The Character Bazzarr

I have done something that other people have done many times before.  I have sold my first character and I am deciding how I feel about it.

For any that do not know, you can buy and sell characters for ISK in Eve, CCP sanctioned.  There is a whole section of the forums called the Character Bazaar set up for this.  Because Eve is Eve and the players are abnormal this is how some people make money. It is how other people make changes.  Sometimes it is how someone finances something or repays a debt.  Some players skip the time part of skill training and buy themselves a character that is already at their goal point.  It doesn't have to be anything magical to be brought or sold on the bazaar   This is Eve after all.

I'm attracted to things that make ISK.  I'm also willing to try most things out once or twice.  Sometimes it is a no.  Anything that is grinding is a no. I missed the Faction Warfare train because I was that disinterested in FW that the sweet, lurid call of ISK could not tempt me to play in that part of the sandbox.

But selling characters has been something of interest. I don't want to buy. Some of it is that I enjoy sculpting my character myself.  Their look, their name, their mistakes in the skill plan; all of it is me.  Someone elses character feels less personal in some way.  Thankfully, not everyone has my issues and the character market is alive and well for everyone else.

Last September, on one of the power of two deals I decided to make a six month alt.  I didn't know what I'd do with her.  At the time I was interested in trying ganking or RvB and I started to train into that. However, I lost interest and moved on to making her a jump freighter alt.  My booster business was going well and I had started to use black frog instead of the corporate jump freighter.  I thought that I could train her into a jump freighter and move her back onto my account and one day afford a jump freighter.

I then promptly displayed zero forethought or sense and made her Minmatar and decided upon a Nomad because I liked the name.  That made a lot of sense to me at that time.  However, a few weeks later I started Chella on her Carrier path.  Working out the skill training plans I quickly realized that Chella would be able to fly a jump freighter.  She can already fly a freighter if I plug in the skill book.  I would have the jump skills as part of my carrier path.  I did not need a dedicated jump freighter alt and if I did it only made sense for it to be the same racial ship as Chella so that they could share it.

Now I had an alt I didn't know what to do with.

What about selling her?

I could give it a try.  I did some searches and decided that I'd keep her a jump freighter pilot.  They are useful and someone always needs one.  I figured I could make a few billion off of her and see how I liked character trading.  I know lots of people buy and sell making their ISK with flipping.  I decided to dip my toes in the market and see how I liked it.

Skilling an account you are not doing anything with is not hard.  I made some errors along the way anyway.  I have those types of talents. The biggest mistake I made was not skilling her into implants early on.  The next time I do this it will be my first path.  Second she has some deviations that came from me not knowing what to do with her at first.  I was skilling her for sale so I wanted her to be appealing but the time frame to be reasonable.  That meant a lot of IV instead of V skills for the high end stuff.   Was the 53 days to Jump Freighter V worth the time I'd have to pay/plex for?

It can get expensive.  As I have learned with Chella, skill books start to go up in price quickly when its ships that require advanced spaceship command..  The money will come back when the character sells but that has to be factored into the profit you are looking at.  Racial Freighters skillbook cost 67.5 mil.  Jump Freighters skillbook cost 90 million.  The prices are all doable but it is a lot of ISK if someone is working with a tight income and a pay off that is months down the road.  Factor in paying for the account or plex and all of these things eat into your budget.

Also, the seller pays the transfer fee.  This is 20 USD or 2 PLEX.  Another factor into the end profit.  What may seem like a lot of ISK is going to be eaten up in the production cost of the character   Not being overly good at these things instead of sitting down and working out neat equations and values I just threw myself into it and charged ahead.

It only gets exciting when the last skill you have decided upon needing before the character is placed on the market finishes.  Until then it is skill queue online.  There is a list of rules to read about posting a character for sale.  It is sensible stuff.  NPC corp, disclose a neg wallet, disclose kill rights, don't lie, no scams.

I used eveboard to make a link so that potential buyers can view the skill list easier.  It also lets you show things like wallet and implants.

Then it was just research a price, home I was not screwing myself in either direction and post.  I got my first response in about an hour and about six hours later someone offered my buy out.  Maybe my price was a bit low or maybe they just liked what they saw and no bullshitting.  I did the transfer the next day once they sent the ISK and poof, I had ISK and they had a character.

It was rather painless.

I can't see myself flipping characters.  However, when things like the power of two pop up the discount for the 6 months is well worth building the character.  It is a time sink to do.  No instant gratification.  If I was better at evaluating accounts and cleaning up their skills and flipping it is a lot of potential ISK to be made.  I'm not that person however.  My little experiment was fun.

I then ran off and sank 400 mil into Blink to reward myself.  I like playing Blink and the money I dump into it is with full expectation of not getting any back.  However, I seem to do pretty well as that I am up.  I walked away with 840 million which was 440 million over what I put in.  That was a nice little ending to the situation.