Price Manipulation Theory

[chazzycaz]

Well I had a theory on a way for a clan to manipulate an item, and I wanted to know whether or not you think it would work.

 

 

 

Please note: I am not saying I am planning on using this technique, or advocating Price Manipulation, as I know the general negative attitude towards it. This is a discussion about whether or not it would work, not the moral implications thank you.

 

 

 

[hide=Theory]Let me first start with how the clans operate as it stands: The clan leader or general says an item, and the entire clan rushes to buy the item at max price. Whoever gets the most are the luckiest, while everyone attempts to buy until the "dump" price where they sell the item.

 

 

 

Now here is my theory: Imagine if a clan chooses an item, preferrably one without a limit on buying, but I do not know much about the limits of the GE, so forgive me on that point.

 

This item will be bought by the clan until the stock is bought out, at max price. After this occurs, the people who got the item, will resell it at max price - and the other clan members with buy offers will get them. After getting them, these members will then resell the items at max price again - the first set of the clan will repost buy offers with the money at max price.

 

 

 

Rinse and repeat.

 

 

 

Because of this, the price of the item will shoot up astronomically, as there is such a vast quantity of max price sales. The item will keep rising and rising until the clan decides to split out the goods, and the members then will attempt to resell at max price to the customer.

 

 

 

Do you think this would work? Just an idea off the top of my head...

 

 

 

For this to work the clan would always have buy offers in at max price, throughout the entire process of manipulation to ensure all stock is bought out.

 

I understand many of the product will be lost to other buyers outside of the clan, but even those sales will still raise the price, and more stock will be brought in by sellers...[/hide]

 

 

 

Please once again note: Do not flame me, I wanted only to know if it was feasable. Good luck trying to find a clan with both high amounts of money, and willingness to work as a team. For this reason the idea is unrealistic, but would the GE be affected like this?

[1wngedangel]

Seriously?

 

 

 

This is already widely practiced by clans.

[SanNo1]

it could work, but for a short period of time, because when a clan buys out an item and it goes up by 5% for 2 or 3 days other people who aren't in the clan will start buying the item too, so the clan members won't sell all the items to other clan members, missing out on the profit.

 

 

 

Also, the members will try to make the most money themselves and probably will not sell any of their bought items, because they will miss out on more potential profit.

[compfreak847]

Almost impossible. First of all, there is no item without limits - anything not widely trades usually has a limit of 100, making it impossible to manipulate. If it is widely traded and easily made, it's virtually impossible to buy up everything to do this.

[chazzycaz]

Seriously?

 

 

 

This is already widely practiced by clans.

 

 

 

Then I apologise, I have been in a few merch (not manipulation) clans, but have never heard of this.

[Smapla]

is it just me, or is there a lot of interest in price manipulation techniques today?

[chazzycaz]

Almost impossible. First of all, there is no item without limits - anything not widely trades usually has a limit of 100, making it impossible to manipulate. If it is widely traded and easily made, it's virtually impossible to buy up everything to do this.

 

 

 

Well what about something hard to obtain, such as Guthan's spear? It has such a high value, it is not required to buy a huge amount, and could be bought out easily with a medium sized clan, even with a limit of 100. More than 100 would not be necessary (or possible unless extremely rich) and all sales raise the item value, which in essence is the point of the technique...

[Madmanpur3]

It's somewhat possible, but in the end they would be stuck with a crapton of junk seeing as how it would reach a price where people would decide it's more worth it to collect/gather/obtain on their own versus buying it via the GE.

 

 

 

Off the top of my head, the only items that I can think of that it would work for are discontinued items and rare clue items. Also, now that I think about it, that's essentially what happened with the animal masks...except it wasn't a lone clan doing that, it was everyone.

[yuriqiu]

It's more efficient to buy out 1 item, sell, then buy out another item. Your way can not guarantee the item ends up back into the hands of the clan itself.

[compfreak847]

Almost impossible. First of all, there is no item without limits - anything not widely trades usually has a limit of 100, making it impossible to manipulate. If it is widely traded and easily made, it's virtually impossible to buy up everything to do this.

 

 

 

Well what about something hard to obtain, such as Guthan's spear? It has such a high value, it is not required to buy a huge amount, and could be bought out easily with a medium sized clan, even with a limit of 100. More than 100 would not be necessary (or possible unless extremely rich) and all sales raise the item value, which in essence is the point of the technique...

 

Err.... There are probably 100,000+ guthans warspears out there. How many clans do you know with 1000 people and 180 billion GP? Besides, people don't trade them that often; they get and keep.

[chazzycaz]

Obviously noone could buy out all the spears in runescape, only the ones currently being traded...

 

 

 

I give my argument up! lol :wall:

[T. Skill]

is it just me, or is there a lot of interest in price manipulation techniques today?

 

 

 

Everyone's out to make big money with little effort.. I personally stick to skilling for my cash.

[Carl]

is it just me, or is there a lot of interest in price manipulation techniques today?

 

 

 

In my opinion there's far to many posts on Gen discussion about Merchants and manipulating and the items they manipulate.

 

 

 

On Topic:

 

 

 

Your theory wouldn't work as you want it, as there's limits on pretty much everything.

 

 

 

Compfreak, it's rather easy if you have the right number of members to buy out items with 100/4h limits. (Don't quote me saying it's not, as I know you probably will. I'm going on personal experience with buying out items with my members.)

[Torlen]

In theory it would work, but people join merchant clans to make THEMSELVES money. They don't particularly care about anyone else, so you'll always have someone trying to profit off the clan as a whole.

[Carl]

They don't particularly care about anyone else, so you'll always have someone trying to profit off the clan as a whole.

 

 

 

One of the biggest problems Channel staff have to face and try and get rid of are that type of person.

 

 

 

This type of person is also a problem that would stop your theory, this, and of course the limits. :lol:

[la la la]

Guthans warspears and most above-rune weapons and armor have a 10 per 4 hours limit.

[holycannoli]

The problem I see with this is that any item you'e going to buy can't be widely traded, otherwise not all of the sales will be to clan members. However by trading a less common item, you're gambling huge money on a product that is in low demand, so you might end up stuck with millions of gp in worthless items.

[ortiz9471]

Besides for all the issues with it, it won't work for one simple reason - for the prise to raise on an item, it has too be traded above medium, as you have said (obviously). However in your plan, they are buying and selling to each other. So they are paying the price for them to rise. They are basically paying 10k per item for each item to raise 10k - yes, the price goes up, but they make no profit. Also, those that are sold to regular consumers will be taken out of this "pool" and sold, then the price goes up - that's more potential profit lost.

 

 

 

Does that make sense of is it just me? #-o

[mario_sunny]

Well it is a good theory but it would be very hard to do. First, you would need an extremely rich group of players... not easy to come by. Then you have to convince them to work together. Making sure they are 100% loyal to the plan is hard too. It is just way too risky. One member might think he is not getting his fair share, and might dump before the item reaches the specified price.

 

 

 

You're also forgetting about the consumers/poorer merchanters. While there are some players in runescape who are extremely wealthy, they only make up a small percentage of the population. The other less wealthy, the consumers who might do some low merchanting themselves, can totally out-do any plan the wealthy merchants try. The fact is these poorer merchants have tons more money combined... and although they don't organise like those big manipulator clans, they basically control the market. Supply and demand... if an item goes down in price the poor will buy a lot of it because they can afford it suddenly. If the price goes up, the poor cannot afford it, lowering demand, and hurting chance of manipulation.

[r4ngewarlord]

Almost impossible. First of all, there is no item without limits - anything not widely trades usually has a limit of 100, making it impossible to manipulate. If it is widely traded and easily made, it's virtually impossible to buy up everything to do this.

 

 

 

Well what about something hard to obtain, such as Guthan's spear? It has such a high value, it is not required to buy a huge amount, and could be bought out easily with a medium sized clan, even with a limit of 100. More than 100 would not be necessary (or possible unless extremely rich) and all sales raise the item value, which in essence is the point of the technique...

 

Err.... There are probably 100,000+ guthans warspears out there. How many clans do you know with 1000 people and 180 billion GP? Besides, people don't trade them that often; they get and keep.

 

cmrobins is buying out guthans warspears and so far its working.

 

its because thier such a usefull and hard to obtain item.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

If it can be done, it can only be done with items that have a small market, like partyhats or lower-rares (santas, masks, pumpkins, etc). Trying to manipulate something like coal or iron is nigh impossible.

[bbalking]

This is not a theory, this is reality for pretty much every merchant clan out there...

[mario_sunny]

This is not a theory, this is reality for pretty much every merchant clan out there...

 

 

 

No it isn't. This is what a merchant clan is today:

 

 

 

It is run by one or many leaders, usually rich. The leaders order all their members in the cc to buy out an item. All the members start buying as much as item x as they can at max price. After the price starts rising, the clan chat goes crazy with people screaming "dump now everyone!!!" or "wait you ****ing idiots, don't dump." This goes on for x amount of days until everyone gets so nervous they dump item x way too early. Suddenly the price plummets: very few people make profit, and many, many people lose money. The leaders leave the clan oblivious to the true dumping price of item x on purpose... so they can make a profit quickly and move on to the next item. After a round of item x manipulation, a few people quit out of frustration and a few more suckers join the clan, only to be scammed the next round. It's a cycle, over and over.

 

 

 

The theory that is suggested would involve a merchant clan that may not exist: One whose members have 100% loyalty and are extremely rich (in order to buy out ALL of item x), and don't panic like little school children when prices start to rise.

[mmmcannibalism]

This would work at a limited level

 

 

 

the two problems are that it would be really hard to get a clan to do this and after a while the item would refuse to rise. For instance, noone will pay 300k for a rune plate so that limits how much profit you could gain.

[captainpoet]

It would work out very well when cooperated well. Personally, I have a lesser item that I gouge daily for a meager 1.4M profit a day. Sure I could do items worth more of a profit, but what I do is something safer, and I know that the price of said item isn't going to just plummet. (Because people have to buy it on a day to day basis)