Buy my mixtape fam Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 Yeah, so I know threads like these are a dime a dozen and pop up every week, but I'm looking for a serious answer besides "buy low, sell high". I've never had success with that, and seeing as to how I'm at a standstill for funds right now, I was wondering, is there a different way to make profit off of unusual trading? I currently have a plan to buy a quicksell in the 15-25 key range, and then sell it for unusual overpay. I've seen a few other friends do this, and it seems to pay off well for them. Each time they get a new hat, they sell it for overpay in another hat, so the hat value keeps climbing. Is this feasible? Also, I've never been one to specialize in selling of unusuals. Is it worth it to get Outpost premium to help speed up the process? Thanks
Lmf Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 outpost premium is only worth it if you plan on being lazy like me , or in your case it doesnt matter, more trade slots. but yeah, item overpay does work if you get lucky and if you invest a bit of time into it.
TheVirtualEconomist Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 Yeah, so I know threads like these are a dime a dozen and pop up every week, but I'm looking for a serious answer besides "buy low, sell high". I've never had success with that, and seeing as to how I'm at a standstill for funds right now, I was wondering, is there a different way to make profit off of unusual trading? I currently have a plan to buy a quicksell in the 15-25 key range, and then sell it for unusual overpay. I've seen a few other friends do this, and it seems to pay off well for them. Each time they get a new hat, they sell it for overpay in another hat, so the hat value keeps climbing. Is this feasible? Also, I've never been one to specialize in selling of unusuals. Is it worth it to get Outpost premium to help speed up the process? Thanks Yay, I love giving advice You should defiantly start by buying quicksells. Look for a discount of 35% to 40%, close to 50% on third gens or shitty robo or invasion effects (i.e overclocked, hat protectors, ext.) However, unless your hat is really well priced for its effect/combo, you will not get any good overpay offers. (examples of this are like a burning hat for only 40 keys, a soldier unusual with a decent effect for 10-12 keys). You willl probably just get third gen overpays, whitch are terrible because in order to get keys again you have to quicksell them for close to 50% off unless they are super low in value. So, unless you get a really good price to hat ratio like I explained above, it is best to requicksell it. If you bought it for at least 35%, you can sell it for 30% off, netting at least 5% of the hats value in pure keys. Honestly the best way to trade imo is to always get your items back in keys at some point, that way it is super easy to tell what profit you have made, and also prevents you from trading for hats that have shitty quicksell prices. (i.e third gens) Hopefully this helps! EDIT: Outpost premium is pretty much the only way to use the site. If you are not on trade servers alot or enjoy wasting your life bumping your trades from your phone, op premium is a pretty much must have. It sucks that you have to pay $15, but as others on the forum would point out, you have to put money in to get money out.
apollothelion Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 Yay, I love giving advice You should defiantly start by buying quicksells. Look for a discount of 35% to 40%, close to 50% on third gens or shitty robo or invasion effects (i.e overclocked, hat protectors, ext.) However, unless your hat is really well priced for its effect/combo, you will not get any good overpay offers. (examples of this are like a burning hat for only 40 keys, a soldier unusual with a decent effect for 10-12 keys). You willl probably just get third gen overpays, whitch are terrible because in order to get keys again you have to quicksell them for close to 50% off unless they are super low in value. So, unless you get a really good price to hat ratio like I explained above, it is best to requicksell it. If you bought it for at least 35%, you can sell it for 30% off, netting at least 5% of the hats value in pure keys. Honestly the best way to trade imo is to always get your items back in keys at some point, that way it is super easy to tell what profit you have made, and also prevents you from trading for hats that have shitty quicksell prices. (i.e third gens) Hopefully this helps! EDIT: Outpost premium is pretty much the only way to use the site. If you are not on trade servers alot or enjoy wasting your life bumping your trades from your phone, op premium is a pretty much must have. It sucks that you have to pay $15, but as others on the forum would point out, you have to put money in to get money out. On the contrary there are other ways.... I honestly only bought a quicksell when I was a noob and didn't know better. Buy a hat, any hat that looks decent enough, and has a decent enough price, and try to pay a bit lower for it, don't go for that 30% -50% nonsense. No matter what the hat is, robo/roboeffect or robohat/nice effect, or nice/nice, everything will sell for overpay, one way or another. Its a common misconception that 3rd gens are shit, that the only way to get pure out of them is by quickselling. That just isn't true. I've had ~100+ Third gen hats, that I sold for good overpay, and then sold for keys. Had people Overpay out the wazoo for some of those, and had some people pay keys. If you only plan to have a single hat at a time or not many, and you don't think you can absorb the loss of Outpost premium, then I suggest against it. It sometimes does well, sometimes doesnt. Only if you make enough consistently to absorb the cost of premium should you go for it. You don't have to buy a hat super low, just decently low enough that you can resale it for nice overpay without too much of a hassle. Typically try to buy hats 7-10 keys, that sell a little bit over 12-15 or something like that. And then just keep 1:1ing or 1:1+sweets until you get a nicer hat, or sell those sweets for ref/keys and then continue the process of buying and trading. Eventually you should have quite a few low tiers, which you can upgrade together for a nice hat that has a lot of demand. Which you then sell for overpay, hopefully in a ton of low tiers, which you can then sell for keys or more hats/overpay, whatever you decide. This process can get tiresome lmao, I keep getting more overpay offers rather than keys lately, and have only been able to convert sweets into keys... RIP ME. Ideally if you go with low tiers, look for inflated backpack.tf prices, because a bunch of lower tier traders follow it like its the bible. And those are easier to sell then perhaps something that is differently priced that you want. Its just a lot of experimenting and finding out what you like and don't like. Just don't fall into the trap of '3rd gens are hard to sell as are low tiers'. That is where the profit is to be made quickly.
Gren Posted December 21, 2015 Posted December 21, 2015 - snip - There's a lot of good advice here, OP would do well to follow it. As with anything in life, a lot of it comes down to 'being in the right place at the right time', i.e. luck. How does that relate to hats? For example, a few months ago I acquired a disco beak. The trade that led to that disco beak started with an aussie scatter which I traded for an unpriced medic hat with D@D (most people would tell you that's stupid, since it's unpriced, new effect, aussies always sell for pure, etc.). I traded that hat for the beak. I then sold the disco beak for 80 keys pure when it was only priced at 70. So much for 'stick to 1st gens'. I haven't quickbought anything in probably more than a year. The scene used to be different, 30% off for a 1st gen used to be an instant sale, now that's the minimum people expect. I always wonder, why would someone sell a hat for 30% - 50% off? There's the rare case where they really need pure fast for whatever reason. More likely though, you're either dealing with a scammer alt trying to unload items fast or the guy selling the hat couldn't get any offers at the bp price, panicked and now decided to quicksell. In either scenario, you're not really benefitting. In scenario A, you get banned for trading with a scammer, and in scenario B you're ending up with a hat that probably deserves a good drop in price. As I said, luck plays a part. Having the right hat (this most likely means you're the only one with that hat on the market, or at least you're the only one with that hat at a reasonable price) at the time when the right buyer is looking for that hat (as was the case in the disco beak trade I referenced) is key. You only control part of that equation though, which is having the right hat. This brings me to the biggest thing you need to learn: Learn the true value of hats. BP isn't always right. Sometimes, even updated prices can be inaccurate, for example if the hat/effect combo has been on a steady rise. You need to learn how to pick hat and effect combos that will sell. There's some science to this, but there's also gut feeling. I know that doesn't tell you much, so here's a list of myths that people with little experience always quote as bible: 1. "3rd gens suck" - yea, sometimes, maybe even more often than not, but i just demonstrated to you how profit from 3rd gens is absolutely possible. 2. "Don't buy unpriced hats" - True, some people stay away from unpriced hats, but just remember: every hat started without a price. Obviously it's possible for a noob to get burned on an unpriced hat. But it's also possible to get a great deal on an unpriced hat because you have a good idea what a hat with that effect (think tiers) should be worth. 3. "Don't buy duped hats" - Also true in a lot of cases, but if you're 1/1 on the market, a lot of buyers won't care, because there isn't a clean alternative. Some people just don't care in general about a hat's history. 4. "Selling for pure or 30% overpay" - K so this is more a line I see in a lot of trades lately, but I'll include it as a myth. Expecting 30% overpay is simply unrealistic. Sure, it does happen, but rarely. If you're trading for profit, then trade for profit, not only a certain amount of profit. You could be sitting on a hat for months waiting for that 30% overpay. Or, you could have made several trades for much less overpay, remained active and made more profit in less time because you weren't waiting for the perfect deal. As well, don't write "Only looking for keys". Just like expecting ridiculous overpay, this is simply unrealistic unless you're discounting heavily. If a good pure offer comes along, great, good for you, but don't wait months until it comes around. I've seen hats that were on OP for nearly a year because the seller was looking only for pure. In the meantime, there were offers that would have resulted in profit. So he could have just traded up his hat and eventually quicksold for the amount of he was originally looking for. Again though, the most important thing is learn the true (realistic) value of a hat. EDIT: Last thing, OP premium is not absolutely necessary. It definitely is nice to have, but you can get by without it. If you have the right hat, people will actively search for that hat, no matter whether it's been bumped 5 minutes ago or 16 hours ago. Manual bumping is definitely a bit of a hassle though....
Buy my mixtape fam Posted December 22, 2015 Author Posted December 22, 2015 -snip- -snip- Thank you both, really cleared it up for me. I was curious too as to how much overpay I should be expecting, that definitely helped
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