More about reprocessing

I just was the beneficiary of a reprocessor doing a massive buyout of one of my sell orders. I always love this.

Since my combat guy in Rens is not a full-on, full-time trader, I don't care about .01 isk wars or keeping the market stable. I want my money and I want it now. I don't want to spend an hour one upping your price. For the item today, the market looked like this:

Sell: 7,000-8,000
Buy: 1,000-1,300
My Reprocess value: 2,400-3,000
"Good" Reprocessing value: 4300-4800

I put up a buy order at 1,500 and am buying hundreds per day. I put up a sell order at for a few hundred at 4,500. This caused others to put up sell orders undercutting mine by .01 isk at a time.

There is no real downside here for me. As long as I buy for under the reprocess value (less fees) I am good. And if someone buys from the sell order, I make even more. The best part about seriously undercutting the market is that someone with good reprocessing skills can come and buy you out and still make money on the spread. I certainly don't mind being a middleman.

It brings in some income and takes almost no time. I get loot, I have to do something with it. I sell most of it, except I take the time to learn whether I can make more by taking care of the item myself. This "reprocess buy" didn't make me a ton of money, but free money is free money. And it freed up another order. I just put up another stack. Let's see if he buys it again.

And he probably will.

This reprocessor found an opportunity to make some easy money buying things at below mineral value, but they didn't take the next step and put up a corresponding buy order. If he/she is willing to accept a small margin buying from a sell order, why not trump my buy order at 2,000 or even more?

If this works, it shows that you don't have to spend a lot of time training skills to reprocess things - just put up sell orders at a little less than perfect reprocessing and wait for the experts to buy your stuff.

(Originally written on 9/27/09)

Update: The same person bought three more stacks on separate days before figuring out that maybe their own buy order would be a better idea. And then they .01'ed me. Silly reprocessor. I upped the price by a hundred. They did it again and I increased by 200. I still own the best buy order and, being Saturday night, business is good.