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I'm going to list out a few general things I have learned and observed through my dealings in the market place. I cannot vouch for 100% accuracy on any of these statements but they can start you in the right direction.

• I'm beginning to believe you should try to buy most of your items during the peak trading times. Since there are so many people online and more specifically more sellers, the prices tend to drop. You would think prices might be higher and sometimes this may be true. However from my personal experience it seems there are more sellers than buyers and so prices tend to drop as people compete to have the lowest price.
  
  
• So if you're buying most of your items during the day, you'll probably sale most of them during the day. Early on you'll want to sell your items as quickly as possible to keep your cash increasing constantly. A side note though is that you may want to save a few of your high profit items. Once the peak trading time frenzy fizzles out, the prices tend to return to normal. Since you bought low, you should be able to sell during nonpeak times since less items are available for sale. Since less are available then the price should be a bit higher. Sometimes this may only make a difference of a 100 or so but keep in mind 100 times 100 is 10,000 extra gold in your coffers.
  
  
• It is really important to specialize in at least 5 different items. You need to memorize the going rates for the day and check on them periodically while you're buying and selling. Personally while I'm trading I'm keeping mental tabs on at least 15 different items(blessed with a good memory). If you forget you can check quickly in a tab or tektek.org.
  
  
• In order to get the best deals you often must be faster than others lurking about looking for those same deals. I find I win maybe 1 in 5 races to put my password in and hit enter. You will miss out on alot but fear not because there are plenty of deals to be found. I suggest you copy and paste your password and learn control V as the shortcut for paste smile .
  
  
• I do not recommend using bids for your auctions. With buy it now you are in complete control of your price and will never get less than what you want for the item. Yes its true you may make more with the bidding but more often than not, people will not bid beyond the lowest buy it now price anyway. You're risking losing your profit for a marginal chance for more money.
  
  
• Try not to invest more than 40% of your total gold into a single item. The problem is if you happen to buy an item that does not sell quickly, you'll lock up your gold and miss out on other good opportunities. I've had this happen to myself numerous times. I put all my money into buying things that were marginal deals at best and missed out on great deals just because I didn't have enough gold free.
  
  
• Study the items that you choose to sell. Pay attention to the price variations that happen during the day and night. You'll know the items approximate range and can buy accordingly. For instance I buy certain items alot for 8200 and below during the day. I bought about 10 throughout peak trading times for 8k each. I sold every single one of them for 8800-8900 once peak times were over. I've been dealing with this item for the last week. I've learned that I can depend on the price to return to 8800+ as night approaches. I just dump them every night for a nice profit.
  
  
• If you do happen to stock pile on a single item, try not to list more than one at a time. I find when a person lists multiple items at the same price, this creates an artificial ceiling on the price of the item. What this means is you've effectively set the most money people are willing to pay for the item for a short time period. What happens is other sellers are trying to underbid you. Once you set a wall like that it's an easy target to undercut and effective too. People know that the price is unlikely to go above 4 of the same item listed at the same price. Trust me.. It annoys me to see people do this because it lowers the price at which I can sell an item. I try to avoid selling until this person's items are gone.
  
  
• I am long winded and only the most serious of you can really put this information to good use. I will continue to add tips as I think of them.
  
  

If any of you have any tips or suggestions please share them with myself and everyone else here. I appreciate anyone's feedback.


Information added July 1st 2007.

• Another side note on a mistake I have made several times and continue to make even now. Try not to buy too many of any single item. I'm not quite sure what a reasonable standard would be but maybe the 40% rule again as far as your total networth/ gold amount. I currently have 15 of the same item that I bought for 8100 and below. Unfortunately the market prices have not reached the point of which I like to sell them. While I may still make a profit of 300-600 profit per sale. I'd much rather make my usual 600-900 per sale. I'm holding onto my inventory which is risky.
  
  
• The risk of holding onto your inventory is a sudden drop of price. An item or two will not hurt you. If however, you have hoarded 15 as I have, a drop of 500 or so could seriously hurt you. This hypothetical drop in price would cost me 7500-15000 in profit. That could be an entire days work. While not devastating to me at this point, it could hurt those of you in the early stages. Be careful. Buy enough to make money but do not overbuy. You'll find the equilibrium yourselves I'm sure. I'm still working on it myself smile
  
  

Information added July 9th 2007.

• This is more of a rare occurence and I have managed to cash in on several different of these events since many of them have taken place in the last month. Whenever an announcement takes place and a special event that gives away items happens, pray that you are online when this happens. I happen to be online (when I am not right?) when the mimzy aura's were released. I did the quest 3 times and got three of them. I sold each one for 1000. I also bought some for 300-400 and sold them for close to 1000. Nice little profit right? It was made even sweeter since I had 2 extra mimzy's in my inventory. I sold both of them for 2k each. So in about a 10 minute span I was able to make close to 10k. Of course I was really lucky to be on at that time.
  
  Moral of the story: Buy and sell special event items as quickly as possible. Also get the maxium 3 allowed.
  
  
• Apparently I need to stress a key point more to some of you. You must be able to resist buying those items you want as you make enough money for each one. To buy and sell effectively, you'll want at least 30k depending on what items you have. At the moment, I have 300k worth of items in my inventory that I intend to sale as soon as the price gets to a range I want to sell. However I also have another 200-300k sitting in my bank so I always have enough money to buy items as good deals become available. I waited till I hit 200k before I kept any items. Keep this in mind and you will make more money faster.
  

Information added July 11th

• I have not been around long enough (about a month now in the market place) to know if this is a common phenomona. The sealed letters started at about 12k-13k if I remember correctly at the beginning of the month. What I'm going to do next month is probably buy 20+ sealed letters and keep them until the 14th-15th. I wish I had thought about this idea this month because the average price of letters have already increased to 14k. There is no telling how much higher it will go and I do not intend to risk losing money if the price decides to drop on me. Tektek.org shows last months letters increasing to 16k but .. hrm.. maybe i'll sell the rest of my junk and risk it anyway... meh.. we'll see smile
  
• Also the new collectible items are going to be hot. The market will be fast and furious with the items moving between all the buyers and sellers. I made a good chunk of my beginning money dealing almost exclusively with last months collectibles. It cools down about a week after being released but you can easily make 500-1500 gold per sale during the first day. Of course you need to have a healthy bankroll of 15000+ but if you can reach that point. You can just buy and sell one at a time quickly. 10 sales equals 5000-15000 gold. Imagine how quickly that adds up?
  
• There are two approaches to how you want to sale your items. When I was much more active I listed all my auctions for 5 minutes only. Why do I do that you ask? It is because it gets double exposure. Some people just watch items that are newly listed and buy them quickly (my method since I can remember 50+ items general price range). Others like to watch auctions that are ending soon because they are looking for good deals using the bid style auction. When I list my item for 5 minutes, both sets of people will see it. This produces very quick sales and moves your money fast. I built my first 100k in a week using this style. As of right now I list items for 8-12 hours since I'm not quite as active. Another thing I notice is that I get extra sales this way too because everyone wants to list a full 14 days. Sometimes people list their items by ending time and my item is likely to be at the top of the list. You must exploit others ignorance/mistakes in order to make money.
  

Demonwolf is correct here. You don't need to go check the price at the store. It tells you in the item information the "store price." Just divide that number in half and you'll know how much you can sell it back for to the NPC. I did this when I was first starting out as well. Generally you get the most if you are able to win the auction bid style. However there is usually a 50% chance or more the person will cancel the auction if the bidding does not go beyond half the store price. Once I reached a certain amount of money (probably 30k) I stopped bothering because it was no longer worth the time. You can make pretty good gold early. Hrm come to think of it.. I could probably try to watch for some of these items myself smile I'll let ya know how it goes razz

Updates added 07-16-07

• Well I experimented a bit with the envelope idea and it didn't work out this month. Either everyone has wised up or someone had a clue and let the word out this month's collectibles were not going to be all that great. I gained maybe 100-200 per sealed envelope which is a terrible margin considering I paid 13k each. Oh well.. I was able to take advantage of the new items though. I probably gained 30-40k in gold in an hour. I sold nothing but the mecha forms. I wish I had waited a bit more to sell the rest of my stock since the price increased substantially from when I was buying/selling around 9pm. Oh well lesson learned for next time. When the prices bottom out, keep buying them at that price. Hold probably half of them (just incase the price doesn't go back up) and sell the rest in the active market. Keep in mind the collectibles were just released today.
  
  Oh yeah a trend I noticed while looking at tek tek is that the items generally are not worth more than the sealed envelopes (only looked at last 3 months). I suggest you sell the sealed envelopes for a profit and just buy/sell the items as people open them for you. I guarantee you'll be able to buy alot of them for 1000's under the price the market sets. IF you can happen to be on when they are first revealed which seems to be 12pm CST.
  
  
• I chose the mecha form because it was the most active of the three. It had 12 pages pretty quick while the other 2 sat at 8 and 9. Plus the mecha was selling for 500 more on average and sold very quickly. Within the first few minutes I was making few thousand a sale but that profit tampered off quickly as people continued to drop the price. Try to choose the active collectibles and watch it closely. You can still monitor all 3 but I'd focus on just one. People are buying and selling like CRAZY for the first week.
  
  
• Another anomoly I noticed in the first day of collectibles being released as the night continued, the price of the thank you letters were not keeping up with the mechas. What I mean is that I was buying the july 2007 letters for 10-10.5k each. The mechas are selling for 10.7k and above. Normally the letters price tend to be matched with the highest price collectible in the group. For whatever reason (it could have been due to the slow servers) the letters did not keep pace with the price of the items. More profit for us right?
  
  
• Also I noticed a price drop in alot of the items the day the collectibles are released. I suggest you sell most of items you plan to sell before collectibles arrive on the 15th. I'm going to have to either take some significant losses on some items or just hold them for awhile until the price returns to normal. Another option is to buy the items while they are dirt cheap and hold them until the prices return. You could easily make 1k + per sale. However, since I have not been around long enough to know if most items return to normal, I'd caution against it for now. Unless you know the item really well.
  
  Holding isn't a problem if you have enough of a cash cushion. More money in the bank means you can make more money. At my peak today I had 20 mecha forms just sitting in my inventory. I kept buying them for 10k and below. I probably sold 70-80 of them today. Easy money if you can figure out how to do it smile .
  

Updated July 19, 2007

• It seems I have a made a serious miscalculation in my approach at the collectibles this month. Even though I could see from tektek.org that the collectibles price drops somewhat quickly after the first few days, I didn't think it would fall as quick as it did. So now I have 40 of the various new collectibles that will cost me 1500-2000 loss PER sale. I have no intention of losing 60-80k for my mistake. I continued to hold out hoping the price would go back up. Sadly this did not turn out to be the case.
  
  
• Fortunately I know the price may return to close to what I paid for them. I just have to wait a few weeks for the prices to elevate to a certain level. While I have 400k locked up in these items, I'll gladly wait a few weeks to not suffer significant losses. Luckily for me, I tend to hoard certain items and pick them up when they're cheap. I'll hold onto them for awhile until the price reaches what I want OR I have nothing left to sale. I thought I was in trouble when my gold was down to 30k but I was able to bring it back up to 300k in a day. I had alot more items than I thought smile . Collectibles do funny things to the market. freki-geri gave me some nice advice about which are likely to be valuable later. We'll see if he turns out to be right smile .
  
  
• Yeah.. if there is an item you deal with alot try to remember how it changed when new collectibles were released. I happen to pick up some aquaticas for 10k-10.3k right after collectibles were released. Everyone is trying to dump their items to pick up the new ones. I waited 2-3 days and the price returned to about 12k. Was able to make about 1700 a sale on the aquaticas. Nice eh? A 15% return on my investment is pretty good considering I average about 5%. The important thing here is that you MUST learn the market and more specifically specific items. Like I said memorizing 5 or more items will take you a long way. You can check periodically and buy them when you know it's cheap and sell them later. You'll even get to notice a pattern in price fluctuations according to the time of day. I'm familiar with about 50 items but know 20 of them very well. Yes this takes time and effort (and having no life on top) but if you aren't doing anything better, why not? I'm working towards that ninja band smile I have enough now but if I buy it, I won't have enough to make more money. I'll wait till a million and then buy it. Patience is the key!
  
  
• Oh yeah I almost forgot the major point of this post. If you're going to deal with newly released collectibles and you are buying the item in bulk (10 or more of the same), it's best to sell most of them by the end of the day. Do not go to sleep for you may wake up as I did realizing you've lost 500 gold for each one you own. Do not compound the mistake by buying 20 more at the 500 lower price hoping the price will go back up either smile . Well buying could be ok.. but you need to be selling it quickly. I wish I had just sold the first 15 for 500 losses sad . It's ok... I won't make the same mistake next month.