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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Goumindong" data-source="post: 4332397" data-attributes="member: 70874">I am going to repost something i put in the other thread on this: As well as repeating what Grabuto just said regarding antique dealers. Low volume means you need high margins to get by.all the arguments against the current 4e rules are not economic in nature nor are they logical.4e is a game. Games need to be balanced. 4e balances buying items by making a bought item, I.E. one that you specifically are looking for to be less valuable than a found item, which may or may not be what you are looking for.Regarding economics:Large margins between buy and sell prices are common in low volume situations. Where there is low volume transaction costs and time on market are increased. These increased costs mean that you need a larger margin to make a profit.E.G. Lets say you could buy magic items at a 5x margin or you could buy standard items at a 20% margin. But it takes 1 year to sell the magic item and it takes 1 week to sell the standard item. A magic item costs at the minimum say, 680 GP and we are looking at 10 for a mundane. So you can buy 1 magic item or you can buy 13.6 swords.In 1 week you have turned your 136 of mundane into 163 gold and you pick up 163 gold worth of mundane items.This continues. In 20 weeks you have bought and sold enough mundane items to be worth 5000 GP. In 52 weeks, the year it would take you to sell that magic item you have made 1.7m gold and are a magnate.Now granted there is going to be some efficiency loss there(probably a lot) as marginal returns decrease. But this only highlights just how much the turn over rate on magic items can easily reduce their profitability. The merchant has to make his rent and keep up the shop, keep it secure, and keep it staffed, all costs incurred which are difficult to eat when you do not have significant income via other sales.There is also the problem with merchants knowing what items reduce to for residium. They aren't going to offer much more than what you can get for the result of disenchanting the item because they know that it will take you a quest to sell the damn thing. So they offer you the disenchanting value of the item and save you the time it takes to sell the item.If you want to sell a magic item for full price in the Points of Light Economy its going to be a quest to do so. Or you are setting up a shoppe and are going to be expected to pay for all the advertisement, staffing, security, and rent that is necessary to sustain that operation and all the risks that that entails without seeing return on your sale for upwards of a year.</blockquote>

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