Anomalous Prices

CCP is running a contest that may be of some interest to wspace residents.  It is detailed in a recent dev blog titled Anomalous Materials: The Research Race of YC 116.  The key parts:

The empire navies are requesting donations of Neural Network Analyzers and Sleeper Data Libraries to help them [technobabble]. 

... this storyline and the associated donation drive will lead directly to new technology falling into the hands of players in the near future. The relative success of each empire’s donation drive will determine in what order each faction will get access to this new technology. 

Each faction navy will also express their gratitude through a special ingame item representing an honorary commission to their forces. The commissions will be given to the character that donates the highest value of Neural Network Analyzers and Sleeper Data Libraries (combined and weighted) to each faction over the course of the event.

This event is open now, and will run until downtime on Tuesday, October 14th.

So, two things of interest here.  First, until next Tuesday, Neural Network Analyzers (NNAs) and Sleeper Data Libraries (SDLs) should sell at a premium.  Ordinarily NNAs sell to NPC buy orders for 50000 ISK.  SDLs sell for 200000 ISK.  There is no reason to take less, and (blue loot being useless otherwise) no reason for anyone to offer more.  The NPC price, of course, won't change.  But the prices at market hubs will rise.

How far will prices rise?  This we cannot know.  Since the only real reason to contribute to this drive is vanity, we can imagine not that much.  On the other hand, there are a lot of players with so much wealth in ISK that they have nothing to buy with it.  If one of them decides he wishes to win this contest, the price can rise almost arbitrarily.  The supply of blue loot is only a little bit elastic.

As I write this, NNAs are selling at Jita between 115000 (high buy) and 190000 (low sell) ISK.  SDAs are selling between 300000 (high buy) to 549000 (low sell) ISK.  (We expect the two prices to stay at a ratio of 1:4, which they are very roughly.)  As one expects, the low-priced supply of these items outside of trade hubs has been completely sucked up.  I expect the prices to rise, since there was a supply of old sell orders through this morning.  From here on out, all supply must come out of stockpiles or fresh from wspace.

So, this is the time to make some extra profit.  If you are planning to sell blue loot, don't take the NNAs and SDLs to an NPC station.  Take them to a hub and profit.

A related way in which this may be good for wspace people is that there are going to be a lot of extra players in wspace this week, looking to make a bit extra from blue loot.  Newbs in lower wspace ratting solo or in small gangs?  You know what to do.

The other item of interest here is that "new technology".  Presumably CCP is planning to add some new stuff to the game.  If lore-wise a tech is a result of blue loot, there is a good chance it will be T3, or more broadly it will be something requiring inputs from wspace.  So, this may represent new wealth for us in the moderately near future.