Up to about $0.58/mil now. Hmm.

With the restabilization of Radiant Star Gem prices, I'm now leaning towards some of the conspiracy theories about Blizzard eliminating a duping exploit that was causing problems.

A Less conspiracy-ey option is a major farming operation or two liquidated their D3 assets including their radiant star gems and Gold stockpile. Based on how these operations work, it's usually only a handful of large farming operations that make up a substantial proportion of the gold flowing into the market. Losing even just one could cut the supply of Gold entering the market by 10% or more. Liquidation of a large stockpile would certainly suppress radiant star and Gold prices for a time. There could simply be less supply out there. It will be interesting to see if it stabilizes around $0.58 / mil.

Interdasting.

In the long run though the price will drop to 0.25/mill. The question you have to only ask yourself is how long it's going to take to reach that price

With PvP coming around in the near future, I see it sticking around at the 50c mark for awhile and may rise during the PvP patches.

Which then will lead to people realising that is isn't that much fun and quitting again... :P

0.25/mil might be coming sooner rather than later - prices dipped to 0.34/mil this eve. I wasn't trading actively when gold was fixed at $2.50 per million back in august - any ideas on how to maximize profitability and minimize risk when the artificial 0.25 comes into effect?

Is Blizzard's economic system down? the price is becoming lower and lower. More and more bots, less and less players? Blizzard really needs to do something

I think botters are partly to blame, but overall, it's probably just general supply and demand. Very low demand for Gold and there are only super dedicated players and botters playing right now, in the first place. No one really needs gold in increments under 50 million so buying 4 million for $1 isn't really efficient. I think it's more supply/demand market driven than botters driving down prices too much.

I've sold a few low $$ items over the last week or so as I've been buying zuni pox rings for 600k - 800k on the GAH and moving them over to the RMAH and selling them for anywhere from $1.80 - $1.98. I'm up to almost $5.00 now and I'm looking to buy gold so I can re-buy more rings. Anyway, last week the price was hovering around 43 cents. Dropped like a rock and was down to 30 cents earlier today before jumping up to 34 cents tonight. I almost bought it at 30 cents but figured if I wait a few days it'll go down to the 25 cents before making a bit of a bounce.

I think i'll hold off now as I have no need for the gold right now other than to re-invest in more Zuni's - I just wonder how long though that I'll be able to keep flippin these as the prices for Zuni rings have dropped. Before it was one-offs that I was buying for the 600k-800k. Now there's a ton of them in the 800k mark for sale.

Gotta figure out where to move to next to make money by moving the items between the GAH and RMAH.

Saw it at 36cents and 37cents yesterday.

can someone please explain this? i suck at econ
supply vs demand drives the price, right? so the falling price means that there is too much supply?

i guess on a side note, but still kinda related... how do prices for materials/gems work? if i list my material at 1g a piece, instead of the going rate of say 1000g, how do mine sell, vs the hundreds of others?

@euggie It's a combination of supply and demand. There's both an increase of supply (Every Diablo player collectively picks up more gold on a daily basis than Blizzard removes through their 15% auction fees) and fewer people are playing so fewer people are buying the Gold. I'm sure we could put together numbers for you and explain things in terms of equilibrium, but the general gist is both too much Gold being picked up and fewer players spending real $ to buy that Gold.

All i know about selling mats/gems is that the AH server finds the cheapest gems it can. If people are selling gems at the same price, they go into a queue. The first person at 800 Gold will sell their mats before the second person at 800 Gold. If the second person lowers their pice to 799 Gold, they'll go first. This is why you'll see a bundle of Gems drop in price 50%, but go back up 10 seconds later. Someone just wanted to get rid of what they had and in a hurry so they undercut everyone in the market for 50% and sold their stock immediately.

Posted by shniggies at 12/03/2012 11:51 AM

can someone please explain this? i suck at econ
supply vs demand drives the price, right? so the falling price means that there is too much supply?

i guess on a side note, but still kinda related... how do prices for materials/gems work? if i list my material at 1g a piece, instead of the going rate of say 1000g, how do mine sell, vs the hundreds of others?

"so the falling price means that there is too much supply?"

Not necessarily too much supply. It could be that the end users (players in this case) have enough gold or enough gear that they do not wish to purchase more gear and therefore more gold for said gear. Additionally, it could be that the only items left for players to upgrade to are only godly items in the billions price range are. One would think this would drive players to purchase more gold to get those items. Some might. The majority won't as their gear will be enough to get them to farm MP3 for legendaries/EXP, MP5 for keys, or do ubers with their friends at MP7. At those levels, there would be enough positive justification to not spend money on gold but wait for that really good drop or look to friends and places like this for people to help them out. Another factor that could be happening is that people are using the RMAH more than the AH to procure items further causing the demand for gold to drop.

I would add that basic supply/demand economics don't apply to the value of gold in this game due to:

1) Production of gold - easily manipulated via botters and not controlled by a central authority.
2) Self-collection/production of gold - the value of real world gold would also be $0.25 if we everytime we walked outside a gold nugget would drop whenever we killed some random insect
3) Item values that haphazardly rise and fall based on Blizzard's manipulation of what they consider as "fair". The real world would go crazy if there was some central "Physics Authority" that determined one day that certain bullets can travel through walls but not people and then the next day they say it can pass through certain people if they didn't wear a certain color.

@khan @ecocd thanks for helping a noob out

It's difficult to tell where gold will stabilize without any hard numbers or significant data, but it's completely logical that the value of gold would drop steadily until it reaches an asymptote. Gold accumulates steadily in every player's account, but I think more importantly, the market has really stagnated. I think there's a little bit of activity for high end gear as well as low end gear, but mid-tier gear prices have really fallen into the ground. I had a few items that I bought for 10-15M maybe a month ago, thinking they were good deals and I could resell them for profit. Now, I see similar items for less than 3-5M. It's not hard to figure out why: no one is buying mid-tier gear. If you have a billion gold, you're looking for 8 figure items. If you have less than 10 million, you can barely afford to spend a few million on a single piece. If you're somewhere in between, you're either not interested in gear you can afford or you can't afford better gear.

Gold seems to have stabilized (it's been around $.35/million for a few weeks), but I'm still not optimistic about it. I think it could go up a little bit when PvP comes out, but I just think the game itself doesn't really offer much in the way of replay value. I myself have converted most of my gold into USD just because it really serves no purpose to me.

I might go all-in buying gold if prices drop REALLY low (<$.25). In that case, I'd feel somewhat certain that we've reached the bottom.

Posted by Khan at 12/03/2012 12:44 PM

2) Self-collection/production of gold - the value of real world gold would also be $0.25 if we everytime we walked outside a gold nugget would drop whenever we killed some random insect

This literally made me LOL at work. But it's so true... :-)

Posted by eastdragon42 at 12/03/2012 09:46 PM

Posted by Khan at 12/03/2012 12:44 PM

2) Self-collection/production of gold - the value of real world gold would also be $0.25 if we everytime we walked outside a gold nugget would drop whenever we killed some random insect

This literally made me LOL at work. But it's so true... :-)

You're not the only one @eastdragon42 who had that same exact thought, though mine came with some soda coming out of my nose instead of going down the right way as I lol'd so hard the only place for the soda to go was out my nose the wrong way.

Posted by baccarat0809 at 12/04/2012 09:22 AM

Posted by eastdragon42 at 12/03/2012 09:46 PM

Posted by Khan at 12/03/2012 12:44 PM

2) Self-collection/production of gold - the value of real world gold would also be $0.25 if we everytime we walked outside a gold nugget would drop whenever we killed some random insect

This literally made me LOL at work. But it's so true... :-)

You're not the only one @eastdragon42 who had that same exact thought, though mine came with some soda coming out of my nose instead of going down the right way as I lol'd so hard the only place for the soda to go was out my nose the wrong way.

LOL ouch!

Posted by baccarat0809 at 12/04/2012 09:22 AM

You're not the only one eastdragon42 who had that same exact thought, though mine came with some soda coming out of my nose instead of going down the right way as I lol'd so hard the only place for the soda to go was out my nose the wrong way.

Hahahaha, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be laughing... that must have been very uncomfortable... it's been awhile since I involuntarily chucked liquid through my nostrils... :)

Back on topic, I think this recent bot banwave is going to effect gold prices. We should see them steadily rise as gold is no longer flowing into the economy nearly as fast. It was headed toward .25/mil, it bottomed at .27/mil, and it's gone up a penny per day.

I'd be a buyer of gold now if you have money both in the RMAH and GAH.

I'm willing to bet the rise in Tome of Secrets has to do with the bot banning wave. Flawless Square Emeralds also hit a 2 week high briefly. Inferno Crafting mats didn't actually change all that much so I guess it's mostly just things that can be picked up off the ground.

I wonder if some of the bots were the ones that were manipulating the emerald and brimstone markets.

Gold still at 0.25€ at EU server. I'm just stacking and buying has much has I can hoping that the price will ocasionally rise when PvP patch comes up.

A risky bet.

I don't think that the bots did anything to emeralds or tomes. While there is still a profit to be made to convert 729 flawless emeralds and 16xx tomes of secrets into a radiant emerald, prices will continue to rise.

Right now you still come out ahead about 1/2mil to do that, so prices still have room to move upwards. If you're keeping it for yourself, it's 2.5 mil cheaper to craft. (Assuming you have all the plans.)

However with the holiday break, it seems the glut of decent items for cheap are disappearing from the auction house. Nothing's getting cheaper, just the lower quality items getting more expensive, higher quality no longer exists.