The 40 plat price cap

It seems that I'm always going on about how you need to find the perfect price point for your markets on your server. It's of utmost importance to maximizing your profits to balance rate of sales with profit and I think I've found mine for rift. And that number is 40 platinum for everything, it's a sweeping generalization of prices sure but it seems to fit the bill, no pun intended. Naturally there isn't anything in game that you can auction for 40 platinum that isn't purple so that's what I'm going to be focusing on today. Of course should anybody be aware of a blue item that they can sell for that much I'd be thrilled to know!

The first epic that I crafted was a black iron hatchet, an epic 1h axe for warriors. It began to sell steadily once prices were at an acceptable point for me to list them, it began to sell consistently. I started listing them at 26 platinum which is about a 6p profit and over time slowly raised the price bit by bit as each one sold. However once I reached a 40 platinum price tag they just stopped selling. When something stops selling entirely, you'd think that something has changed.

It might be a patch, a hotfix, or just the community's view on the targeted class in general, but in this case the only thing that had changed was my price tag. I dropped the price back down to 38 and voila, they start selling regularly again. So 195% ish of the material cost is the ideal pricing point for this item.

Strange sure, but one case doesn't make a pattern.

The next epic I started to sell was the flesh reaper, this one is a bit more expensive to craft at about 28 platinum in materials. So I started to list these at 50 platinum with a fancy augment. Not a single sale. Ok so maybe 50 is a bit too much for an entry level epic and I drop the price to 45 platinum. A week later and I finally get a sale. Woohoo! So I craft another and list it back at 45 and sell another but at the same slow pace.

I get undercut by a few gold and I drop the price down to 39.55 platinum. Two days later it sold and I crafted another one to list for the same price. I sold yet another that week. The other one either sold or expired by the time I went to list another and I put it back up for 45 to see what happens. What happened was the exact same thing!

Ok so I'm two for two on selling things under 40 platinum better than higher prices, that is until I mention Martyr's fist and faith forged spaulders. Both sexy cleric purple gear, both cost roughly 25ish platinum to craft. And yes, both take forever and a day to sell with a 41+ platinum price tag.

So what's the deal here? Obviously people are willing to pay top dollar for crafted epics, but not many are. That part is easy to explain and I've covered it a few times so far, there just isn't a lot of money in the world period. There's a lot of quests and vendor bait but there's a lot of gold sinks as well so not many people can afford that.

The real question here is why 40? What makes this the magic number? Yes 39.99 is not particularly different than 40, but that bit of pricing psychology has been proven to be very effective for ages now. So I will ask again: what makes 40 platinum so special and not 45? Why not 100 platinum? We shall see.


Thanks for stopping by!