Only Worth What Someone Will Pay


Mommar here.

This weekend was relatively successful.   As with many weekends the bulk of my gold ends up being purchased from weekend warriors (and weekend Mages,  weekend Shamans.. You get the point).

I received an in game email from a player who wanted to purchase one of my Lionheart Champion Reborn that I have crafted and listed.   Every so often I've picked up a couple that players have listed for what I felt was too low so that I could flip for a good profit.

It wasn't the first time that someone had sent me an email asking for a reduced price on my item.  I have a decent idea of what I've invested in everything I sell so if it's possible to be flexible for a sale I will be.  In this case I had the blade listed at 17k (I had sold one earlier in the week for this price) and they offered me 10k for the blade.

The 10k was the amount that he was willing to pay for the item.  So I mentally looked at the material requirements

First needing to craft the Lionheart Blade, Reborn

Lightning Steel Ingot x5
Living Steel x 3
Spirit of Harmony x 3

Then the materials Lionheart Champion, Reborn

Lightning Steel Ingot  x10
Living Steel x 6
Spirit of Harmony x 6

So to Craft the entire item you need

Lightning Steel Ingot x 15
Living Steel x 9
Spirit of Harmony x 9

The Living Steel and Spirit of Harmony are easily replaced through a little farming (Halfhill farming or just overall beating on mobs) but the Lightning Steel Ingots take 5 days to replace.   The makes these the real push of how much the item is worth to sell for me.   Between that and the previous sale earlier in the week at 17k I decided to politely decline the offer and counter offer for 15.5k.  

How the transaction ended isn't important (mostly because I still try to keep some of my transactions private) but the important lesson I hope people get is just how I calculated the worth of the item.  On my server a rough estimate to replace the Spirits of Harmony would take me about two hours at most.  Living Steel goes for between 350 and 400 per item.  So a total of 15 days if I craft everything on my own (I have purchased a premade  Lionheart Blade, Reborn and then proceeded to craft the Lionheart Champion, Reborn.  This saved me the original 5 days and some material costs.

But for our discussion let's just say I finished my daily Blacksmithing crafting of Lightning Steel Ingot every day for 15 days.   Give an approximate cost for the Spirit of Harmony at 100g.   My goal was to arrive at somewhere between the 12k-13k in mythical profit covering over the 15 days it takes to craft the item.

If I would have taken my new friends offer then my 'profit' would have dropped down to 7k to 9k for the same item.   That means that I was valuing every Lightning Steel Ingot at 900g per where his value was hitting approximately 700g per.   How much I was willing to sell the entire item determined just how much the individual rare crafting item was valued.

Neither of us are wrong with our pricing points.   If you have ever watched a version of Pawn Stars,  you come the realization that a value is an arbitrary number that is placed on an item.  The true value of an item is just how much someone is willing to pay.   That same sword could sell for 20k if I was able to find the right buyer.   Later on as more powerful items are offered,  it could be worth a dirty wet sock.

Keeping this in mind will help a lot with your price points and how much to sell an item.  You determine just how much value you have in an item simply by calculating the material cost and just what your time is worth. Once you have this ability in your arsenal to work these quick calculations in your head,  then you have the ability to explain your pricing point and be much more flexible.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

What i learned from Marvel Heroes....
Patch 5.4: Arise Scribe Arise!!!!!
Walking On The Dollars
Bang The Drum Slowly
Five Rules For Dating My Gold Stash
Transmog Me Baby




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