Today we are going to talk about cornering the market in MMO’s. You may be asking yourself what it exactly means to corner the market. Let’s break it down.
One simple way to earn money through the in-game market in any MMO is to purchase and sell things on the market. Any market has market makers and they are just market participants that are frequently buying and selling certain listed items. This concept works the same for both the New York Stock Exchange and the Galactic Trade Network. When we speak of SWTOR markets in particularly, the small size of the market in certain items allow a new market participant with some starting capital that will allow them to increase their profits by not just being in the market, but by cornering the market.
To be able to corner the market you will need to eliminate other sellers. In order to do this on the GTN, you will have to purchase all of the existing listings and then you will be able to set the prices. By doing this, you will be cornering the market in that item until the other sellers react and then undercut your listings, and this can sometimes take a while. While you are waiting for this to happen you will benefit by raising the price on the item to one more profitable, but if you take this concept too far the buyers will hold out until new sellers with lower prices show up.
The Case Study
I wanted to purchase two stacks of 10 Zeltron Personal Aroma Sets, and this is the blue quality Rank 5 companion gift for Courting. Companion gifts are selling off pretty well on Jedi Covenant for quite a while now. However, after the latest live stream shown that companion affection will continue to matter in the next expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire. The latest lowest unit price when it was last checked the market to list my 20 units was 2,900 credits per Zeltron Personal Aroma Set. This is quite a bit lower than I would prefer to sell these units. But, I did notice that the total supply on the GTN is quite low, and this is what drove me for the idea to corner this market for the day.
There were 56 units listed for sale and I was able to purchase this for 319,312 credits total, so the average price per unit was around 5,700. I would like to sell these units for 7,500 and this is the normal pricing on Jedi Covenant. This is not a crazy price so that means that fewer sellers will jump in to undercut me. Including the original units and the ones that were purchased to reset the market, there are now 76 units of Zeltron Personal Aroma Set listed on the GTN for 7,500 credits per each unit.
The Results of the Case Study
Within just 6 hours of buying out the market for Zeltron Personal Aroma Sets, many small quantity sellers undercut the price level. The case study happened on a Saturday and this is a great day for GTN volume, so I was counting on there being enough buyer demand to consume the undercut lots and still have demand left to purchase mine too.
This strategy paid off in the end and all 76 units have been sold. The gross proceeds were 535,800 credits and 319,312 credits were spent to corner the market for the Zeltron Personal Aroma Sets. The approximate amount cost of 40,000 credits for the initial 20 units, my net profits were 176,488 credits.
Conclusions
The 20 units could have been sold and netted for about 20,000 credits at the market price. I have tested this out many times when the market is too expensive to buy out all the way, but it’s not the best scenario. The biggest requirement for this strategy is the initial credit balance to be able to purchase that supply. There’s no shortcut around that initial credit bank requirement.