Market Discussions

Melted nanoribbons! I started playing shortly after T3s came out and I found this item through the eve-central hauler tool. Had no idea what it was for but I spent the next three months buying them in Amarr and hauling them into Jita. At that time the margin varied from 500k-1mil per unit and I made 2bil in my first couple of weeks ... then more ... then more ... and then more. I started bringing them in from Rens and Dodixie too and putting out regional orders for all the neighbouring regions, covering 9 or 10 regions in total. I also added other bits of salvage in early on as well but it was the MNs that provided the mainstay of my trading for the first four months in the game. Of course, all good things come to an end and the margins slimmed down quite a bit by Feb 2010 but by that point I had made something like 100 bil and had a few other tools available to me.

I think the first item I ever traded was a Navy Raven. I was two months or so into the game and thought I was ready to fly a Raven (I wasn't but was lucky enough not to lose one). A few days earlier I bought my first Raven but wasn't happy with it so I decided to go for a CNR which was listed around 300M at that time. Using EVE-Central I noticed two CNRs that were listed roughly at 200M - almost 100M below average. After selling my Raven I had just enough ISK to buy both of them (most of my ISK at that time was still from the guy who invited me via buddy programm and who gave me 400M for using his invitation). I moved one of the CNRs to a trade hub and sold it with a nice profit. I still have the other CNR and used to run L4s in it. However, this got me into missioning and not into trading.

A few months later - I believe it was November 2012 - I noticed that Nocxium was on the rise in Jita while prices were low in the neighboring regions. I liquidated almost all my assets and ended up with roughly 3Bn in play money. And then I began to buy every bit of cheap Nocxium that I could get. I bought Nocxium in 3 regions and kept buying it when it was listed below my threshold. I even went to low sec to gather what I had bought (these were my first trips to low sec actually). Prices began to climb dramatically in all regions and in Jita as other peoples also began to buy Nocxium (I like to think that this was my first successful market manipulation ). Finally I sold all my minerals in Jita. It really felt good seeing all that profit rolling into my wallet.

It felt so good that I wanted to repeat it. If possible without that much effort. And now I had a lot of liquid ISK buring a hole into my wallet. That got me into trading ... and the rest is history.

These stories are all fantastic!

I half expected people to say something along the lines of "That was so long ago, I don't remember".

All I had to do was buy a rare faction tower and sell it to a HUGE MARKET FAIL buy order...

My start was flipping Bantams in the newbie system I started in. Then about 5 days into the game I learned about Jita, and we fell in love.

Once I had about 10mil to my name I started flipping strip miners. I would bid in Jita, then transport, and sell in the newbie system. Making a million a pop was so exciting back then. I really do miss that rush of the wallet flash.

Then came in planetary interaction, and at that time, you needed to by the class of command center you wanted to put down, and if you wanted to change you needed to demolish and plop another down. This lead to a massive bid-ask spread and through that I made my first billion.

About 3 months into the game I started doing PI myself and traded/built POS guns. The spreads and margins are good to this day.

After that is was just bigger volumes and values but the same principles at work.

T1 frigates....I found that if I timed it right, I could have all the buys and sells going through me for a region.

I had been trying random types of trading, and diving in at the deepend too much and getting burnout, and then I stumbled accidentally onto frigs. Someone told me to buy them from indy hubs at 20% below build, and relist for in the trade hub 20% above, buying out any which were not above build cost.

For some reason I developed an addiction to T1 frigs, and was trading all of them, then when the blue highlighting came in, it became even more fun to see a screen of blue for each one.

Once I figured out what the donchian was really about, I had a lot of fun picking a mission system, and seeing how far I could push buys and sells on drones to move the donchian channel around.

I still have a thing for T1 smaller ships, nostalgia, and it is quite fun.

that was so long ago, i don't remember.

seriously though, my best guess is that the first things i ever sold were the career agent quest rewards. My first encounter with the game ended in relatively quick burnout caused by extensive missioning, which does not help my memory :/

I don't remember the item that got me into trading, but I do remember the generosity of my fellow corp members in helping me to pursue trading.

They noticed in Corp chat how excited I was about dabbling in trading and making (hundreds of thousands of) ISK with my feeble skill set. As well a guide on the (old) EvE forums that I'd discovered that basically served as a road map for trading, that I could not stop talking about.

My corpmates started throwing ISK my way--to my astonishment--as well as tips and advice. Pretty soon I was making millions and before long I had a few billion to my name, all while continuing to mine, do PvE and train for PvP.

I was able to pay them back by establishing an in-corp investment banking system and I had a lot of fun with it.

Certainly the wallet blink and making ISK hand over fits is the draw when it comes to trading, but for me it was a generous helping of the kindness of others that got me started and that I remember/appreciate the most.

What really brought me to Jita to start trading full time was actually a mistake... I listed Imperial Navy Heat Sinks on contracts from redeeming my missioning lp... sadly, I forgot to unstack 6 or 7 when I created a contract... It was accepted within 5 min as I had to log off for work... I noticed my mistake afterwards and also who accepted the contract...

I started to go through everyone's contract history afterwards and noticed a few trends. I made my first one bil profit trade by flipping a highly researched Capital Construction Parts bpo I had won on a public auction contract... I flipped highly researched tech 1 bpos until I had gone from 40 or 50 bil to about 350 bil liquid isk...

That's when T2 BPOs caught my eyes... I bought my first t2 bpo (a nova javelin rocket bpo) for 4.3 bil isk... I flipped that within 24 hours for 13 billion isk... Then I hit it huge... A Mackinaw BPO popped up on public contract auction and the forums for 225 billion isk buyout... I had just watched a hulk bpo sell for 350 bil on the forums and figured that this was well underpriced... Turns out it was as I sold it to Somer Blink for 450 bil two months later...

I flipped many other t2 bpos after that for a few hundred bil more in profit and decided to collect Alliance Tournament cruisers with the excess isk... Now I estimate my assets and isk to be worth 1.5 to 2 trillion isk... it's been fun.

My first venture into trading was moving low price skill books to Arnon, selling to newbies like myself starting the Sisters Of Eve epic arc.

I started Eve intending playing it like the old ELITE space trading game but playing the 0.01 isk wars became a drag and I discovered PvP! Now I just trade in Low Sec and only tend to alter my prices when funds start to run low. Most things shift eventually if I don't put too much mark up on them.