TCS: Opting Out of Speculation

The announcement of the Winter expansion plans has, as expected, thrown the market for a loop. People are buying gentries to build customs offices like crazy according to a tweet by CCP. The moment the interceptor changes were announced the interceptor market was wiped clean by speculators and stock pilers.

I admit, I logged on my market alt and grabbed a handful of the four interceptors that I fly before the market vanished or the prices soared up. I purchased them for me and not for TCS.

For TCS I found myself faced with an interesting dilemma. I could up the price of the interceptors that I had listed. I could pull the interceptors that I had listed. Or, I could wait.

I chose to wait. As expected, some purchased me out of interceptors a few hours later. Molden Heath is off the major paths so someone had to come region shopping to find mine. I let them sell for what I had listed them at. The focus on TCS has never been to ride speculation. I don’t plan to start now. It is a line between what I may do for myself and what I will do with my store concept for the community that it  is in.

Now, I have no interceptors on the market. I have one or two in stock. I think. My electronic assault frigates were also purchased. That is the most amusing thing. I have sold a total of 2 since the store opened. Now every single one is sold.

I decided that I am going to have to accept this gap in the market for right now. It is only a short term thing. The goal of TCS is not to feed a market speculators pocket. I feel that is what I will accomplish right now. For my boys, they can have the interceptors that I have hoarded at their original prices if they are interested. Besides that, I will wait to see what happens with the prices once the expansion comes out.

Everything is going to be in flux until the release. Then it will be a matter of supply and demand as people want to try new toys. I suspect that CCP released the change now, instead of in a ship balancing thread, for that exact reason. Suppliers have two months to amp up their production. And they will. Invention lines will start cranking out the ships. The more on the market the sooner prices will settle into their new price point.

This time I am going to try to skip the mistakes of Odyssey when it comes to buying speculation and expansion touched items when it comes to my store.