Trading – Knowing the Buy Price

When I started to trade, I was really paranoid about the Buy Price of my items. This is because I had relatively low isk, and did not wanted to have losses. Also when I started I did not had any 3rd party tool to help me keep track of those prices. EveMon helped, but it’s record was kinda limited.

 

I was so paranoid about not having a loss in my profits that I remember It took me 6 month to sell a Munnin. I’d bought it in Jita somewhat overpriced, but there was a shortage of those in Dodixie and therefore it had even higher prices than Jita, so I was expecting to sell it before the price came down to “normal” levels. Unfortunately it did not happen, so I hang on to the Munnin for 6 month, until I finally lowered my order and sold it at a loss. Small loss, but enough to piss me.

This was indeed a very bad move and I see it now. Generally it’s better to sell some items at a minor loss to get the isk back and invest it in something else that might indeed give ya, hopefully, some profit.

Nowadays I don’t really care much with the Buy Price. My main factors to decide if I’m gonna drop the price if my order are:

 - How much I’ve been undercut (0.1isk or 20 mil?)

- If I’ve been undercut by a lot, how many items are for sale bellow my order and how fast they gonna be bought off the market. If I think the items below my order sell in the next couple days, I might stay put. If the items bellow me are probably not gonna sell during a week, I’ll just undercut to get my isk back and invest it in something else.

Still if you’re starting to trade, avoiding selling bellow your Buy Price, is always a good thing. NPC items such as skillbooks or blueprints allow you to know exactly what is your buy price (unless you actually get them cheaper than NPC sell orders by setting up your own buy orders), but try to not fall into the “WILL NOT SELL AT A LOSS” paranoia. It’ll be more harmful to your business on the long run.

 I mostly trust the market to function properly, that is, prices in Regional Hubs will be higher than Jita. Of course many times this general guideline goes down the drain, but will be accurate 90% of times, so not knowing your “buy price” is usually not the drama I initially believed.