Science & Industry

At major trade hubs, there is unlikely to be much difference in price between ore and the minerals it refines into with perfect refine. Refining ore is mostly a matter of reducing volume, the minerals ore refines into take up much less space than the ore. As such, it is generally something miners do before hauling to market to sell. It is possible to buy ore in mining systems a good distance away from trade hubs, and make a profit refining it, but the quantities you can get miners to sell you are generally small and unpredictable, and take a lot of order management to get. Miners who churn out large quantities generally refine themselves or have a corp buddy who does, there really isn't a lot of isk to be made buying unrefined ore.

For a discussion of skills needed for refining see here: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/231229/page/2

Note that skills aren't enough, to get a true perfect refine you musthave standings with the corp that owns the refining station. 6.7 standings will reduce refining tax to zero.

It is cheaper to buy the ore and refine, but you're going to have to buy the ore in out-of-the-way places, meaning you will need to haul a lot. And I mean a lot. Or pay someone to haul for you, which eats into your profit margin, and if you need large amounts of ore, the profit margin isn't going to be large to begin with.

Unless you are mining ore yourself, just buy the minerals. Most Ore is sold at an inflated price compared to the mineral contents you would actually need. In other words, you would be buying extra minerals inside the ore you don't need most of the time.

depends on whether 86% return (less any applicable taxes) nets you more than the ore would.

For example, let's say the following:

Trit = 5.00 ISK / Unit
You need 333 veld for 1 refine, and you'll get 1000 Trit.

333 Veld = 1000 Trit * 0.86 (your refining skill) * 0.95 (assuming 5% taxes) = 817 Trit * 5.00 = 4085 ISK per refine

Assuming no taxes on the market (which doesn't happen, I don't want to do the math), your break-even point is 12.25 ISK/unit of Veld. Anything lower than 12.25 ISK and you're better off selling minerals. Anything higher, and you're better off selling the ores.

It only makes sense to buy ore if you are going to use the minerals and you are far away from large market hubs. This way it offers two worthwhile benefits. 1. it is cheaper then the market hubs. 2. cuts the sometimes risky logistics out of the picture.

You are going to want very large levels of buy orders over very long periods. The ore will come in very small trickles over time. Make sure to keep up on mineral values of your ore purchases so you don't end up over paying when the mineral market shifts. Its good to get some marketing skills that allow you to create and modify market orders from several jumps away.

If you wanna get it to it purely to resell the minerals then you're in for a surprise. You need the ability to refine with no loss, standings at all the stations you plan to refine at, very good marketing skills to reduce marketing costs, and you need freighters worth of ore to turn a small profits, witch will only trickle in slowly over time. The time spent managing orders, freighting around ore to refine it, freighting minerals to market, and then managing the mineral sales... Your better off spending your time doing almost anything else.

+1 for all the dream crushing replies :)