Magic Items and their resale value

[Blackeagle]

Why should the Owner sell the item to the Merchant for 200 so that the Merchant call sell the item to the Adventurer at such a fat markup?

Selling an object worth a fortune to someone who kills people and takes their stuff for a living sounds pretty risky to me.

The historical record may or may not be germane to a particular campaign, but it is immune to the charge of be "unrealistic".

Haven't you heard? Reality is unrealistic.

 

[Intense_Interest]

Intense_Interest,

You misunderstood my point. It is not a Merchant who would be most likely to offer the good deal. (But in the case of a really really harsh market, why not?)

Nope, pretty sure you just argued that the illiquid market should encourage Merchants to lower prices as well. But if playing mobile goalposts is your own flawed debate tactic, so be it.

It is the Owner who found/earned/stole/inherited the item who is thinking "Gee, I could take 200 for this 1000 gp item now. Or I could make a small effort and I have a good chance of getting 250. Maybe even 300."

Why should the Owner sell the item to the Merchant for 200 so that the Merchant call sell the item to the Adventurer at such a fat markup? Maybe there is an Adventurer out there who would be happy to pay twice or thrice the Merchant's standard low ball offer? Why not put the word on the street and see what happens?

Considering that you've already read the whole "Used Book turnaround" to show that an established buyer is expected to be able to do massive markup in many cases, I don't see where the confusion is here.

Word on the street? You are still arguing from a modern-centric viewpoint. Word on the street is what gets you killed. Trying to do it as a player is a huge metagaming ploy around "PCs face equivalent encounters", so the DM is absolutely invited to throw a grudge-monster Dragon in your face.

So why would anyone rich enough to afford the magic item in question not instead spend it on 100 +1 swords for their army or having the ability to pay those soldiers in his army? Unless they are in desperate need to have a +10 sword of Godslaying, it isn't a worthwhile investment. And considering that you have to get the magic weapon in question from somewhere, is it even worth the risk that the original owner might be still alive? The only people who exist with those confluence of factors are ones that would be powerful enough to break the Point of Light concept, which is against the assumed setting of the rules.

Magic Items are a form of Health Insurance for PCs. Having less of it while you live is a major risk even in making a "small effort", considering that the real price of a magic trinket can go up to the hundreds of thousands of GP and any monster at or above your ability level will gladly kill you for it.

Meanwhile, if you find a stash of 10,000 +1 swords, a merchant would probably ask you to pay him for the amount of risk he is taking, considering that people who like +1 swords enjoy killing other things. It would be much cheaper for a player to convert the whole group into Residiuum, which is still going to be at the 1/5 price range you think is deplorable.

Some small portion of the magic items in existence will have Owners with such incentives. Maybe that portion is 0.5%. Maybe it is higher. Maybe it is lower.

Create a high-magic world with a large enough city, and that means that every day there are some individuals with a huge incentive to go for a higher price. Not so much in smaller cities...but there is always a chance.

Lets build a necessary group of factors:

Heavy Magic
Large City that has a Leadership that allows random citizens to sell any Magical Item to whomever asks
Amount of Adventurers in the world that can access the city in question (that has to be enough to merit a semi-competitive magic item selling market instead of a locked-out protected one)
Rule of Law enough to avoid you or your seller being strong-armed or mugged
Specific demand of your item in question
Then account the chance that the searcher and the finder will ever overlap within the same period of time.

Thats a huge group of assumptions, especially considering that some of them (rule of law vs. free magic item market) are inverse enough to be close to diametrically opposed.

You're hoping that a campaign will be built into not as much of a "realistic" game world than one that kowtows to some game-breaking concept of "fairness".

As for your other points, if relevant, they make strong assumptions about details in the campaign world. Hypothesize that there is a superpowerful Merchant Guild all you want, but there is nothing compelling about such handwaving.

"Maybe there is an adventurer" is the same strong game-world assumption that I posit in the Merchant Guild concept. And because of the Points of Light assumed game universe, my idea of people within a PoL banding together is far more supported than your assumption of multiple, contactable adventurers that are in need of a certain level of magic item.

The historical record may or may not be germane to a particular campaign, but it is immune to the charge of be "unrealistic".

So? "Unapplicable" is a better method to dismiss an argument than "unrealistic", which is what I did.

 

[Mapache]

Why not? You have a better example of something that many people can relate to to prove/disprove the 20% model.

Used Cars? The cars I have traded in were pretty much driven into the ground but I'm guessing if the lot did resell them I got less than 20% of what they sold for.

If you go poke around the Kelly Blue Book, it looks like trade-in prices for cars in good condition are 60-70% of what the dealer resells them for. Used Xbox games are cheap commodities, while cars are expensive and comparatively rare items, in that most people will have at most one of them. Thus, they seem like a better base for the economics of magic item exchange, though neither is an item that is only used by a violent, heavily-armed subset of mercenary nomads. Does anyone have any numbers on illegal weapon trading? That's probably the closest thing in the real world with respect to customers and level of precautions the merchants need to take.

 

[Lanefan]

Er...why are shops and merchants even involved in all this?

If I'm looking to sell a +2 axe I don't need (because I don't use axe) I'm going to take it to the local Fighters' guild and sell it directly to a fellow adventurer. If said fellow adventurer knows it's going to cost x-thousand and take y-time to get one made, I ought to be able to sell it to her for the same x-thousand (or mighty close) she would have spent anyway and she can have the axe right now; bypassing all the middlemen.

Another point: instead of Joe the Merchant being the dealer in stray magic items, I've always had the sale of such things (other than some weapons, armour, and holy items) be the purview of the local wizards' guild. They're the logical place to find such things, and better equipped to defend 'em against thieves.

Lanefan

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Er...why are shops and merchants even involved in all this?

If I'm looking to sell a +2 axe I don't need (because I don't use axe) I'm going to take it to the local Fighters' guild and sell it directly to a fellow adventurer. If said fellow adventurer knows it's going to cost x-thousand and take y-time to get one made, I ought to be able to sell it to her for the same x-thousand (or mighty close) she would have spent anyway and she can have the axe right now; bypassing all the middlemen.

1) There might be no "Fighter Guild"
2) There might be a Fighter Guild, full of non-adventuring Fighters, typically level 1 NPCs, that just don't have the money to buy a +X Sword.

4E does not assume that there are adventurers all around with tons of money. It is you and your close friends that are looting all those dungeons and having all the money. There are probably other adventurers, but most likely not in your area (all those fighting around looting rights would be akward).
If you happen to meet another adventurer along your travels, he probably is quite happy with his +3 Flaming Greatsword, and doesn't really want the spare +2 Thundering Longsword you found. Off course, maybe he could use it as a spare, and you get his +2 Frost Axe in exchange?


---

After reading and thinking about this topic, my favorite way to deal with magical items is barter, without a guarantee that you get exactly what you wanted...

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Nope, pretty sure you just argued that the illiquid market should encourage Merchants to lower prices as well. But if playing mobile goalposts is your own flawed debate tactic, so be it.

If the market is so illiquid, there exists an incentive for even the Merchant to do the fire sale, because even a fire sale would be very profitable. Now the Merchant may choose not to for other reasons or that may not happen often enough to help an Adventurer. Nonetheless the incentive exists.

What you are missing is that the fire sale price is immensely attractive to the Owner who wants to sell.

Considering that you've already read the whole "Used Book turnaround" to show that an established buyer is expected to be able to do massive markup in many cases, I don't see where the confusion is here.

Used books in most cases are disposable. That is why the used prices are so low.

You are the one making modern-centric assumptions, as you have mental habits adapted to a society where so much is considered disposable, regardless of the physical qualities of the item in question. Cars are a better (albeit imperfect) comparison point.

(As for computer games, I have personally sold used computer games for 40-50% of retail. It was just a matter of being willing to go through the effort, which was not even large.)

Word on the street? You are still arguing from a modern-centric viewpoint. Word on the street is what gets you killed. Trying to do it as a player is a huge metagaming ploy around "PCs face equivalent encounters", so the DM is absolutely invited to throw a grudge-monster Dragon in your face.

Actual history proves I am not arguing from a modern point of view. Case closed on that one.

But you are correct that the campaign assumptions matter. Perhaps your interpretation of the PoL-style campaign setting is much more accurate than mine? I could be convinced from that point of view.

That brings me back to a previous point: 1/5 might be justifiable based on very strong assumptions on the campaign world -- but I have doubts that would easily be transferable to most campaign worlds.

I am more than happy to explore what those strong assumptions would be.

"Maybe there is an adventurer" is the same strong game-world assumption that I posit in the Merchant Guild concept. And because of the Points of Light assumed game universe, my idea of people within a PoL banding together is far more supported than your assumption of multiple, contactable adventurers that are in need of a certain level of magic item.

It is hardly an assumption about the game-world, it is a simple observation about human(oid) nature.

"Maybe there is an Adventurer" or "Maybe there is someone rich out there" is what the Owner is saying to himself before he accepts a lowball bid from the Merchant. To suggest that only Merchants ever have appropriate amounts of cash is a strong assumption about the game-world on your part.

My point is not that there is automatically a convenient magic flea market. My point is that plain human(oid) greed plus a sufficiently high commonality of magic items imply that someone(s) will try. Enough magic items in your big city and number of people who will try is non-trivial, as the incentive is so large.

I would also note that if the incentive is very large, the incentive for the existence of effective middle men is also very large. As I already mentioned, middle men do not necessarily need to risk capital; they only have to see the potential rewards relative to the effort to be attractive.

Maybe a PoL campaign can never have nearly enough magic items for us to expect such a thing to arise. But what about some other campaigns?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Selling an object worth a fortune to someone who kills people and takes their stuff for a living sounds pretty risky to me.

Middle men.

In most societies, the powerful have strong incentives to encourage the existence of middle men, so preying on them is a dangerous profession.

It worked out okay for Robin Hood. But Robin Hood is celebrated precisely because he would be an extraordinary (fictional) exception in a world where poaching the King's deer gets you wrapped tightly in wet leather and slowly roasted over a fire in a public place.

 

[vagabundo]

Are we going to need a Fair Trade sticker for the poor adventurers who suffer so much to get the goods??

In my POL greedy city merchants source the stuff from the adventuring merchants in the wilderness and sell in the magic market/auctions in major cities. This could explain the 1/5 market value, a long chain to retail and if the adventurers meet someone in that chain they would happily sell the item for market value to them (with a little wiggle room for Rogues with a hard neck).

There also is a niche for some merchants to have a wide range of magic items for sale, they transport them around in wagons in a couple of bags of holding. A very industrious Eladrand wizard with many rituals could make a lot of money.

Anyway, I'm going to use the 1/5 market value as the Lazy Mans alternative; an adventuring merchant has the gold there and then or wait and see if you can get a better price in the city. There could be good side-treks for adventurers looking to flog their gear at better prices.

 

[Timlagor]

At least NPC crafters can now make a profit on their magic item crafting!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Anyway, I'm going to use the 1/5 market value as the Lazy Mans alternative; an adventuring merchant has the gold there and then or wait and see if you can get a better price in the city. There could be good side-treks for adventurers looking to flog their gear at better prices.

And I support that attitude.

Yes, for simplicity's sake, we should set a standard, crappy, low ball price that is reasonably convenient for our PCs.

IMO better prices should exist, but require some degree of effort.