I should probably add it to the official Merchant Square rules for the people who don't read this thread.

Edit;; Merchant Square rules have been adjusted. They're awesome. You should check 'em out.

Hm, what if you're taking offers on things? Because that's different than auctioning and selling.

I'm not completely sure. Taking offers is... kinda weird, if you ask me. It's like an auction with an unknown reserve price (possibly even unknown to the seller), no starting bid, and ends as soon as someone places a bid that exceeds the reserve.

I'd basically say that someone offering considerably above market value in a "taking offers" thread is... well, foolish, really... but there's no reason it wouldn't be ALLOWED.

Yeah, taking offers is all about unknowns really. I mean sometimes the seller is taking offers because they don't even know if they want to sell it for sure.

I've never do the taking offers because I don't know how much they are asking in contrast on how much I want to pay. When there's something that i like and they say taking offer I usually offer it 10% lower and some people do actually take it

I take offers, but it's only because I have no idea what to price it.
Then when I get an offer, I sell it to that person for lower.
But that's just because I'm silly like that. x n x

Their are price guides Night mare so you can give it a price guide baseline, such as if an item costs 2.5k in the price guide you can price it 3k if you want because it's in a short range or you can price it 2k. I usually put it in a range between 500 au below to 500 aurum above the guided price. If it's lower than the actual guide more power and people to you. If you got a buyer that's willing to pay 3k for a 2.5 item, hey a 500 au profit to you, that's always sweet.

As long as its not ridiculious like 6k for a 2.5k item BI I hate that. I've seen those and I'm like "really?! Good luck with that."

Even though I have 83k aurums doesn't mean I want to get more richer I like to be treated like everyone else. Even rich trisphites what to save as well so when a shopping spree comes along we can splurge on it. Which for me I rarely shop unless its something that I really need not because of trends. XD

Well, most of the time I just do it to see what someone is willing to offer.
I always go lower, though, just because I never want someone to pay too much.
I find it to be rude when I make someone pay a stupid amount for an item.

Nobody ever said that taking offers wasn't allowed. Lucid mentioned it IS allowed. You just have to say you're taking offers. All I said was that, in my personal, unofficial, opinion, taking offers is a weird thing that I, personally, have trouble wrapping my head around.

Taking offers is just a lazy auction XD That isn't an insult :P

I like the way you put that, Hermes.

I have no idea what is going on but I will answer the first question - yes inflation is necessary. As someone who usually donates an avi sites, if there is no inflation I'm not gonna feel inclined to donate and/or sell to people. It sounds greedy, but why should I sell an item for 4k today when it was 4k a year ago? o.O

From what I gather, the problem isn't gradual inflation based on rarity and age, but immediate inflation of items as soon as they're released.

Since, despite there being theoretically limitless resources, said resources (donation items) are only available for a finite time and cost actual money (for the most part) meaning that, after the month (or year) is up, there will be a finite quantity of them in existence on the site.

So, if some sort of plutocracy is formed by the extremely wealthy on here, buying donation items for extremely high prices because a.) they want to make sure they get the items and b.) because they have so much money that it's still mere pennies to them, it makes the acquiring of donation items by less well-off posters (who can't afford to donate real money to the site) extremely difficult, if not impossible, as even if said plutocracy does decide to sell the items, as you said, why would they sell for less than they payed? And since they've effectively created a monopoly, the price of the item in question is driven enormously high.

Not that that actually seems to be happening here (at least not to a really concerning degree, from what I've seen) but it theoretically can happen, and would make the site seem unfriendly to casual posters who can't amass those kinds of funds.

I don't really have much of a personal stake in it, as I don't mind donating and the site's prices are more than reasonable. But, on the other hand, I can't quite wrap my head around the idea of selling something I payed real money for, for fake money, no matter how much was being offered, unless I felt like I'd wasted my money on the donation item in the first place, which hasn't been the case yet.

Very nice analysis, Suzerain. ++.

On somewhat of a different note, I'm surprised prices on some things aren't higher considering how much aurum we can earn per post. But then, if there are usually less than 40 people online at a time I can kinda see that as a reason. o.o

This is exactly the reason why I am quitting Trisphee. Monopolies drive me INSANE. I hate Walmart for that reason, which is why I no longer buy anything there.

I can see that. I've been getting annoyed a little lately, finding I spend much of mu time here posting for the sake of getting aurum for things. I've just decided I'm going to ignore the market for a while once I wrap up some of the outstanding items I'd like to buy.

What concerns me about prices going up is that most price guides I see are based off of selling prices in the market, and if selling prices go up arbitrarily, it will eventually raise the prices in the price guides too, and since those are used as an estimate, it will drive prices up further because the base-line will keep getting higher. It will become a circular thing.

Well, then all it takes is some enterprising soul to start selling low and getting all the business from people who are fed up with price-gouging, then the whole trend will reverse itself. ;)

THANK YOU. That's a almost perfect analysis, one real factor that is that not a lot of people are donating to the site to begin with , which is understandable not everybody has real life money to spend like you said...

(Everything posted below here is to everyone, not you xD. You get a cookie for being smart! *Hands over*)

For the last 3 months Fenris has been telling us that Trisphee have been just making enough money to get the site going.
So of course Runes are going to cost a lot, a lot of you are complaining that people with a bunch of aurum are jacking up the prices but really if you paid any close attention, the price of runes have been going up gradually sense the beginning of 2011.

(And if you want proof on that, just ask. I'm glad to take my time to make a small badly made chart on price increase on runes for 2011.)

I'm annoyed that people are complaining about prices that have been going up by real inflation, its not freaking artificial like everybody thinks it is. And even more annoyed (pretty much pissed) that they have to blame other people for not selling runes they bought with their own real money to give them something they want. Sure they might hoard them for themselves or sell hoards of them to other people. ITS THEIR MONEY, DEAL WITH IT!

Just think of it this way, the site is slowly dieing because lack of money. People are deciding to quit because they can't get a monthly item in a few short days. Maybe some of those people donate, so now the site is losing more money. And then prices increase even more, then more people leave. By the end of it all the site is gone because it couldn't have ends meet.

Woah that took a load off of my chest.. *Whips face*

I'm not sure how runes factor into this. I thought it was more talking about Aurum prices. RDI's I can understand being more expensive given that they are rune prices and it's always an estimate of sorts when it comes to aurum equivalents, but when the ADI's start costing a bundle that's then it gets confusing to me. The aurum donations items haven't gone up in price have they? The there's no real money involved since aurums largely come from posting. No one needs to buy runes to get aurumn items so I don't see how it's necessary that rune prices need to affect those items other than rune items.

Aurum comes from posting, it's not related to real money, so I don't why there should be inflation at all. One of the concerns I have for the aurum pricing going up is not that the prices will be beyond reach but that quality of posts may drop because people feel the need to get aurum faster and more of it just to afford the items they want. I'd rather aurum remain a perk of chatting here rather than something that makes posting seem mandatory in order to have a spiffy looking avatar.

Well a good bit of news is actually the site is doing better this month than it has in awhile. We still would be much better off if we were making more but for the moment things seem to be on the rise.

It's because they're a finite resource, as I mentioned above. Granted, there ought to be more ADIs than RDIs floating around, but they're still gone from the normal market after the month is over, meaning that they're discontinued and rare, after that.

And I imagine, for the worry in your second paragraph, that if it came to that, the admins could always either step in to regulate the market if they really had to, or change the amount of aurumn gained from posting.

I empathize with that concern, since for me personally, I spend a lot of time per post, and mine tend to be lengthy, meaning I don't end up posting as much on here as the chattier people. At the moment, I still feel like I make enough aurumn to get by with my posting style, but I can see that becoming a concern if prices go up that much that the only competitive way to earn aurumn is to more or less spam.

Everything should stay 2k. :I

Muff, that wouldn't solve anything.

If a few people started selling at insanely low prices, what would stop the "elitist aristocracy" with insane amounts of aurum from snatching the low-priced items up from the less fortunate users and selling the items back to the populace at large later at insanely inflated prices?

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/j...links/orbs.png

I like to go by the price guide and see other users going by it too.
Sure, I did overpay for the two Dragon Lord I got, but that is because I was Really, Really, Really, Really, etc wanting the item and willing to pay that much to get them as there did not seem to be many sellers of them at the time.
I agree that prices should not inflate too much over the price guide, and that after a few months, the prices of past items will tend to increase because of the time that has passed.

I am always seeming to be in need of Au, so always looking for people to chat with and extras in my inventory to sell. I really like how the achievements allow Anka tokens to create a new source of currency.

The only way to regulate a market would be to control the prices of items as a whole. As it says in basic economics, an item is only worth what the buyer is willing to pay. If the buyers themselves refused to pay inflated prices then the prices would have to drop to the desired level of buyers. Along with this a increasing amount of pure that is floating through the current market right now also drives prices up. This ofcourse problem has been addressed with the reduced amount of aurum for forum games posts along with the expensive special items inserted into shops. Along with these two the monthly aurum item also is a pure sink in a sense. The only thing that could hurt the trisphee economy more than ever would be the installment of runes cards or something. They only end up messing up the economy honestly. But thats my view as an exchanger along with my basic economic knowledge : )

inflation happens if there is not enough supply of items people need,. I think the old announcement told that if every year all the items will be back in the shop for a while for some people to get it

This is why I kind of left the site for a while. Things I wanted inflated fast. I saw another Crysandrea happening and it made me sad :(

For me it's on of the reasons why I go for common items in merchant square instead of DIs is because DIs can inflate to stupid amounts, but when it comes to commons get deflated

Finally another person who understands the horrors of the crys market.

The crys market is a mockery of it's old self...

Here is the issue in our market:

Price guide- "This item is worth 10K"
Person who wants to make sure they get the item NOW- "I WILL PAY 40K FOR THIS NOW!"
Person selling-"KK! HERE YA GO~!" *sells to*
Other person- "Oh, kk, the price guide must be wrong ,that item isn't worth 10K, it's worth 40k"

We've gone past the point of supply in demand, it's turned into "Jack that shit up as high as possible, watch them flail and laugh"

This is why I like auctions, and why we don't let auctions have no definite end~

I personally will try and pay between the low end and high end of what an item is going for in the price guide so if the low end is 4k and the high end is 6k I usually try and get it for 5k.

I understand what is being said, because at one point I wanted a kitsune mas and the seller was wanting 20k for it and I'm thinking 'seriously... I think not'

Two points I have to state

Price guides only reflect what people are paying for an item, thats kind of why they are called "Guides" Just because they list a price doesn't mean you get to point at them and yell at someone that their prices are wrong.

Just as in real life I would never tell you what to do with YOUR money. On some sites it is a rule that you cannot tell someone what to sell THEIR items for.

Second - I sold this months items for 2.5k each because that is the exact price the Bedside Manner is. I assumed that since that was set at 2.5k it meant that the other two items would be worth the same in Trisphee money.

I was very surprised when someone offered me double for one Rave. I don't get to buy things a lot here and had no idea people were paying twice as much as the third item in the donation shop costs.

Belial, that's how the monthly items were intended to work. For a while, the current rune items were worth the same as the aurum item and it was beautiful. But since a few people hold all the runes and everyone is desperate for them, people started paying more for runes, and therefore, for the rune items.

Yep...

In fact, it was even cheaper at one point to buy runes than the ADI- I was getting 1K-10 rates for a while XD

But yeah, pretty much, now a few people hold a lot of runes every month, and everybody clamors for them... I jump on the things I want when I see them early on, then let everyone fend for themselves the rest of the month, because I'm that tired of our market XD

>w<. I struggle getting the items I want.
I have the aurum to get them, but I fail to find sellers. XD

Why does everyone overexagerate about the 1k per 20 runes?
They were charities that ran to help people who couldn't donate get runes. Some only allowed you to buy 40 runes every week/month. While some just sold as many as they can as long as you had never been able to buy runes.

I agree are market sucks and the only way to balance it out is to have more people selling runes. People may beg a differ but there is no stopping another persons greed. And for the record greed is neither bad or good it's just something everyone bears and has.

I will have to contradict you, I do agree that you can't stop a person's greed, but greed is BAD. It makes most people suffer there is no way to belittle greed as saying it's neutral, IT IS NOT.