Welcome to Gaia! ::

A short quiz:

Q: What do you call it when, in the real world, prices are lower than usual for a short period of time?

A: A SALE.

As many people have noticed and a few have commented on, prices for many Gaia items are lower than they have been for awhile. As folks have written about elsewhere, this is typical for the Gaian economy: the prices tend to fall throughout the summer and into the Fall. (At least they have for each of the four years I've been here.)

While this distresses some investors, it's also a great opportunity for adding to your hoard while things are on sale.

This is one of the reasons that you don't ever want to tie up ALL your assets in items. You want to keep some of your Gaian wealth liquid - that is, in pure gold. While pure isn't going to earn anything for you through the magic of inflation, what that theoretical loss buys you is flexibility to act quickly in situations like this one. If you have gold sitting around, you can buy some the bargains going around without having to sell any of your assets in the depressed market. And that can add up to some significant profits down the road.

I recommended at the start of summer not to stop investing in items, but to let your gold accumulate a bit more than you usually might because of the summer/fall deflation we'd all talked about. It's here. And I've added quite a few items to my own investments at prices I honestly didn't think I'd see again. Buy low, sell high.

Note that no, not every price on every item has fallen. It never does. And even on the items that have, not every listing is a bargain. But they're out there for the hunting, and the hunting is pretty good right now.

Some further thoughts on bargain hunting now:

When the market makes a marked upswing, Gaians all start to take a much more avid interest in investing. They see prices making a rapid rise, buy a few items, ride the wave a little, sell, make some gold.

Some people anticipate the upswing a little better and hop on the train as soon as they see prices start to move. They buy a few more, ride the wave a little longer, make a bit more gold.

But if you really want to make a lot of gold in the MP, you need to anticipate the market *before* it moves, before the prices start to rise. You need to do some research, anticipate which items are going to be most popular, and buy them early and cheap. So when it moves, you're not scrambling to get on board - you're already there. You're already prepared.

Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.

This is not without risk. All the research in the world is no guarantee against being dead wrong. And this year could be different - even though prices have risen over the holidays every single year I've been here, there's not a 100% guarantee they'll do it again.

But making a lot of gold, as opposed to making *some*, involves taking risks. Since it may be a losing proposition, I always advise not tying up all your working capital in goods - that way you can always get going again without having to sell items at a loss.

One way you can lower your risk on any given item is to purchase it for less that it's been selling for. And funny, right now a lot of items are being offered at far less than they were.

Again, invest thoughtfully and strategically. Crap at bargain prices is STILL crap. But quality items at bargain prices are profits waiting to happen.