Market Discussions

Why not sell the minerals at higher prices?

Also, mine minerals so that you don't have to buy them from someone else, thus, are no longer free for them (since they'd make a potential profit from you).

It's always a dangerous assumption to believe people are too dumb. Usually it's true, but in certain fields there might be somebody who is outplaying even the wise guy who checks materials price.

Now I don't really play so I did not check, but in the past I'd do:

1) Purchase and resale of stuff for well below production cost. Items DO come for close to free sometimes (pirate dumping loot).
To a station trader, it does not matter whether an item is largely below production cost, he cares to resell it for higher than he purchased it for, that's it. Somebody, along the buy/sell chain that led do said station trader stock, lost money... the station trader does not care, he buys at X and sells at X + Y, he's focused on Y.

2) Speaking of pirates, there's the simple fact that many professions create minerals as byproduct or can create so much ISK that those minerals (or modules then bought and melted and resold by reproccers) basically just pad up the real income.
A guy making say 80M per hour with PvE, is not exactly going to care if he's dumping excess loot at a mediocre price. He saves switching ship and wasting 15 minutes to fly to a better station by making 20M in those 15 minutes. Who cares if he's losing 2M because the station prices are not so good.

3) Another thing I have done on a massive scale, is to purchase hundreds of billions worth of stuff during the summer (prices used to tank wheh I did that) and then dump that stuff close to Christmas.
To somebody using a "materials calculator" app it'll sound like I am losing say 3% ("he's dumb!"), whereas I am gaining 30% with all of about 10 minutes of effort every 6 months. The materials calculator is not going to reveal this price history.

say enemy A's philosophy is to sell products to invest in war efforts, mercs and what not.

by producing item 'B' with resouces 'C', A does not get the ISK from you he used to, which in turn he used to bash you over the head with, cybernetics boosters may vary.

So, do you lose 10,000% profit or make 20,000% by investing more wisely, and avoiding loss of spoils of war?



Edit:
This is not a good example because you can't buy resources 'C' if the seller or source of 'C' is allied with A.