Is direct trading dead?

mastertigra

Young
Joined
Mar 13, 2022
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17
Hey entropians,

I am not a new player but still a newbie I guess. For now I have 600-ped budget and mine/sell my resources every week.
I tried to hunt at the beginning of my journey but hunting low lvl mobs with MU items(vixens, exarosaurs, snablesnots etc) was not profitable because I could not sell low amounts of resources with good MU.
After playing for about 6 months, I began to notice that almost all loot from starting mobs or resources mined by TT/101-105 have no or ridiculously low MU.
Despite that, I always tried to sell my stuff via direct trade, but it took almost a week to find a buyer with a good price (in most cases I went to AH instead of waiting for one more week).
A lot of resellers always tried to offer prices which are worse than Auction ones.
Auction trading is ok but not always - some goods cannot be sold almost never ( f.e blausariam).
I understand that entropia population has a lot of high-skilled players who don't care about low lol crafts or something like this and less amount of newcomers (correct me if I am wrong).
However, planet trading chats are full of valuable trading offers like weapon, chips, armor etc and there are no resources trading offers or something useful for beginners.

Please advise how to effectively sell my goods and why does Entropia economy feel dead?
 
I guess the convenience of the AH cant every be overcome by direct trades. Sure if u have the time and patience thats always a better option. For stuff that has 100.500 to 102% MU, that too in low volumes, resellers are your best bet. Reason being while you may not have a big enough ped bank to stack those items enough to sell on AH, they do. Ofc they will give you a lower price cause they need to get paid for their efforts as well. People perceive resellers as villains, but they are in some cases, needed. If you got 100 ped of blaus with 101 mu, u list on ah thats 50 pec gone. instead they give you a MU of 25 pec. thats still better than tting it. Im not saying always sell to resellers cause no one will buy stuff directly, but its a question of time vs money. Also depends on what resources u selling. somthing like blaus is so easy to find, i would rather go mine it then spam caly trade for hrs and wait for someone to reply. Plus AH is accessible globally.
 
because it is... most of oil have no MU, and for most of crafter it s easier to buy a 2kped stack at 100.5% than a 50ped stack at 103%...

you should try to find a trader who resell stuff but still do decent price and trade mostly with him.

Keep in mind on specific ressources sometime people buy low stack for a higher % so you can still be profitable even with the auction fee and low stack
 
Before my 3.5 year break, direct trading of low lvl resources was also good. Now trade is almost dead. There are only very few resellers left with whom I trade. But they are not always there. I ignore dealers who offer 100,1 or 100%. Then I prefer to throw the stuff into the tt. I already don't support stinginess in real life.
 
Trade channel is not an option for minerals. Its been like this for a while. Also put all resellers on ignore, they just waste your time.
 
Trade is dead. Long live trade.

There's too damn many planets for the small number of daily players so auction house or Trade Terminal are your options in most cases. Entire real world stock market has crashed due to covid and things that resulted from that, this may be temporary, but I doubt it... only thing that may help is if Mindark and Epic Games hypes the hell out of this game to increase population when new game engine comes alive... but sadly that will likely just be a temporary increase as it was last time they changed engines.
 
Once you learn what stack sizes sell best the auction is in most cases consistently more profitable than calytrade. Animal oils go for 101% or less on calytrade and the only buyers are resellers who just list it on auction anyway. On auction you can get 105-110% for smaller stack sizes and with the fee your net position is still over 103%. Play around a bit, take some losses, find out what works then continue to do it.
 
Once you learn what stack sizes sell best the auction is in most cases consistently more profitable than calytrade. Animal oils go for 101% or less on calytrade and the only buyers are resellers who just list it on auction anyway. On auction you can get 105-110% for smaller stack sizes and with the fee your net position is still over 103%. Play around a bit, take some losses, find out what works then continue to do it.
What Katie said

If 600 ped is your hunting budget and your saved inventory budget , you will struggle considerably on anything larger than puny.
 
A lot of resellers always tried to offer prices which are worse than Auction ones.
Perhaps this shouldn't be so surprising in light of what each price represents. At equilibrium, a street price encodes the intersection of supply and demand when sellers have an immediate, guaranteed opportunity to sell, while an auction offer price encodes the intersection of supply and demand when sellers have only a delayed, probabilistic opportunity to sell, and moreover, a guaranteed auction fee. A resource reseller (or trader, "reseller" is often defined more narrowly than trader, but there is no consensus around any particular meaning) is a liquidity provider who, from the seller's perspective, transforms the delayed and probabilistic type of sales opportunity into the immediate and guaranteed variety.

You as an individual seller will make tradeoffs based on your own time preference and risk tolerance, the former being especially variable between players. Sellers with lower time preferences are willing to sacrifice immediacy to obtain higher prices, and generally find little value in liquidity providers. Sellers with higher time preferences are willing to accept lower prices to obtain immediacy, and value liquidity providers immensely. Regardless of where you land on this spectrum within any circumstance, I recommend reflecting carefully on the fact that other Entropians are managing tradeoffs in similar circumstances very differently based on their own time preferences. Appreciating that your personal time preference is goal-relative rather than an invariant shared by all rational decision makers sheds light on why some Entropians find resale services valuable even if you rarely do. It has an eye toward applying critical thinking rather than dogma to your decisions as a seller, and may help you avoid some of the more..."questionable" advice in this thread, such as selling to the Trade Terminal before resellers, or putting large subsets of potential buyers on your ignore list.
 
There are a lot of reputable resource buyers (and a lot who aren't). Find them in twin peaks, #arktrade, etc. use them to your advantage or don't, idc.
 
Before my 3.5 year break, direct trading of low lvl resources was also good. Now trade is almost dead. There are only very few resellers left with whom I trade. But they are not always there. I ignore dealers who offer 100,1 or 100%. Then I prefer to throw the stuff into the tt. I already don't support stinginess in real life.

when i came back a few month ago, i went to twin to trade my ore as a reflex, the "trader" didn t accept any ore under 103% (which i can understand i removed them) then he proposed me 100.5% for everything. i had something like 300ped of belkar in it, had some other ore at 120%, i laughed at his face and left, had to sell everything to auction.

I wonder how many people are dumb enough to sell to this kind of shitty people...
 
As recently as November and December 2022, Muscl Oil and Eye Oil could be sold for 104% and 102% respectively in direct trading. Since January it has only been 100.6 - 100.1%. Direct trading is dead for me.
 
when i came back a few month ago, i went to twin to trade my ore as a reflex, the "trader" didn t accept any ore under 103% (which i can understand i removed them) then he proposed me 100.5% for everything. i had something like 300ped of belkar in it, had some other ore at 120%, i laughed at his face and left, had to sell everything to auction.

I wonder how many people are dumb enough to sell to this kind of shitty people...
Lots of people. It’s bullshit and predatory but many just want to dump their entire inventory into a trade window and get paid any figure above TT. People are scared of auction, even when there are orders active for their product, and they can make a guaranteed profit, they still want to give it away to some reseller because auction fee bad.
 
600 ped budget is like what 50-75 ped of each part ? so lets say 50 ped with a mu of 104% - so auc sell price is 52 ped auc fee 0.52 ped something. thats effective mu 1.029% , take abit of for certainty of sale so lets say 102% so trader would be an ok price between 101.5 and 102%. anything above i would say it super.
you said vixen, 10 ped vixen @ dunno 400% , thats 40 ped auc fee is like 2 ped something. so effective mu is 380% , again take abit of for certainty of sale but higher mu is higher margin loss so abouts 360% , that make ok direct sale to a trader 340-360%.

its a sad part if you have low budget since you want to play and not wait weeks / months untill mu picks up if at all. but even at a couple of k ped cycle its the same its just easier to auction stuff, but competition is high in auc and undercutting lowers the price again so less mu. ( yes some players hoarding shit for 10 years to sell for that once in a decade MU spike )

also remember reseller eather has contacts that buy bulk for lower prices or they sell bulk / know the qauntity's to sell to make profit. ( and prolly have knowhow and bankrole to wait if price is low ).

my2pecs , no trader , no clues eather :p
 
I hope people understand that this game is a real cash economy and the core of a economy is trading...

Resellers Provide instand liquidity
If you sell to them for 100.5 because you need the money its not theyr fault
If you choose to rather sell to tt its not theyr fault
If you choose to eat the auction fee and ending up selling low Stacks for 100.25 its not theyr fault

Stack stackables , wait Till price goes up and then sell

Same thing to item trades
Yes you can sell your adjusted resto for 4800 ped in the auction
Yes you can Post in trade Chat by ur self and ask 4600 for a fire sale
But when you need money fast feel lucky that there is a reseller who is willing to buy for 4300

Otherwise just tt it and be happy with the 50 ped before thinking about blaming others for your own faults

Just my two pecs
 
Example : i once bought 5000 halloween boxes for 2.20 each because i thought it will reach 3 ped

They sell for 80 pec now

Who do i blame now
And who will say thank you naika you Providet 11.000 ped liquid peds to the community even when you enjoy 7000 loss now.

My fault
Will hapen again thats how economy is by nature


*edit actualy it was near 7000 boxes but to bored to do the math on it
 
I hope people understand that this game is a real cash economy and the core of a economy is trading...

Resellers Provide instand liquidity
If you sell to them for 100.5 because you need the money its not theyr fault
If you choose to rather sell to tt its not theyr fault
If you choose to eat the auction fee and ending up selling low Stacks for 100.25 its not theyr fault

Stack stackables , wait Till price goes up and then sell

Same thing to item trades
Yes you can sell your adjusted resto for 4800 ped in the auction
Yes you can Post in trade Chat by ur self and ask 4600 for a fire sale
But when you need money fast feel lucky that there is a reseller who is willing to buy for 4300

Otherwise just tt it and be happy with the 50 ped before thinking about blaming others for your own faults

Just my two pecs
yes but buying 120% ore for 100.5% is a trash move, imagine if i was a newcomer and thought it's normal...

i don't blame trader and reseller they provide fast ped and they need to make some $. i blame people like that who do shit with price... having 3% marge is already enough for them.
 
yes but buying 120% ore for 100.5% is a trash move, imagine if i was a newcomer and thought it's normal...

i don't blame trader and reseller they provide fast ped and they need to make some $. i blame people like that who do shit with price... having 3% marge is already enough for them.
I know of whom you speak. Them jerks be making ped from newbies. But i do blame their mentors for not guiding them properly. Like I said in a post before, every problem we have in terms of knowledge gap can to an extent be traced back to MA not having a good mentoring programe and incentivising people to spend the time and energy on the newcomers.....oops i started ranting.....to get on point, yeah some resellers are jerks👹
 
I know of whom you speak. Them jerks be making ped from newbies. But i do blame their mentors for not guiding them properly. Like I said in a post before, every problem we have in terms of knowledge gap can to an extent be traced back to MA not having a good mentoring programe and incentivising people to spend the time and energy on the newcomers.....oops i started ranting.....to get on point, yeah some resellers are jerks👹

i agree mentoring isn t really good, we have more noob quest to introduce the game but it s still not suffisant i think
 
when i came back a few month ago, i went to twin to trade my ore as a reflex, the "trader" didn t accept any ore under 103% (which i can understand i removed them) then he proposed me 100.5% for everything. i had something like 300ped of belkar in it, had some other ore at 120%, i laughed at his face and left, had to sell everything to auction.

I wonder how many people are dumb enough to sell to this kind of shitty people...
I bet was MysterSnow who you traded with? XD
There is only 1 dude ingame i met has the best prices for ores&enm and even him i dont sell high end ores enm because MU goes up and down with it and with enough patience you will get most of MU from it
 
My suggestion is : try get little bit bigger budget.
So ,when you have some oil tt in 100p its worthy to add on Ah for 101%,you will make 50pec profit insteed 20ish pec from resellers.
This game requires patience even tho lots of us dont have.
Bigger stacks are better because you pay similar fee from 100p and 300 p oil at 101% .
You will pay mazbe a pec or two higher for 300p stack on Ah but if you go smaller stacks will drain you 50p avarage for every add on AH.

But someone sad make small stacks and sell for higher MU.its risky since those oils are common in every day hunting..I would suggest that on little bit rare loots.

For ores,just find the best reseller If you want a name,contact me and i will provide you..he isnt often online but he is fair compared to others.
Ores like pyrite .ignisum etc.. you determine by yourself when you going to sell..
Thats the case even for oils..
Usually during mayhems is higher demand because you get only shrap from mayhems...
Need plan,a bit of bankroll and patience..

Hopefully i helped
Cheers
 
You've pretty much described one of the biggest issues with general mining - it's not scalable. Aside from timing the waves to maximize rare resource claims, you're always going to have a large chunk of low markup stuff to get rid of. On the smallest scale you can get rid of some by selling micro quantities for a higher markup on auction. IE list 2.50 peds of a resource for 4 peds and after the auction fee you've made like 129% on something that's daily markup is 104%. Of course this isn't super scalable and is becoming less effective than it was years ago as many people do this.

Your other option is to make connections. It's all about business and connecting with people that regularly need the stuff you're selling and can get the exact quantities they want for a fair markup. It's a lot of work though. Even going the shop route has a large initial investment and requires a lot of work in advertising, tracking and stocking the shop.

why does Entropia economy feel dead?
Because it kind of is... one of the biggest issues as of late is a lack of liquidity for items it seems. Too often do you try to sell something and it just sits there for days, weeks or months because the player base is so small that more often than not no one is looking for the item you're selling when you're selling it. You continue to relist and all your markup is eaten up by MA in auction fees (which are ridiculously high, credit cards charge lower fees to merchants). And the dirty little secret here is MA is incentivized to keep liquidity low so you have to relist several times (why get paid a fee once when you can get paid the same fee 4 times?). Eventually, you reach a point where you just have to bite the bullet and list for massively under market value to titillate the resellers if you're not in a position of endless bankroll and time.

In game banks should have helped with this issue bridging the gap offering some money now while you try to sell directly, but they suck - interest rates would trigger usury laws in most countries and very VERY few items are actually loaned anything against their markup.
 
There are (virtually) no fair traders left. Become a trader yourself or get used to the auction. Alternatively, we will have the option to recycle unwanted loot into Nanocubes in an upcoming VU..
 
Lets hope this change with nanocubes brings more MU on stuffs and people get interested in playing the game and do more hunting/mining and crafting other things more then EP.
I think MA really should think balancing between greediness and getting more people in the game.More people,more money spend,more trades,cycling peds etc.Everyone would be happy.They will make money anyway but some things requires balancing.I have invested thousands how much i could from my pocket but the loot is terrible/Mu terrible so is trading with it.
Not everyone have money to put 10-20k $ especially in this time of inflation.
 
Bots are here. Last time they were they destroyed Hadeshiem. Maybe this time they'll destroy the auctioneer and trade terminal systems?
 
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