MOAR T2

After the frustrations of the last post there was a request for a Rapier at a good price from an alliance pilot. I mentioned that I could invent and make them but it would take time. He mentions that he won't need it for about 2 weeks. So I say sure I'll look into it.

PRO TIP: If you want to save isk, plan to buy well ahead of when you'll need something. This will allow you to shop around and maybe commission a manufactuer in your corp/alliance to make the item. Don't worry the good ones will tell you when it's cheaper to buy from the market than for them to make it. It also allows you to spot and avoid market manipulation attempts on certain items.

So I get out my spreadsheet (of doom™) and get my Jita alt fired up and start plugging in numbers. Why thank you EVE HQ for the values I'll be needing in my BPC calculations. I won't bore you with the details but the exploration allowed me to spot the following manipulation attempt in full cry:

Fullerides in Jita

Now I had priced this at about 1200 isk/unit back when I was doing the Hyena calculations. and in the 15min before I did this print screen, the lowest sell order was around 2500 isk/unit! In order to get a better read on what's going on I quickly check the history:

History graph of Fullerides in Jita

Ok, note how the lowest sell order is at around 2000 isk/unit but so far nothing has sold for more than 1400 isk/unit. That my friends is how you spot a manipulation attempt while it's going on. Also the total volume up for sale looked rather low (gut feel - I don't actually track this that closely). Interestingly the overall trend is definitely on the rise.

A quick peek at Akita T's moon mineral thread in the science and indy forums reveals some interesting facts:

Fullerides are made up of
1/4 Technetium
1/4 Platinum
1/4 Hydrocarbons
1/4 Silicates

(100 of each of the ingredients will give you 6000 Fullerides)

Now Platinum saw a bubble after Dominion hit and then stabilized @2400-2500 per but is seeing some action in the last few days. Hydrocarbons @180 and Silicates @600 which go into Carbon Polymers have been relatively stable (short duration bumps not withstanding). Carbon Polymers themselves have been hit with a sudden increase in the last few days and went from @400 to around @900 it looks like. And although Technetium has had a big spike at the start of Dominon, on the short term that was un-sustainable and it has crashed back to 20k before bouncing up this week to 30k per. It's interesting that the two most expensive component parts have seen some action in the last 7 days but it's only today that Fullerides have really tried to take off. We'll have to see if the trend holds for Fullerides now it looks like stocks were getting low. Have the people doing the reactions run out of cheap pre-Dominion Technetium? Is it a simple concerted market manipulation attempt?

The long term price of Fullerides however is probably going to be up if the long term predictions for Technetium hold. Also note with Geminate changing hands there was probably a nice dip in Technetium supply while the changeover was underway which will have helped burn through some of the existing Technetium stockpiles.

Anyways getting back to the Rapier. The end result is if moon material prices don't go crazy over the next week or so, it's cheaper for me to invent and build, then sell Rapier for my alliance pilot than for him to buy it in Jita. A quick check of the effects of Fullerides shows that it should have minimal impact on the Rapier pricing even if it stays rather high. So in goes the Bellicose BPO into a copy slot.

Going over the effects of the Fullerides increase on my T2 Projectile ammo however shows that it's going to have a severe impact on T2 Projectile ammo. At last week prices Fullerides was the major part of manufacturing costs of T2 Projectile ammo. If the price spikes it's going to be worse. Expect T2 Projectile ammo to spike in the following weeks if there is a sustained increase in Fullerides prices. Average Barrage M prices are a bit elevated over their pre-Dominion days but not radically so. Should a sustained Fullerides spike materialize however, expect the price of Barrage M to head to the 400-500 per round region