Market Discussions

I am new to trading, and this has me confused.

I have just noticed a strange buy order at a local trade hub. Here's the deal:

Item X (which is pretty common meta level 3 item that drops in the area) normally goes for about 200k ISK.

There's a buy order for 1500 of those, with minimum amount set also to 1500, for 2 mil ISK a piece. Also, there are several sell orders at the same station, where you can easily get said 1500 pieces, buying them at the average price of just below 1 mil ISK.

So what is actually stopping someone form buying the item in required amount and then immediately selling it for 100% profit?This smells like a scam of some sort, but if it is I don't understand how / why it works - can someone explain this? Thanks.

Either that, or he'll cancel the buy order as soon as you've buying some of his sell orders.

its a scam, search "margintrading scam" for further information...

its basicly the skill margin trading that allows you to place more buyourders than you actually can afford...so you buy something entirely overpriced that you never get sold for that price or a higher price...

Also, looking at the price history I notice that a very similar order actually went through about a month ago.

Does that mean that someone likely got scammed, or does it only show up in history if the order was fulfilled (I am assuming it's more likely the former though).

So either the original scammer is at it again, or the guy who got scammed and was left with a stock of overpriced stuff is trying to get his money back... ;D.

There are all sorts of scams in the market. If something looks strange, it most certainly is "wrong". Like the latest "cheap hulk" contracts being advertised in local in trade hubs. Looks like a contract for a reasonably fit hulk? Except the contract is only for the fittings and does not include the ship. Someone who is drunk or tired is going to lose a lot of isk, just like if they saw the "million isk hookbill" scam.

Some explanations of the scam:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=18942
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=91204

Unless i'm way off base they need to have at least 24% of the items value locked up in that order.

So if you see an order that is for 2m each @ 1500 units you should be able to sell into that order 1500 units at 480k.

If they initially made the order at twice the size, then they could sell to it, and drain the escrow to a lower level.

Any buy order will have at a minimum 24% locked up.

What i am saying is yes, you can fill the scam order, but only for 24% of the total value.

The point isn't to buy the items on the local market for the inflated price. The point is to buy them elsewhere for their normal value then sell them at 24% of the offered value so you get the most possible for the would be scammer.

So long as you don't buy over priced items from the local area you should have much at risk. Of course buying from far away takes a lot more effort.

Edit.

Something to remember is to round down though. If they set up the order then transfer the extra isk in their wallets elsewhere they wouldn't have even 1 isk over the 24%.

It is also possible, that this buy order is setup as a margin trading scam and functions as such, but has a second agenda, which is to prevent other players to place buy orders on that item.
In such a case the initiator of the scam order has a second order without minimum amount which he wants to protect.

The best is if you have perfect refine and good construction skills and BPO, make all the items from minerals, which is usually way less than local prices. Sell what you can at the scam price before it fails, then melt the rest and resell the minerals. If you do it that way, you pretty much cannot lose. Even if you sell none before the order fails, then melting it down will result in pretty much your initial investment minus taxes.