I've seen many shops so far and some of the shops prices are ridiculous but i can understand why some of the prices are up more then others. The time it takes to go out into the wilderness and grabbing the supplies is like a little handling fee. But what if we could possibly get a Price Guide. Im not saying every shop has to have the same price but a guide line? To see what the average price of a certain item is. We could do this by visiting maybe 20-30 shops and trying to get an average price from all of them without guessing and making it abnormally high and no one wanting to come buy. But in the end it comes down to the shop owners and if they would like something like this mainly to those setting up shops. Just a thought i have many at the moment lol. Thank you for taking the time to read this Regards -Ryukk
The thing is, it's all about Supply and Demand and you're unlikely ever to have a stable average price. People can't always play MC which means their shops will eventually run out which drops the supply but the demand stays the same or generally, with lack of supply, increases, and so the prices need to increase to mirror that demand. Or sometimes, people simply can't be bothered gathering whatever is short that particular day. The only thing you can reliably do is find yourself some good traders, whos prices you like, and stick with them. For example, Glowstone in SMP2 is running out from what I've observed during my gaming times, and I've been the only person supplying Glowstone. I started at 12r per 4 Dust, but have now raised prices to 16r per 4 and in anticipation of my supply exhausting, I am now in the Nether, fighting Ghasts and Pigmen to collect as much as possible. It's not a small undertaking. I've gone well out into the Wild, found a Village, took it over and am going to reinforce and provide defences for the village and with my Nether portal in, I'm now using it as a base of operations. I've took some Fortune pickaxes with me, lots of food and supplies to start a farm to keep it going, and have spent about six hours so far in the Nether dodging fireballs and trying not to get killed by lag as I bridge over lava. All this is because the supply is low, and because of the effort involved to get the Glowstone, it means my prices will be high when I return to recompense for all my outgoings unless someone has put in a pre-order with me at a fixed base price. Also, just like real shops, some things will always be cheaper than the main market price will some will be more expensive. You get attracted to a shop by its cheap prices on staple goods such as wood and sand, and then decide you want to buy something more exotic which is more expensive than the average, but you've actually not lost that much because the basic goods were so cheap. Lots of different methods to the economics of it, but essentially, it'd be too difficult to maintain an average price and you'd then see prices getting drive so low as to devalue everything.
I just try to beat the EMC shop prices. Which won't be hard. Especially when they don't sell what I plan to sell...
This would probably be more effort than it's worth, but I wonder if there would be a way of plugging into the shop system and having a dynamic webpage that lists the average prices for items on a server.
I made my own price guide by using a SPREADSHEET... yes I said it! They have a use. Then I went round all the big shops and noted all their prices. Now I buy and sell the best on SMP3. Its an incredibly boring task but I did find some nice buy/sells to make a few 100 rupees... because... you know... Im pretty poor.
