31 replies to this topic

[Isms]

I was hoping to take advantage of the huge inflation in items being posted on the TP once it came back up. I noticed that copper ore was selling at 21c a piece, but the next tier in ore (iron) was only selling for 7c a piece. I instinctivly put ALL my eggs in one basket, and purchased over 7k iron ore. I now have 2s left and am praying that is goes up.

To all crafters: What was your experience with iron ore? Is there a reason the price is so low? I imagine it's a useful crafting supply...Does 7c seem too low when copper ore is selling for 21c?

[Major_Heartfire]

Iron is still in lower demand than copper because, believe it or not, there are still a lot of people in Tier 1 of crafting.

Copper is receiving a massive influx of supply, but it will also be getting used up. Iron, meanwhile, is being harvested by the majority of the playerbase (I assume most people are still there) but the majority of crafters are not there.

[Wanderlust]

You're going to be sitting on that ore for a good bit, I'm thinking, but you will eventually get a return on it.

[killay]

The problem is that Iron Ore can't be used by Jewelers.

[CondescendGaming]

killay, on 02 September 2012 - 10:32 AM, said:

The problem is that Iron Ore can't be used by Jewelers.

^ This. You have to take into consideration other crafts.

[LanceHardwood]

CondescendGaming, on 02 September 2012 - 10:47 AM, said:

^ This. You have to take into consideration other crafts.

from what I see in my guild only every player and his cactus is running jewelcrafting also iron ore is common waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too common

[Angully]

Iron ore is at least 5x more common than copper ore that's why its worth so little.

[fuzzyeggshell]

I wouldn't say that iron is more common than copper in terms of vein density per area. It's just that atm, most of the playerbase is around level 20-40, which means iron is the only thing they are mining really. I also suspect that most people leveled extremely quickly between 1-20 without mining too much copper due to how easy it is to level and/or not knowing about mining.

IMO iron prices will increase but perhaps not as much as you might expect, and gradually given the fact that people will slowly trickle into the iron crafting range with supplies being this high already. I would estimate them to settle at around 10-15c in 2-4 weeks.

Edited by fuzzyeggshell, 03 September 2012 - 02:57 AM.

[Plutoman101]

Umm, iron ore is still all over the place in higher level areas, too.  40-60 areas.

I would imagine that was a loss right there, or at least a break-even.  There's so much iron ore and it's so cheap that I've really stopped bothering to mine it.

[Gen1tor]

LanceHardwood, on 02 September 2012 - 03:00 PM, said:

from what I see in my guild only every player and his cactus is running jewelcrafting also iron ore is common waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too common

Why JC is so popular? Personally I found it easier to lvl up but this doesn't justify that almost everyone picks it. I picked it too but now I want to drop it because competition is going to be strong!

[Nivrax]

JC along with Cooking are only crafts that benefits all Professions, in the full too. The first one gives gear, the second temporary buffs, you can see where the players are going.

[Icy Spicy]

i personally don't think iron will go up, cant remember what it was yesterday... if you paid 7c for it then you might want to find a way to unload them somehow, but thats just what I think, my research, my money, good luck... 7000 iron is alot of inventory space too

[Major_Heartfire]

Also depends on how much you are planning on selling them for. If you want to sell them for 8c, meaning you make a 15% profit on whatever you bought (roughly, I'm not a math person) then you can sell relatively soon. There is just a huge influx of materials right now as people have been saving up for two weeks to place their items on the TP. If you are looking to sell iron for copper prices, well then good luck because that will be a very long wait that will never end. Iron is less in demand than copper for a variety of reasons, and as such the mass supply will only push prices down.

Remember that if supply is greater than demand, prices go down. If demand is greater than supply, prices go up.

[fuzzyeggshell]

Plutoman101, on 03 September 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

Umm, iron ore is still all over the place in higher level areas, too.  40-60 areas.

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but when I was at those levels I was mostly seeing platinums.

To be honest, I'm fairly certain that almost all materials are undervalued simply due to the high demand of copper/jute, as well as the relatively low amount of currency in game and the fact that people tend to hold onto their cash when markets fluctuate wildly as they are now.

I'm still standing by my estimates for iron ore, but tbh you were better off investing in other materials.

[Lappdancer]

Iron is all over the place since it's used for two tiers of armorsmith crafting.  Even as an armorsmith I've found way more iron than I needed to level up but was always having trouble finding the mats for my jewelery.

[xExitium]

Iron are super common, since WvWvW have them all over too.  Only armorsmith & weaponsmith use them. =/

[Shoros]

Iron Ore is extremely common. I think you can find it from lvl20 up to lvl59. I gathered nearly 600 Iron Ore from simple leveling etc., while I only gathered around 200-300 copper.

[Major_Heartfire]

I think at this point he understands that iron is not going to get up to copper prices. Also, I'd advocate that you don't sell the iron ore price as it is right now. It has definitely bottomed out. I don't remember exactly what I wrote down, but I think iron prices are 2cpu above what a vendor takes them for. In other words: buyers of iron ore are getting the best of the market right now.

[xExitium]

7cp/pc is quite expensive.  Good luck anyway.

[Isms]

Yeah I definitely see now. When the trading post went up for the first time, I was hoping to take advantage of the inflation. I assumed that iron ore would be just the next tier of copper ore, not knowing that it wasn't in demand as highly as copper for all crafts. I'm just gonna hold onto it for now and hope that someday people will be out of the 2nd tier zones long enough for the prices to rise. Regardless, I was investing in the economy as a whole, hoping that 80s will make so much more money, that copper is something to laugh about, and prices rise.

[pssyy]

Iron is common as dirt, and you get 2x Ore procs when mining like 90% of the time.

[EasymodeX]

I have jewelcrafting and tailoring.

I can't use iron ore.  Also, for some reason it seems like I was gathering in the "iron ore tier" for a retardedly long time -- I have much more iron than I ever had copper, and way more iron than I have platinum.

[MattVid]

I tried to stock up on a few things before the TP went live, but it is just a total cluster right now. Considering I already buy Iron ore by the 100's for 4-5c each and the buy order is fulfilled in a matter of minutes really doesn't bode well for the Iron Ore going up in price anytime soon.

So many people are harvesting it, as you are harvesting it from like 18-55. It is simply flooding the market.  There are much better ways to make money than trying to play with resource costs. If anything, you are better off farming the mob dropped crafting mats like totems, bloods, fangs, etc. Your return will be very high since basically everything sells for 1s+ each.

There is also really no way to buy out a lot of anything when there are hundreds of thousands posted up all the time. With how dumb people are being about low-balling everything (to the point of losing money rather than just vendoring stuff), I don't really see the TP being a great way to try to "play the market to make money" currently. Supply is super high, and demand is super low, except for certain things.

[Warskull]

Isms, on 31 August 2012 - 06:11 AM, said:

To all crafters: What was your experience with iron ore? Is there a reason the price is so low? I imagine it's a useful crafting supply...Does 7c seem too low when copper ore is selling for 21c?

Copper is available for about 15 levels.  Even with the full clear bonuses, players aren't likely to harvest more than 250 copper during the course of leveling.  Iron is everywhere from 15-45 and from 45-55 it still pops up a bit.  Players are likely to harvest 400+.  Now that 250 is the max you can store in your collection so the rest either goes on the auction house or in the bank.

The price likely will go up with inflation, however in the end you will have lost money because the gold you get in the future will be worth less than the gold you had now.

Now is not the time to play the trade market.  It is the time to amass gold via vendoring/general PvE and trade that gold for gems.  Look at the gold sellers for every MMO out there.  The demand for real money to gold transactions goes down and the gold supply increases.  You get more and more gold for your dollar as time goes on.  If the same trend follows here, you are likely looking at some of the best gold to gem rates the game will ever see.  Buy your character slots, bank slots, and bag expansions now.  I doubt we will see something as favorable as 25s into 100 gems in the future.

If you find a niche in the trade market where you can immediately make gold, go for it.  There aren't many and if you tell people that margin will go away.

Edited by Warskull, 11 September 2012 - 02:14 PM.

[TerraHero]

Why is copper so high in demand and high priced? Well, basicly it comes down to this. Copper Ore is only really available in the first zone, and parts of the 2nd zone you visit. These are fairly fast zones, and a lot of people did these to death in the BWEs. So people go through these pretty fast.
As a result, the influx of Copper isnt that high. Its only available in 1-1.5zone of levels. And yet, professions need a ton of this stuff. If you dont do multiple starter zones or linger unusually long in a starter zone (way past all the hearts) you never have enough Copper for the crafting needs of 1 discipline. Let alone people who picked combinations like Armorsmith + Jeweler.

Then look at Iron. There is a demand for it, its used as Iron and as Steel. But, Jewelers dont use it at all. And to add to this, Iron is common through a long range of zones. It starts in the 2nd zone (around lv17ish part) and you will still find Iron close to, or into, your 60s. It is, by far, the most common ore in Tyria.

[ilr]

Isms, on 31 August 2012 - 06:11 AM, said:

I was hoping to take advantage of the huge inflation in items being posted on the TP once it came back up. I noticed that copper ore was selling at 21c a piece, but the next tier in ore (iron) was only selling for 7c a piece. I instinctivly put ALL my eggs in one basket, and purchased over 7k iron ore. I now have 2s left and am praying that is goes up.

LMAO.... kiss that money goodbye.   Iron will NEVER go up**.  You shoulda put it in Gold before that went up.


See this is why so many people can't speculate on the market... b/c they don't actually play the Game. (READ:  EXPLORE).  If they did they'd know what drops where and how often. ...along with which nodes still too rare.  You don't play the market in this game by watching price fluctations.  You play it by understanding where the actual supply is coming from.

If I were the OP... I'd dump it ALL for vendor price or whatever or take the loss the next time it slightly upticks, then buy stacks of mithril instead and Forge-->convert them into Orichalcum


** - one exception:  If Anet actually allowed Runes of Holding to drop from game content... But that's not happening anytime soon.

Edited by ilr, 12 September 2012 - 03:28 PM.

[chuckles79]

Iron ore is available in more areas than any other metal.

I never lacked it when I was on tier 2, and at tier 3 I find the wood to be a greater limiter than the metal.

You would have been better off manipulating the market on gold and platinum; as those will only increase over time.

[fuzzyeggshell]

It seems that iron ore is priced at around 12c now, which tbh, is sooner than I had expected.

[Ksielvin]

fuzzyeggshell, on 15 September 2012 - 03:56 PM, said:

It seems that iron ore is priced at around 12c now, which tbh, is sooner than I had expected.

Related to changes Anet made.

[Isms]

Well that was a close one. Iron ore prices went up. Luckily, I also bought 1000s of butter at 1c. That one seemed to turn out well .