as a family.

*sigh*

Annie (jeger)

[Dumpty]

I wouldnt worry about, i mean think about it, If you could dupe stuff would you wanna take the effort to dupre some spider silks hat you can sell for a few plats each, or soemthing like a BoC that can sell at 400k a pop?

[Silound]

He said he would bride his children with candy to sit and forage for him for hours. Not exactly a forage bot. He would get huge amounts of tufts and tea leaves.

How many accounts though? In an hour with a 200 forage ranger I've gotten at best 8 tufts in Kael arena (bset spot I've found). A couple hours is between 16 and 40 tufts then, so how many accounts does he run to stock up in two days?

Yes he could be a guild forage bot, but he recently started making a lot of them into bags, which of course are priced at nothing. Wonderful economy we Prexians have.

[Elton]

skilling up

It really depends on the item. I have GMed 6 of the 7 skills (working on tailoring). I have spent hundreds of thousands of pp raising them. My net loss is about 275k pp currently. My loss is due to failed combines and items that sell back at a cost lower than I paid to make the item.

I would buy stacks and stacks of spiderling silks and small pieces of velium among other things as opposed to farming them myself. If my end result would sell better in the bazaar than it would to the vendor I would usually give them to my trader. I would check the bazaar and see the going rate and price mine considerably less just to unload them. I knew I was taking a loss, but it was less of a loss than I would have taken if I had sold them to the vendor. Having the item sit on my trader for months while it slowly sells does me no good. Honestly, the loss I take by selling my items cheap is most likely less than the loss I take on most skill up recipes. For example, I used bows to go from 230 to 240 fletching. I bought all the items from one vendor and sold him the bow when I bought more ingredients. My cost to go from 230 to 240 skill was 39k pp. I was successful over 90% of the time so the largest chunk of my losses was not due to failure. The biggest loss was due to the difference in buy back versus cost to make. I think I lost over 150 pp per bow. I probably got a skill up every 25 attempts. 10 points x 25 combines/point x 150pp per bow = 37,500 pp.

I plan on doing solstice robes when i get to 187 tailoring. I checked the bazaar the other day and there were tons and tons of robes for sale. I doubt I'll compete with that. The robes will either go to the vendor or go for tribute after I am done.

If the bazaar price and the vendor price aren't that far apart I take the loss and sell them to the vendor. I did this last night with LoY ribbons I had made. The end result of my skill up run was about 50 ribbons. They sold in the bazaar for 40 pp and the vendor paid 23 pp. I ate it and sold them to the vendor. I can't use them to make robes (I'm a wood elf) and they were just taking up space.

I rambled a bit but I think I answered your question. I am one of the people that throws items I used to skill up on my trader at a low price just to unload it. I'm not desperate for the plat. I would just prefer to take the loss and get some of my money back now instead of waiting months to make an extra thousand plat. I'm not a duper and my supply is limited. Once I sell out that's most likely all I will have. I don't put anything on my trader til I am past the recipes that use it on my path to GMing the skill.

[Silound]

Merchant value of 15p 4g 2s 0c for Ceremonial Solstice Robe (may vary slightly based on your cha and faction).

Tribute Value of CSR is 37 points.

Most servers see CSR sell in baz between 300-1k, with few servers being extremes to either end.

You may be better off finding alternative solutions to your tailoring woes Elton.


Edited for stupidity.