Pricing differences

Can someone explain why certain items sell for so little in the market but cost so much to buy in the shop? i.e. Opal Basil shop - $10,430 and max selling price in the market (for me today at level 223) - $2,266.46. Chickpea shop $10,485 and market $5338.27.

It seems the pricing is backwards. Normally you can sell a plant for more than it cost you to buy from the shop.

 

Because in the shop the price is set. In the market the players choose how much they want to sell for. Everyone wants their product to sell, so they will offer it for a cheaper price than everyone else.

It wouldn't make sense to sell higher than the shop price if you were only selling a small amount. The reason being, no one would buy 100 chickpeas for 11000 CC at the market when they could buy for 10485 CC at the shop. When you start selling in bulk - hundreds at a time - that is when it makes more sense to sell higher than the shop price, because you can only get a limited amount from the shop per day - so people will be more willing to spend a higher price to get more of the product (ie. they will be willing to spend 11000 CC per 100 chickpeas to get 1000 chickpeas, versus 10485 per 100 to only get that 100).

However, as I said, everyone wants their product to sell. Whilst there are times it makes sense to sell for a higher price than the shop, most people are going to want to offer the most competitive price. If your price is more expensive than elsewhere, people will go elsewhere.

It all depends on what is popular at the time. Maybe there is some reason people want those items more than others, so people are selling more, and hence there is more competition to have the cheapest price. Or maybe people have been growing them in excess (eg. to get more drops) and have a surplus that they want to make money from - again, leading to a greater number of offers, and hence more competition to have the cheapest.

 

Hello HMP3,

The prices in the shop sell the items at their Barn Value. These prices are set and do not change. The Market prices rise and fall due to demand, so if there are a lot being offered in the Market, their value drops.

Can I assist you further?

 

There's a very dramatic price increase in the shop starting with chives because those crops were only introduced in May 2018, while the other crops have been around for much longer.

Crops from chives to orange pansies sell for a lot because they have been in very high demand for just under 2 years due to the high level FSQs which call for very large quantities of those crops.

There wasn't much demand for crops starting from reeds onwards because we didn't need them for FSQs until very recently (Jan 2020) when the new high level FSQs were introduced. As with all new items, the initial market price was set to the item's barn value and since there wasn't much of a point in growing and selling crops like opal basil and chickpeas before 2020, the market prices for those crops remained low. Now there is greater demand for them, so more people are selling and their prices are slowly increasing.

This will also differ from market to market. On your market, the max price for opal basil is 2266.46 CC. But on another market, they were already selling for more than 17,000 more than a week ago. It all depends on how many people are selling those crops to push those prices up near the beginning.

 

Hello lovely Farmers,

Since this is a subject that a lot of players might want to weigh in, I will move the thread to the Users' Corner.
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Best regards,
teddy.bear