Market Discussions

Mass buying and reprocessing junk items and drone alloys all over Essence region. Also, trading between Arnon and Oursulaert.

So thats you doing that.

Buy plex, sell plex

My first billion came from selling a character (though it was more like my first several billion in one go). Oh how character prices have changed since then though

Living as a cluless noob in Deklein back in 2006

I noticed that the selling price of Meta 4 large shield extenders was about 60% less than the going rate in The Forge, with several other meta items offering pretty good margins as well. So I bought out the entire region (and looted the corp repreocessing hangar), and spent several days flying between Deklein and Nonni in a Kestrel, taking about 30-50 mods at a time. With the ~20-30 mill profit each run made, I would buy a +3 implant and some ratting ammo and fly back and sell that in the alliance hub for about a 5M profit.

I ratted while I waited for my sell orders to clear (I could only do 9 market orders) I ratted and raised more liquid capital. After a few days I was able to buy and fit a Raven, which increased my ratting income nicely.

Eventually I got lucky and found a Dread Guristas spawn which dropped a DG invuln. I used the ~billion ISK I had accumulated, plus the invuln, to buy myself an alt who could fly a covetor and a viator...

Making T2 PI and selling it to my alliance.

Manufacturing.

Back in the days of escrow, not-quite-faction-ships listed as faction ships was great. Prices were also known to drop now and then, I snapped up a bunch of pirate-faction ships pre-buff and resold for a chunk. Been casually plucking up things for resale since.

Also a big help was the day a corp/alliance I was in disbanded and left me the hangar (was in nullsec, hired a pilot from the alliance that pushed us out to move it) and sold a large portion of the BPO/BPC and ships that came with that score off as well. And some has been as simple as selling characters on the bazaar.

I made my 1st billion circling beacons in lowsec.

No I didn't. I tried that and couldn't stand it.

1st bil was made via invention and manufacturing. The next few bills made via wormhole life style.

Now I can afford to lose loki's while learning pew.

Man, that was a long time ago. Here's what I remember:

First Million May, 2003. Ninja mining Arkonor in a Probe somewhere deep in 0.0. I think I hacked away at that a couple of hours a night for a couple of weeks to get that first million. Refined the ore and sold the Zydrine and Megacyte at the NPC base bid prices of 1024 and 4096 ISK per unit, respectively. NPC entities had a hand in everything back then. Why a Probe? Probably because of its relatively large cargo hold. Couldn't afford a Cruiser or Battleship, the game was brand new and we all started with zilch. Mining Barges and Exhumers were months to years away.

First Billion June - August, 2003. Trading Robotics in South Lonetrek, in a Bestower. Back then, lotsa stuff was NPC stuff. Robotics were one of the more lucrative NPC trade items, netting tidy margins by hauling short distances between NPC sell stations and NPC buy stations. Back then, before the mechanics and skill requirements of the trade system evolved, it was possible to buy entire spawns of a trade good by strategically seeding layered buy orders. That made it possible to acquire the required volume of a given trade good necessary to make meaningful profits.

First Trillion January, 2004 - January 2012. Large-scale manufacturing and industrial material speculation. After a few months away from the game (but continuing training), I returned to join a couple of industrially-minded colleagues to develop a manufacturing venture. We started with missiles – low initial capital investment, high volume and decent profit margin – and as capital resources grew and T2 became available, moved into components and T2 ships. Our leading product was the Hulk, manufacturing and selling 20,000 units over the course of 3 years of production.
Midway through the manufacturing era, we began supplementing income by investing heavily in industrial materials, with favorable results. Major expansions, in particular, were very good to us; technetium-heavy products and player-produced planetary materials being noteworthy examples of investment opportunities driven by game changes.

First Quadrillion Well, after making that first million, I thought a billion would be impossible. At a billion, I thought getting to a trillion would take forever. Right now, the notion of reaching a quadrillion ISK is downright ludicrous. But maybe anything is possible given time, luck and execution of a sound business model. Future efforts will focus on continuing to refine and execute large-scale investment and trade strategies.