I’m Danny Centauri a player with many years EVE experience, but until October last year a capsuleer with minimal industry and trade hubs experience. Over the past 10 months I’ve grown from 1 industry character to 13 spread across multiple accounts, 8 of these being t2 producers. I wish to share my experience with Eve News24 readers to allow others to reap the benefits of proper market whoring. ^^
Market Watch: Change Brings Profit
Change is profitable in EVE, and every industry player who isn’t of the mindset that the minerals they mine are ‘free’ knows that. With the announcement of the mining barge and exhumer changes back on the 14th of July it was clear there would be an opportunity to make an easy profit, but the journey to that profit wasn’t as easy as I had been expecting.
A supplier had been providing me with retriever BPCs on a regular basis, and I had been happily inventing away with these. I had built up a stash of BPCs and put 150 macks in the oven expecting around 40mil profit per unit with sell prices at 165mil. A nice easy profit of 6bil in just over a weeks work I thought.
Then 19th July the Platinum Technite alchemy changes are announced and the material costs to build macks drops by around 15mil. OHSHIT prices drop and it’s a race to get mine built ASAP and dump them to market to save what little profit is left. The first of my Mackinaws came out of the oven on the 22nd of July and prices had already plummeted from 178mil PU down to 155mil PU. Here is how the sales went:
22nd – 23rd July = 79 x Macks on contracts (7 contracts of 10, 1 contract of 9)
1.6bil + 1.6bil + 1.6bil +1.6bil +1.5bil +1.44bil +1.3bil +1.44 = 12.08bil turnover
12.08bil turnover – 9.875 build cost = 2.205bil profit
24th July = 20 x Macks market = 3.041bil turnover
3.041bil turnover – 2.5bil build cost = 0.459bil profit
22nd July = 51 x Macks on market = 8.023bil turnover
8.023bil turnover – 6.375bil build cost = 1.648bil profit
Average profit per unit: 28.7mil per unit, epic fail in comparison to my 40mil expectation.
Batch profit: 4.3bil, wtf where’s my 6bil!
A close call this could have gone very wrong, very fast, if tech prices had dropped much further. Fortunately it seemed the speculation on tech wasn’t as bad as I first anticipated, who’d have thought it EVE players trading sensibly, which meant photon microprocessor prices remained high allowing me to remain competitive. It was at this point I decided I was not done, with low production costs I could afford scale up production!
The production cost of a Mackinaw dropped to around 115mil per unit a roughly 15mil drop in moon mineral costs being offset by a increase of around 5mil per unit in retriever prices. Following a recent purchase of 300 max run BPCs from my extremely reliable supplier, I was ready to scale up so I threw more POS’s up and got down to the business of inventing with 6 characters.
Around the 26th of July the mining barge changes were up on singularity and a few clever people caught on to the increased build costs of both barges and exhumers due to tiericide, it was at this moment prices rocketed up to over 200mil in less than a day. With the comps for 150 macks already in the oven this was great news I just got lucky. Lucky enough to decide to purchase materials for yet more and moved them into position for another batch of 50. Here is how the sales went:
1st – 2nd August = 80 x Mack on contracts (8 contracts 10 macks each)
2bil + 2bil + 2bil + 1.9bil + 1.9bil + 1.9bil + 1.9bil + 1.7bil = 15.3bil turnover
15.3bil turnover – 9.2bil build cost = 6.1bil profit
1st Aug = 28 x Macks market = 5.467bil turnover
5.467bil turnover – 3.220bil build cost = 2.247bil profit
2nd Aug = 41 x Macks market = 7.106bil turnover
7.106bil turnover – 4.715bil build cost = 2.391bil profit
4th Aug = 51 x Macks market = 9.354bil turnover
9.354bil turnover – 5.865bil build cost = 3.489bil profit
Average profit per unit: 71.1mil, epic win things were looking up.
Batch profit: 14.2bil, holy shit here’s my profit! Screw you tech nerf.
At this point my profit was 18.5bil profit in half a month. Having recovered from CCP shafting me with tech alchemy and with a smile on my face I continued and got ready the materials for another 100 and put 50 into the oven. Buy order prices held steady at 197mil and build cost at 117mil I had a good chance of netting a further 8bil profit with this final batch. The sales went something like this:
7th August = 50 x Mack market = 10.743bil turnover
10.743bil turnover – 5.850bil build cost = 4.893bil profit
8th August = 50 x Mack market = 9.836bil turnover
9.836bil turnover – 5.850bil build cost = 3.986bil profit
Average profit per unit: 88.8mil, profit $ worthy of a victory dance.
Batch profit: 8.9bil, a final cause for rejoice before CCP increase the material costs indefinately.
So final count after 19 days profit is, 27.4bil. An average of 1.44bil per day which just goes to show how profitable change can be, with the tech alchemy changes thrown into the mix it also goes to show just how unpredictable they can be too.
Dabble in release day changes at your own risk but with the right infrastructure behind you can expect the profits to be as big and as satisfying as taking the risk itself. With a little planning and by taking on a production chain from start to finish you minimise your risk of being affected by market manipulation without building the t2 components myself profit would have at maximum been 10.5bil.
I’m sure there are industrialists out there who make this look small fry, but this is my story of how a one man operation traded roughly 12% of all Mackinaws in Jita over a three week period managing to do so despite of CCP technetium curveballs and market manipulations of t2 components. A relatively easy 3 weeks work to net 27.4bil profit, enough to retire to Luminaire and spend the rest of my EVE life sipping mojitos, playing golf and hiring exotic dancers on Gallente Prime.
- Danny Centauri