Is there a formula?
How about we start with a basic Opalo ?
I promise I am not trying to destroy prices - just really keen to see if there is any true basis for the price of any item in this game.
No, there never was a formula and never will be.
Why do my eyeglasses cost $400 bucks and my 40 inch tv I use as a monitor that shows hd porn and gets it's picture from outer freakin' space is $350?
My glasses are about an ounce of non-precious metal with 2 lenses that some idiot ground down in 12 minutes in a back room.
How can this be?
For the same reason ANYTHING sells for what it sells for: People willing to pay it.
Why do computers always stay around 1k at best buy? They give you some half-ass reasons if you ask them, sure, but we all know it's complete horseshit.
You think the track homes built during the housing boom (in US roughly 2002-2008) were actually fair prices that took into the cost to construct, and the 1/4 acre of treeless backfill they call a yard? Heck no...but people still bought them.
All it is is someone offering something and someone buying. Because they want it. There's your formula. $=want
Sure we will pay more for a MacLaren or a Mod Merc, but ask either to justify the price with raw data? Good luck.
I can't help but think you are looking this with a bias that says "holy cow, we can't prove these are worth this much, so they MUST be over valued" If that is true, stop...it doesn't work like that.
So nobody needs to look for reasons why shit ain't worth what people pay. It IS worth what people pay, and that is all that matters.
If it isn't worth 100k ped to you, but it is to someone else, then it's still worth 100k ped.
Edit: Also, the one item people love to figure out a formula for: UL mining amps, is also complete BS. It's just people making it look like a deal by constructing some stupid formula based on using it x amount of time every day for a few years.
It is still arbitrary, doesn't take into account unknown variables that may exist, and though it may have tricked a few into paying higher prices, the fact is that most of the people who bought them bought them because it was worth it to
them...not because what it was worth it over x hours per day over x amount of years given x amount of L mu avoided. The "formula" is still meaning
less with the one item that the formula
looks the most meaningful.
No formula means shit if people are not willing to buy it. New L7 UL amp contest winner learned that already.
EVERY gun is this game is worth the price it sold for at the time. Period.
People will pay more for the best...whether its imk2 or MM or MacLaren or Ferrari or whatever it is...if its better than the rest, people will pay, and what they pay is what it's worth.
All this is probably summed up best here:
Its all about what everyone believe this gun can do or can't do.
Exactly right...same with UL amps etc. The "proper" value of anything is different among every person who tries to value it, because they all look at it subjectively, so the only true price is obtained by finding a buyer willing to pay x amount and selling it. Anything else is an exercise in frustration because no 2 people will look at it the same way.