Rune trade, slightly unrealistic

I dont how people say how common this rune is now, ive been playing for almost 2 years and i still havnt found a single sup absorbtion then again thats my luck all over But i dont quite get why its Out of stock, if its that price it should be well in stock. Are u sure ur looking in the right area? (it was moved a while back)

Yes, yes, right area. It's as I said earlier, there were minors and majors but no superiors for sale. Unless the superiors are in different area alone.

Nope they are in the same area.
I've never really paid attention to that rune but will watch out for more evidence of this and maybe we could suggest a change in the suggestion forum.

hmm strange. I would check (not that is disbelieve u but so i can see for myself) but i cant get on gw atm. Which server are you on? (or does it occur on all the servers)

European, but I doubt it matters. What would international servers use then? At any rate, it is out of stock currently in Euro and Int servers.

If it were rarer it would be harder to unlock for PvP. Wasn't the whole link between PvE and PvP the original idea behind GW?

The second part of this is wrong. When you ID a rune, the value you see will be what the merchant will give you. The rune trader doesn't pay that price; he'll still pay 25g for most unwanted runes, even if your rune will sell to the merc for more. This is why you should check prices before salvaging any rune from an armor; if the armor is worth more at the merchant than the rune would be worth to the rune trader, don't bother salvaging it, just sell it to the merchant.

In this case, the rune trader may have been out of supply momentarily, but the overwhelming trend for the past couple of months has been for sup abs to be very low. Therefore, people have for the most part stopped selling them to the trader, and they will occassionally run out of supply. HOWEVER, this does NOT mean that the trader should offer a ridiculous sum for it, just because someone bought his last couple of runes and he's out at the moment. If this were the case, someone could buy up one of the unwanted runes at 100g per until he was out of stock, and sell them back to him at an inflated price. The price increase when the trader is out of stock must be only a slight increase to avoid this kind of trade exploit.

Now, if the trader is low on stock continously, and people buy up the runes rapidly for a long period of time, you would see the rune price steadily increase. However, you're only looking at a small period of time where the rune was sold out. This does not correlate to a long-term trend or increase in demand, therefore the price should not be any greater than what he showed.

Yeah, I was going to suggest the same thing. I was wondering: if one trader is out, does that mean all traders are out? Also, do traders everywhere tend to offer the same price, or can you find one in a less-traveled area that offers better prices?

I feel I must point out something that obviously not everyone knows.

In my experience, if you ID an item, the price you get for it is always the IDd price.

So, if the rune trader offers you 25g, this is because it is the IDd price of the item, or you have not IDd the item.

Superior Absorption used to be worth a lot more and I remember a couple times when the rune trader was out and offered this same paltry sum. It does seem to be a bit broke, doesn't it...

If the traders would work on supply and demand basis (which is what even Gaile has said to be the case), the price would start rising as the trader gets closer to the end of it's supply. Also you couldn't be able to just buy loads of them for 100g as you must buy each of them one at a time and hit that Request price button in between.

But here we are, rune is out of stock and the merchant buys them for the lowest possible amount. I'm really curious how the Anet's supply and demand system work when this is possible.

This happened to me several weeks ago, so I longer recall what specific rune it was (could have been Sup Abs as well). I went to see the selling price before salvaging and there were none in stock. I expected this would mean a high price, so I salvaged it and was offered the minimum. It seems pretty straightforward to me; the price-setting algorithm is based on supply and demand, but when supply equals zero the math doesn't work out. Rather than remembering the last asking price, it seems to treat it as an item its never seen before and thus starts with minimum price. Almost certainly a math error behind the scenes going on here...

I must point out your wrong. When it comes to selling the rune to merchs, it help to ID them. But with RUNE traders, they offer u a quoted price following a supply and demand policy. Now I already stated it was pre-quote listed as 160g the merch ID price. But since the rune trader was out of stock the rune trader price should have been higher.
And it doesn't require you to ID salvaged runes you can but its not required.

I wonder about these forums sometimes.

1. Yes I'm checking in the correct spot! No rune in the traders stock. I even double checked and went thru the traders whole inventory.

2. You have to ID a rune to know what your salvaging from the armour. If you try to explain how this is wrong. Then explain how I just looted a gold armour and IDed the armour to find a Sup Vigor, which I traded to the rune trader and got a quoted price. (gold armour = nameless rune. Sup Vigor armour = Sup Vigor rune)

3. All the traders in a server are linked and sell only what is supplied by players, at the same rate and prices. No matter where they are. (Thats Anets official story)

4.Traders may not be linked across the GW universe, I don't know, I play the NA servers so there could be runes in the Euro servers.

I always heard Anet speak of supply and demand in explanation to Runes traders and prices.
But I just proved them wrong.
Rune trader has no Sup Absorption runes. He can't sell said runes cause he doesn't have any, meaning there is either high demand or low supply.
The lack of supply means he needs to get more. But why then is he ripping me off, offering 25g.
When minor runes in stock are going for higher. He doesn't even have any Sup Absorption to sell, hench he needs my supply but as a matter of sheer stubboness, I'm not sell it to him! I would rather merch it :P

This sounds like the most reasonable explanation. Obviously, the pricing structure is more complex than just "out of stock = uber gold".

I had the same thing happen when i got a new necro hero in, I went looking for a few runes, and there were none in the trader, so a friend gave me one i went to check the price and not only was it cheap, about 400g but it was about half the value it had beent he previous week when in stock.

I agree that if an item is out of stock it should be a lot higher in price no matter how much demand there is, obviuosly if there is low supply and demand there should not be as much as low supply and high demand, but 25g for something that is not there is silly!

With all these heroes runnign about, you would think demand would be up, I equip mine with the best i can find, and buy it if I dont have it, I would imagine most others do too, but the prices for virtually all runes to buy now is 100g, and to sell 25g. This is just wrong, I havent had a single superior rune for the ritualist in a year and the price for them is rediculously low. In one year i have had 2 superior vigors, and the price of it has droped 7 k in the last week, monk runes have lost a few k off them too. The market for these seems to be going to pot. every time i get a superior rune i think, hopefully its a vigor, otherwise its just plain rubbish i dont need, I wont make money from it.

Last point is that when i sell rare material or even common material i see the price come down as i sell it, and when the fireworks were in demand, the price of glittering dust skyrocketed, and i made a wee fortune selling it to the trader, this system does not seem to be in evidence at the rune trader, not when they have no stock and still buy for a rubbish price

Thanks for the answer.

Now don't go assuming too much. There's a good possibility that the trader has a memory of prices too. Just because he's temporarily out, doesn't mean he should go on a buying spree. Until people hold out on him for a while, then he might get desperate.

But also, he may know from his history that the rune sells for no more than 160, in 99% of cases (I am entirely making numbers up here). He may have a margin of 135 (he will not buy & sell at same price). So if he knows he'll "never" sell the rune for more than 160, then he just won't buy for more than 25.

Heh minor runes of absorption are going for more? That's funny--I need to find the people that he's been selling to.

I recall reading that the traders have been bugged for quite some time with sup Abs, reporting that the runes aren't in stock when they are in fact.

I hate mesmer runes. Do mesmers ever buy runes?

always remember the regular merch will give you the recomended price.

also the minimum for runes is 25g wich is what the merch will pay for minors if the rune trader offers you 25g take it to the merch. Items sold to merch are essentially destroyed runes however go back into rotation so if everyone were to sell the 25g runes to the merch they become rarer and thusly eventually the rune trader will pay more for them

Most people here don't know it but Sup Absorption Rune has always been bugged at the trader. It's different than other runes, and I observed the bug some time back in 2005. And it's still not fixed.

It's probably the only rune which when bought out of the trader does not reappear when sold back to him. (maybe minor/major abs work this way too, not tested). As long as trader has at least 1 of them in stock, the price he will pay for next one will be normal, just like every other rune at this price level. But after the last one gets bought out, his buy price resets and he offers the minimum merch value of a sup rune = 100g for them. And he will buy tons of them at 100g ea and never restock on them.

I was able to reproduce this bug on the beta server, here's a screenshot made just a couple minutes ago: