iribuya [2103695] —
Original article
Pawn shop DP price dropped twice in two weeks. Can prices fail to enjoy annual summer boost. Blood Donor Day expected to have minimal impact. FHCs / EDVDs continue to lose value.
May has been an interesting time in the trading community, with Museum Day, two pawn shop price drops and a bizarrely flat can economy contributing to a sense of confusion among many traders. But here to sail you through the choppy waters of uncertainty is the famous bazaar trader Iribuya, who is the author of this month's Market Report.
EVENT CALENDAR
Before we begin, I'd like to point out the importance to traders of the newly released Event Calendar, where citizens can see a full list of all the special events in Torn. It can be found on the left side of your standard layout at the bottom of "Areas". You can hover your mouse and see the name of the event and if there are any special effects or perks which come with it.
As a trader these events are important because they can cause large changes in prices - demand for certain items might go up or down on these days, offering a unique chance to sell high or buy low. We've seen 420 Day pass with an increased Cannabis price earlier this year, and as we'll demonstrate later, Museum Day also had a profound effect on the trading economy.
Contrary to what the calendar displays, most event days now last for 48 hours, as this enables people from all timezones to take full advantage. The typical pattern of deployment is that twelve hours are added either side of a real-life event day according to Torn City Time. For example, St Patrick's Day is on the 17th of March, so its bonuses will begin at noon TCT on the 16th and cease at noon TCT on the 18th.
It is expected that all daily events will be amended to conform to this format, with the rapidly approaching Blood Donor Day no exception.
BLOOD DONOR DAY
Coming up on June 14th we have the second round of World Blood Donor Day when life and cooldown penalties for drawing blood are reduced by 50%. This means people will be extra motivated to use their Empty Bloodbags and fill them up, so will we see an increase in their price?
Only slightly. Most factions have a huge stockpile of empties so their members can slowly fill up the armoury for when wartime comes around. This, in combination with the Biology Education course that's needed to extract blood, makes this event only useful for a small segment of the Torn population. Last year we did see a spike of $2,000 on top of the basic price of $17,700, but nothing anyone should worry about long term.
Filled blood bags will decrease in price as supplies rise, but last year's figures show only a small effect on circulation (pun intended). Therefore, I wouldn't expect too much of a decrease in blood prices this year. Last year's Blood Donor Day article explains how this event works, and any changes will be announced by the newspaper around 2-3 days before it begins.
Predictions:
iribuya: "Price of Empty Blood bags will slowly rise 5-15% and then drop back again on June 14th to their old price. Filled blood bags might see a temporary drop, but these items are very unstable already, so it's hard to pinpoint the exact cause."
MUSEUM DAY
May 18th was Museum day, and this meant a 10% boost to museum point payouts. This might not seem like a huge increase in the context of a single plushie or flower set (11 points instead of 10), but for many, set-running is their main income, so a little change can have large effects - some people make 5-9m per day by following guides and using the latest market development tools.
The price of plushies was expected to rise leading up to the event and even more so after the Newspaper reminder. As you can see from the following graphs, this prediction proved true.
CHAMOIS
PANDA
What is interesting is that almost every single plushie has dropped in valuation after the event to a price lower than before Museum Day started. A similar trend was seen in flower prices too, and this drop comes in spite of the fact that circulation for these items fell massively, as hundreds of thousands of plushie and flower sets were exchanged over the event's duration.
Demand for plushies and flowers simply hasn't increased in line with the circulation drop, and that means the overall value for these items has dipped slightly below its usual figure. But the sudden exchange of thousands of sets had a knock-on effect on the points market too, with an influx causing a gradual downturn in prices in the aftermath of Museum Day.
Points have been on a steady decline for months now, and this event was considered a potential benchmark for the future development of the market - a healthy economy doesn't lie, and we saw a nice drop. However, the effects of Museum Day on the open points market were somewhat relieved when the Pawn Shop didn't update its city-point prices before the event started.
Some smart people realised they could sell their freshly converted sets for points to the shop for quick and safe cash and still make a profit. The ability to sell points to the pawn shop at close to market price meant fewer points were sold on the open market, thus alleviating the increase in supply. After the event, points had a moment of balance, but without further intervention, they look like continuing their descent for some time yet.
Predictions:
iribuya: Price of Points will keep dropping and might stay balanced, hitting certain plateau's like 47k and 46k for a short while. I have no idea when this will stop, but it would not surprise me if next year we'll be sitting at 40k / point unless Ched decides to make points useful in extra areas like Single life refill, Happy Boost, Cosmetic Upgrades, Armour coloring. Make some nice suggestions.
ORAN: I predict points prices will increase as they're getting expensive to build as flowers and plushies prices are increasing too.
FEATHERY HOTEL COUPONS
There are many items which provide energy in Torn, but the one with the lowest cooldown time, Feathery Hotel Coupons, has been slowly losing value of late; $14.8m to 14.2m over six months. That's too little to actually be worth panicking over, though, as the big war is long gone and we're just seeing supply and demand return to normal levels.
There are no imminent events that are known to cause price-spikes with FHC's, but in September, the yearly Elimination contest will likely see their price go up. So if you plan on munching the coupons to get your team to the top, now might be a good time to buy up a small stock. You can also buy now and sell them in September for a higher price, but that's a long term investment that might not give the best return-rate.
Predictions:
iribuya; Price of FHC will not go down much in the coming months. I expect it will stay above $14m. Good Low-Risk-Low-Return investment for Septembers guaranteed price hike.
ORAN: FHCs at 14m is what most people have in mind and I think they would hover right around 14m to 14.2m maybe 14.3 if demand goes up or if someone gets a good book
Person 3:
EROTIC DVDS
This item has seen a massive decrease in price since mid-April, and the end is not yet in sight. In less then a month E-DVDs went from a stable $4.8m to a meagre $4.1m, its lowest valuation since August 2018. At first, big bazaar sellers like metalkarmak would not accept such a drop and kept buying up cheap pornos hoping it would turn around. But if the supply and demand of an item change greatly, it is often impossible to turn back the tide.
My initial guess was that the surge in new players had slowed down and premium training was not seen as worth that much. A basic happy jump with 5 DVD's for $25m was just too much and not worth it for the newcomers. However, a quick look at the City Hall user graph shows the intake of new players increasing over the past few months. Nevertheless, while Happy Jumping is still the best way to gain early stats, maybe the hype surrounding this method was overinflated, and E-DVD prices are finally levelling as a result.
Predictions:
iribuya: Price of Erotic DVD's will probably hover just above $4,100,000 for a while, but could also see a dramatic decrease no one expects. Do not invest in them now.
ORAN: Erotic DVDs dropping was a surprise but looking at the market they seem to be remain 4m+ and up to 4.2M at most times.
CANS
Cans, like FHCs, are a popular source of premium energy. There are three types of can (Small-Medium-Large) and their prices are always in a dance with each other. Their annual deflation caused by Christmas town began to partially recover during April, with prices just $100-200k below their pre-CT valuation. For some cans, such as X-Mass and Tourine, this trend has continued. But for every other can, May has seen their recovery stall and level off.
However, this plateau may not last for long. Over the past two summers, there has been a huge increase in can prices which tends to kick off in late spring and keep growing until August / September. This could be because Elimination starts in the fall, and people are just 'investing' in cans to sell / use them during elimination.
But this year the spring growth trend has not yet begun - prices have been flat and falling since January.
SANTA SHOOTERS
TOURINE ELITE
So if the growth spurt hasn't yet kicked in when we're almost in June, will it ever begin? I feel a short delay in the can price rise is nothing to worry about, as there could be many reasons for it. Some players may have excess cans left over in reserve from the great war, and others might be holding on to their supplies in anticipation of a possible can event day in future. With prices stalling at the moment, cans seem to be a reasonably safe investment right now. Their summer price rise might not be as dramatic as in previous years, but it will happen eventually.
Predictions:
iribuya: Price of cans will very slowly rise until September. Good investment.
ORAN: E drinks are indeed a good investment and their prices will continue to rise and peak right at or before elim 2k19
DONATOR PACKS
The Donator Pack duplicators have been perma-banned for almost three months now, and we're finally seeing a healthy market again. The pawn shop resale price was dropped halfway through writing this article to $24,500,000 from $24,700,000, so market prices will almost certainly follow suit. Pawn shop DP prices have been consistently reduced over the past six months, falling incrementally from a value of $26,300,000 in October 2018.
The value of DPs on the item market follows this trend precisely, with a similarly continuous fall in effect since November 2018. If you're looking to make money from this item, be aware that some traders will buy DPs for a higher price in the hope they can flip it for a small percentage more on the item market later. How much more depends greatly on what the Economist chooses to do over the next month.
Torn's Economist changed the pawn price of DPs twice in May, with this marking the first alteration since late February when two changes were also made. If this trend continues, it may be that we have to wait until August for another alteration, but even then we can only expect something in the region of $200-300k higher or lower, depending on the requirements of the economy.
Predictions:
iribuya: Market price of Donator Packs will not decrease or increase by much over the next few months.
ORAN: Donator packs will hover around 25M with minor adjustments and sometimes up to 25.5m If someone decides to store their cash. Also, the economist better explain why pawn was dropped even tho they were above average.
LOGISTICS COMPANY
It is too early to tell what the specials of this new company will be worth until they go on sale, and with the highest rated Logistics Firms currently on just two stars (eighteen companies) it may be some time before we find out. The effects of the seven-star special will kick in sooner though - possibly in around a month - with the Contraband perk giving players a random shipment of foreign items for just 50 job points a time.
Thankfully, it's not possible to choose a country or item type, so the items provided will be totally random - no weapons, armour or ultra-valuable items will be provided. You can receive 100 Crazy Straws from Mexico or maybe 50 Xanax from South Africa, meaning the first people to use this special are basically gambling and might get very lucky.
Since we don't know the value limits on these items, it's hard to predict the scale of the effects they'll have on the prices of foreign products. Some kind of drop is likely, but to what extent is not yet discernible. For the 10* special it's also too early to speculate, but let's have a go anyway. I expect the first usages will go for a TON of money.
It costs 250 job points for one Logistics Report, so a price of $250m may be paid in the special's early days. I expect this price will drop rapidly as players figure out the specific worth of this special to their companies, though. It is known that LR's provide greater effects to low-star companies, so the price may eventually have to be tailored to reflect that fact.
Predictions:
iribuya: Prices of random items abroad will not change at all because of this special initially, but this could change if more is known about the limitations of the special.
ORAN: I think at this point any guess for logistic company prices would be pretty unreliable and also I think their impact would be minimal.
HORSE HEAD
Earlier this month, I wrote a little post on the forums about Horse Heads and how overpowered they are. It got the community talking about them, and some people realised they didn't work the same as toilet paper / dog poop / stink bombs. These items lose the receiver 25% happy, but a horse head placed inside a parcel can be much more destructive.
I was hit by one when I least expected it, and all of my Nerve / Energy / Happy were obliterated. At the time, I didn't know what hit me and almost made a bug report. Then I realised, and I asked the sender to explain. I was shocked that an item costing just $1.8m on the market could be so devastating, so I wrote a post about it. Now I must make a confession.
Upon learning of the horse head's destructiveness, I bought the item up to a certain price in the hope my forum-thread would cause an increase in the value. This plan worked on a very small scale, but it was worth it for the experience anyway. Take note people: sometimes it's possible to influence the markets if you spread a little rumour or (fake)-information. If you think this was a one-off, take a look at the infamous bug-report about the Coin Set gym bonus rumour L4Suicide started.
WRITE THE NEXT REPORT
Are you an experienced trader with some insider tips and observations you'd like to share? Then please contact the Torn City Times today and offer yourself up to write next month's market report.
May's Market Report was brought to you by iribuya, one of Torn's most popular traders. Together in the Torn City Trader group with eski, ORAN and Mary, we've made a combined 50,000 trades, served 50,000 bazaar customers and made almost 2 Trillion sales-value through our bazaars alone! 100% safe / friendly / fair / quick / clear trades guaranteed.
EVENT CALENDAR
Before we begin, I'd like to point out the importance to traders of the newly released Event Calendar, where citizens can see a full list of all the special events in Torn. It can be found on the left side of your standard layout at the bottom of "Areas". You can hover your mouse and see the name of the event and if there are any special effects or perks which come with it.
As a trader these events are important because they can cause large changes in prices - demand for certain items might go up or down on these days, offering a unique chance to sell high or buy low. We've seen 420 Day pass with an increased Cannabis price earlier this year, and as we'll demonstrate later, Museum Day also had a profound effect on the trading economy.
Contrary to what the calendar displays, most event days now last for 48 hours, as this enables people from all timezones to take full advantage. The typical pattern of deployment is that twelve hours are added either side of a real-life event day according to Torn City Time. For example, St Patrick's Day is on the 17th of March, so its bonuses will begin at noon TCT on the 16th and cease at noon TCT on the 18th.
It is expected that all daily events will be amended to conform to this format, with the rapidly approaching Blood Donor Day no exception.
BLOOD DONOR DAY
Coming up on June 14th we have the second round of World Blood Donor Day when life and cooldown penalties for drawing blood are reduced by 50%. This means people will be extra motivated to use their Empty Bloodbags and fill them up, so will we see an increase in their price?
Only slightly. Most factions have a huge stockpile of empties so their members can slowly fill up the armoury for when wartime comes around. This, in combination with the Biology Education course that's needed to extract blood, makes this event only useful for a small segment of the Torn population. Last year we did see a spike of $2,000 on top of the basic price of $17,700, but nothing anyone should worry about long term.
Filled blood bags will decrease in price as supplies rise, but last year's figures show only a small effect on circulation (pun intended). Therefore, I wouldn't expect too much of a decrease in blood prices this year. Last year's Blood Donor Day article explains how this event works, and any changes will be announced by the newspaper around 2-3 days before it begins.
Predictions:
iribuya: "Price of Empty Blood bags will slowly rise 5-15% and then drop back again on June 14th to their old price. Filled blood bags might see a temporary drop, but these items are very unstable already, so it's hard to pinpoint the exact cause."
MUSEUM DAY
May 18th was Museum day, and this meant a 10% boost to museum point payouts. This might not seem like a huge increase in the context of a single plushie or flower set (11 points instead of 10), but for many, set-running is their main income, so a little change can have large effects - some people make 5-9m per day by following guides and using the latest market development tools.
The price of plushies was expected to rise leading up to the event and even more so after the Newspaper reminder. As you can see from the following graphs, this prediction proved true.
CHAMOIS
PANDA
What is interesting is that almost every single plushie has dropped in valuation after the event to a price lower than before Museum Day started. A similar trend was seen in flower prices too, and this drop comes in spite of the fact that circulation for these items fell massively, as hundreds of thousands of plushie and flower sets were exchanged over the event's duration.
Demand for plushies and flowers simply hasn't increased in line with the circulation drop, and that means the overall value for these items has dipped slightly below its usual figure. But the sudden exchange of thousands of sets had a knock-on effect on the points market too, with an influx causing a gradual downturn in prices in the aftermath of Museum Day.
Points have been on a steady decline for months now, and this event was considered a potential benchmark for the future development of the market - a healthy economy doesn't lie, and we saw a nice drop. However, the effects of Museum Day on the open points market were somewhat relieved when the Pawn Shop didn't update its city-point prices before the event started.
Some smart people realised they could sell their freshly converted sets for points to the shop for quick and safe cash and still make a profit. The ability to sell points to the pawn shop at close to market price meant fewer points were sold on the open market, thus alleviating the increase in supply. After the event, points had a moment of balance, but without further intervention, they look like continuing their descent for some time yet.
Predictions:
iribuya: Price of Points will keep dropping and might stay balanced, hitting certain plateau's like 47k and 46k for a short while. I have no idea when this will stop, but it would not surprise me if next year we'll be sitting at 40k / point unless Ched decides to make points useful in extra areas like Single life refill, Happy Boost, Cosmetic Upgrades, Armour coloring. Make some nice suggestions.
ORAN: I predict points prices will increase as they're getting expensive to build as flowers and plushies prices are increasing too.
FEATHERY HOTEL COUPONS
There are many items which provide energy in Torn, but the one with the lowest cooldown time, Feathery Hotel Coupons, has been slowly losing value of late; $14.8m to 14.2m over six months. That's too little to actually be worth panicking over, though, as the big war is long gone and we're just seeing supply and demand return to normal levels.
There are no imminent events that are known to cause price-spikes with FHC's, but in September, the yearly Elimination contest will likely see their price go up. So if you plan on munching the coupons to get your team to the top, now might be a good time to buy up a small stock. You can also buy now and sell them in September for a higher price, but that's a long term investment that might not give the best return-rate.
Predictions:
iribuya; Price of FHC will not go down much in the coming months. I expect it will stay above $14m. Good Low-Risk-Low-Return investment for Septembers guaranteed price hike.
ORAN: FHCs at 14m is what most people have in mind and I think they would hover right around 14m to 14.2m maybe 14.3 if demand goes up or if someone gets a good book
Person 3:
EROTIC DVDS
This item has seen a massive decrease in price since mid-April, and the end is not yet in sight. In less then a month E-DVDs went from a stable $4.8m to a meagre $4.1m, its lowest valuation since August 2018. At first, big bazaar sellers like metalkarmak would not accept such a drop and kept buying up cheap pornos hoping it would turn around. But if the supply and demand of an item change greatly, it is often impossible to turn back the tide.
My initial guess was that the surge in new players had slowed down and premium training was not seen as worth that much. A basic happy jump with 5 DVD's for $25m was just too much and not worth it for the newcomers. However, a quick look at the City Hall user graph shows the intake of new players increasing over the past few months. Nevertheless, while Happy Jumping is still the best way to gain early stats, maybe the hype surrounding this method was overinflated, and E-DVD prices are finally levelling as a result.
Predictions:
iribuya: Price of Erotic DVD's will probably hover just above $4,100,000 for a while, but could also see a dramatic decrease no one expects. Do not invest in them now.
ORAN: Erotic DVDs dropping was a surprise but looking at the market they seem to be remain 4m+ and up to 4.2M at most times.
CANS
Cans, like FHCs, are a popular source of premium energy. There are three types of can (Small-Medium-Large) and their prices are always in a dance with each other. Their annual deflation caused by Christmas town began to partially recover during April, with prices just $100-200k below their pre-CT valuation. For some cans, such as X-Mass and Tourine, this trend has continued. But for every other can, May has seen their recovery stall and level off.
However, this plateau may not last for long. Over the past two summers, there has been a huge increase in can prices which tends to kick off in late spring and keep growing until August / September. This could be because Elimination starts in the fall, and people are just 'investing' in cans to sell / use them during elimination.
But this year the spring growth trend has not yet begun - prices have been flat and falling since January.
SANTA SHOOTERS
TOURINE ELITE
So if the growth spurt hasn't yet kicked in when we're almost in June, will it ever begin? I feel a short delay in the can price rise is nothing to worry about, as there could be many reasons for it. Some players may have excess cans left over in reserve from the great war, and others might be holding on to their supplies in anticipation of a possible can event day in future. With prices stalling at the moment, cans seem to be a reasonably safe investment right now. Their summer price rise might not be as dramatic as in previous years, but it will happen eventually.
Predictions:
iribuya: Price of cans will very slowly rise until September. Good investment.
ORAN: E drinks are indeed a good investment and their prices will continue to rise and peak right at or before elim 2k19
DONATOR PACKS
The Donator Pack duplicators have been perma-banned for almost three months now, and we're finally seeing a healthy market again. The pawn shop resale price was dropped halfway through writing this article to $24,500,000 from $24,700,000, so market prices will almost certainly follow suit. Pawn shop DP prices have been consistently reduced over the past six months, falling incrementally from a value of $26,300,000 in October 2018.
The value of DPs on the item market follows this trend precisely, with a similarly continuous fall in effect since November 2018. If you're looking to make money from this item, be aware that some traders will buy DPs for a higher price in the hope they can flip it for a small percentage more on the item market later. How much more depends greatly on what the Economist chooses to do over the next month.
Torn's Economist changed the pawn price of DPs twice in May, with this marking the first alteration since late February when two changes were also made. If this trend continues, it may be that we have to wait until August for another alteration, but even then we can only expect something in the region of $200-300k higher or lower, depending on the requirements of the economy.
Predictions:
iribuya: Market price of Donator Packs will not decrease or increase by much over the next few months.
ORAN: Donator packs will hover around 25M with minor adjustments and sometimes up to 25.5m If someone decides to store their cash. Also, the economist better explain why pawn was dropped even tho they were above average.
LOGISTICS COMPANY
It is too early to tell what the specials of this new company will be worth until they go on sale, and with the highest rated Logistics Firms currently on just two stars (eighteen companies) it may be some time before we find out. The effects of the seven-star special will kick in sooner though - possibly in around a month - with the Contraband perk giving players a random shipment of foreign items for just 50 job points a time.
Thankfully, it's not possible to choose a country or item type, so the items provided will be totally random - no weapons, armour or ultra-valuable items will be provided. You can receive 100 Crazy Straws from Mexico or maybe 50 Xanax from South Africa, meaning the first people to use this special are basically gambling and might get very lucky.
Since we don't know the value limits on these items, it's hard to predict the scale of the effects they'll have on the prices of foreign products. Some kind of drop is likely, but to what extent is not yet discernible. For the 10* special it's also too early to speculate, but let's have a go anyway. I expect the first usages will go for a TON of money.
It costs 250 job points for one Logistics Report, so a price of $250m may be paid in the special's early days. I expect this price will drop rapidly as players figure out the specific worth of this special to their companies, though. It is known that LR's provide greater effects to low-star companies, so the price may eventually have to be tailored to reflect that fact.
Predictions:
iribuya: Prices of random items abroad will not change at all because of this special initially, but this could change if more is known about the limitations of the special.
ORAN: I think at this point any guess for logistic company prices would be pretty unreliable and also I think their impact would be minimal.
HORSE HEAD
Earlier this month, I wrote a little post on the forums about Horse Heads and how overpowered they are. It got the community talking about them, and some people realised they didn't work the same as toilet paper / dog poop / stink bombs. These items lose the receiver 25% happy, but a horse head placed inside a parcel can be much more destructive.
I was hit by one when I least expected it, and all of my Nerve / Energy / Happy were obliterated. At the time, I didn't know what hit me and almost made a bug report. Then I realised, and I asked the sender to explain. I was shocked that an item costing just $1.8m on the market could be so devastating, so I wrote a post about it. Now I must make a confession.
Upon learning of the horse head's destructiveness, I bought the item up to a certain price in the hope my forum-thread would cause an increase in the value. This plan worked on a very small scale, but it was worth it for the experience anyway. Take note people: sometimes it's possible to influence the markets if you spread a little rumour or (fake)-information. If you think this was a one-off, take a look at the infamous bug-report about the Coin Set gym bonus rumour L4Suicide started.
WRITE THE NEXT REPORT
Are you an experienced trader with some insider tips and observations you'd like to share? Then please contact the Torn City Times today and offer yourself up to write next month's market report.
May's Market Report was brought to you by iribuya, one of Torn's most popular traders. Together in the Torn City Trader group with eski, ORAN and Mary, we've made a combined 50,000 trades, served 50,000 bazaar customers and made almost 2 Trillion sales-value through our bazaars alone! 100% safe / friendly / fair / quick / clear trades guaranteed.
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