Creating a bubble on the Trading Post

Yesterday, at about 5:00pm, posted a guide to the Chef Profession on Reddit.  I was expecting, at most, 1,000 people to view it, and perhaps 100 to actually follow through with it.  It appears I was off by a factor of 10.  That guide has now been viewed over 9,500 times.  Yikes.

In addition to stoking my ego (people like what I wrote!  They really like it! [No, moron, they like charts, now get to work on artificer, you silly excel monkey]), posting the guide has also caused prices of certain goods on the Trading Post to go off the rails.  The one that I’m most concerned about is Tarragon Leaves, as it is still the cheapest and most accessible route to leveling chef at T5.  It increased in price by 145%.

The most notable increase was Pile of Tangy Seasoning.  It increased in price by a mind-boggling 3,733%.  When I posted the guide, there were 15,000 Piles of Tangy Seasoning available on the TP.  Now there are less than 5,000 (and priced highly to boot).  I should get an achievement for that.  ”Inadvertently caused market bubble of tulip proportions” or something.  Whoops.  Sorry about that guys.

Here’s a breakdown of all price changes:

Item Date Change (coppers) Change (%)
12/3/2012 12/4/2012
Bottle of Simple Dressing 3 5 2 67%
Head of Lettuce 3 6 3 100%
Head of Garlic 35 60 25 71%
Mushroom 9 6 -3 -33%
Onion 9 9 0 0%
Paprika 3 6 3 100%
Pile of Tangy Seasoning 6 230 224 3733%
Peppercorn 6 12 6 100%
Walnut 6 7 1 17%
Blueberry 9 15 6 67%
Stick of Butter 16 19 3 19%
Green Onion 9 15 6 67%
Head of Cabbage 9 13 4 44%
Slab of Red Meat 6 7 1 17%
Tarragon Leaves 20 49 29 145%
Asparagus Spear 14 13 -1 -7%
Slab of Poultry Meat 10 14 4 40%
Portobello Mushroom 10 9 -1 -10%
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6 Comments

  1. jeveuxdormir from reddit
    Posted December 4, 2012 at 5:20 pm | Permalink

    I wanted to say thank you very much for the guide, I was able to craft my way to level 400 while it was still at the lowest price (and I had some of the material), I appreciate your work very much so and I hope you’ll make another one for weapon smith and huntsman =)

    Good day.

    • Posted December 4, 2012 at 5:36 pm | Permalink

      Oh god. Huntsman. That’s like eleventy thousand gold!

      • jeveuxdormir from reddit
        Posted December 4, 2012 at 6:44 pm | Permalink

        Oh my! I didn’t know it was expensive, well never mind then.

        I have a little suggestion if you don’t mind? It’s about the guides, I’ve seen that you update them which is nice for the readers who have not bought the materials yet, however for those who have, they get confused (I for one waited many hours before starting to craft after buying everything).

        I advice you to keep an archived copy of the “outdated” version, just link it at the bottom of the article and put which version + date it was first added.

        I must confess that I was really worried today to find an updated guide while I had the mats of the 1st version (and yes I know that I can download the file and even the pics but I wanted to use the site :p).

        Thank you :)

        • Posted December 4, 2012 at 6:50 pm | Permalink

          I’ve had the same thought. There’s no easy way to archive a page on wordpress (that I can tell). But I kept the old image files. I’ll add a link to those.

  2. Jo
    Posted December 5, 2012 at 3:34 am | Permalink

    You should sell as pre-order your next crafting guide, before posting it on reddit so the pre-order buyers can make money on the AH :-)

  3. Posted December 7, 2012 at 1:08 am | Permalink

    Thanks so much! This is just what I needed to figure out how to clear bank space filled with low level food items.