The Buyer
Eggs are an interesting crafting material to trade. It is only a level 25 crafting material, however, as you can see by gw2db.com it is an ingredient in over 20 recipes up to level 300. Crafting guides also recommend making "Balls of Cookie Dough" to level up Cooking from levels 50-75. When trading eggs the primary person I am selling to are crafters. Crafters are not necessarily watching the market on a day to day basis and do not realize there is an ebb and flow to the market even on a hourly basis. This gives an advantage to the trader in that we can take advantage of their ignorance.
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| Egg Sales |
The Seller
It is also important to understand where the eggs we are purchasing are coming from. Eggs drop in the world from various common mobs, including all moas and drakes (see Eggs on gw2 wiki). They are also obtained from lower level bags. The conclusion is that there will be a constant supply of eggs to the market. We can also assume that the people selling these eggs are relatively ignorant of the market value of their eggs.
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| Egg Purchases |
The Market
When I am the active buyer of eggs, that is I have the highest buying price, eggs flow to me at a steady rate it batches mostly of 1s, 2s, and 3s with the occasional spike up to 10, 20 or even 30. And rarely, I will get a spike of 100 or more. When I am the active seller, that is I am offering the lowest sale price, eggs also flow out at a steady rate; however, when selling I sell in batches of 20-50 most often, rarely spiking above 100. All this seems to confirm my assumptions above. The primary buyer of eggs are crafters leveling from 50-75 and the primary sellers of eggs are PvE players. Both of these groups being relatively ignorant of the day-to-day price change in eggs.
Now by looking at gw2spidy.com's egg page we can see some other interesting things. Starting on November 24th through November 28th the number of sell listings dropped from roughly 40,000 to 10,000. During the same period of time purchase orders went up from roughtly 75,000 to 110,000. This was followed by a large surge in prices which peaked through November 29th and 30th. oday, purchase and sale orders have returned to their November 24th levels, however prices have not.
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| gw2spidy's price chart for eggs, November 24th through December 2nd. |
In the last couple of days I have bought eggs from 15 - 25c and sold them from 35 - 45c making a profit of 11s87c - 58s12c per stack sold, depending on how you track inventory. Either way even on the worst case scenario I am still making a profit. Due to the volume of eggs being traded I can effectively day trade eggs. In the chart below you can see that there are a number of times throughout the day at which you can buy eggs for less that 25c and a number of times when you can sell at above 35c.
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| gw2spidy's price chart for eggs, December 2nd, 9am - 5pm EST |
Conclusions
My only regret is that I did not see the flags in the market before the November 29th surge in prices. I have learned my lesson and hope that others can learn something from this. I hope to talk more about Winter's Day speculation in a future article. If, however, you use eggs as an example, you should be able to start browsing gw2spidy.com for other great potential buys.
Winter's Day aside, eggs are a great commodity to trade due to the constant supply to the trading post from PvE players, the constant demand from Cooks. The relatively small supply on the Trading Post allows for price changes on an hourly basis that can be taken advantage of for profit. Buyer beware, the market appears to be resetting to per November 24th values. Winter's Day speculation should keep the market active until then.
I was going to end this with an egg pun, but I will just let you imagine it instead.
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