Keys & their prices?

[Arry Waters]

And I thought you came to the conclusion that bp.tf is not the reason and that the system is not broken, my bad.

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. =b Never said Bp was the reason for any manipulation of prices. To deny that it isn't flawed and perfect in every way is just foolish as well. If BP reflects the market and the market itself is broken, what does that make BP?

[Uranium235]

If BP reflects the market and the market itself is broken, what does that make BP?

 

Not broken either way, it's that simple.

[Arry Waters]

Not broken either way, it's that simple.

 

Lol, ok. I'll just not go further on this with you.

[Uranium235]

Lol, ok. I'll just not go further on this with you.

 

I think that would be better too. By your logic all newspapers must be "broken"

[Arry Waters]

I think that would be better too. By your logic all newspapers must be "broken"

 

However you want to interpret it as I guess.... =/

[F CHARLIE]

"Think about how much Refined Metal has been devalued in comparison to Keys. If the value of Metal is indeed decreasing, all items should see an increase of Metal value. Unfortunately, this is not the case. No other item that is more commonly traded for Metal has seen any of the price increases the Key has been getting even though the value of Metal has been decreasing. We can safely say that Metal is only being devalued in comparison to Keys."     Arry Waters

 

 

I am glad to see this from someone else.  I provided proofs of this idea in a thread on outpost about the revaluation of Bills Hat.  My thought was that if it shown that the overall trading value of ref had not dimineshed than the trade price increase of the key had something to do with its own properties.  I said that, logically, those propeties do not transfer to other items even tho those items have been traditionally priced in keys.  This means that, logically, thier value did not go up just because they are priced in keys.  The Bills hat was not more valuable.  It should be true that if you had a bunch of keys, they should be able to buy more Bills than before because the key is more coveted while desire for the bills stayed constant, same for buds.  The legacy of currency "items" is giving it immunity.

[F CHARLIE]

"To understand this concept, we have to expose the possibility that the TF2 economy is a dualconomy, meaning there are two economies trying to co-exist. As you can guess, the two economies I'm referring to are that of Metal and Keys. Just for this theory, if we can imagine that there are indeed two different economies, if we see the price fluctuations in the Key economy we would be able to see that it has been fairly stable. The same could be said for the Metal economy. Hats are still 1.33 Refined Metal and Bill's are still 8 Keys and have been for a very long time."    Arry Waters

 

If there is a dual economy it is psychological.  Many lower tier items are not tied to the drop system, like genuines or vintages, yet are stable in trading.  It stands to reason that when the trading price of keys finally stops rising than the lower/mid/upper tier "items" will rejoin into one again.  Not that people would buy unusuals with ref but that ref will still be recognized as reliable.

 

The other posibility is that because almost all new ref produced is consumed buying keys in the current "key speculation" phase of tf2 economy and when that is done, than ref farmers will either stop farming ref (because thier plan was involving the key which would be less profitable) or they turn it to buying items, with keys, and selling them.

 

I read most of the report from base64 about the rise in key price.  He does state that there does exist some account owners who have 100 accounts that idle constantly.  I can hypothosize that when it is no longer profitable to spend time doing it, then they might stop.  I mean the rest of us do this for fun.

 

I want to note that I don't like that items have become currency.  It is their duel purpose that bothers me.  It has game functions but is also currency while ref is really only a medium of exchange.  There simply needs to be larger denominations of it.

[Arry Waters]

To Charlie,

 

You're theory is concise. The Key's own properties are the exact reason why it's been rising in value in Metal. It is what represents buying power in the economy. To say that those properties don't transfer over to other higher tier items is not so black and white though. Yes, it doesn't take any more Keys to buy those higher tier items, but lets say someone may want sweets with their purchase or sale, which happens quite often. Those little overpays done on large scales can affect Metal prices as well. Bud sellers may ask for a little over half a Key (about 2 Ref) in Metal overpay. For someone who buys Buds regularly, it's not much of a payment, but in reality they're paying a little more for each Key that Bud is worth. This happens quite frequently to other high tier items as well. That means in a matter of seconds, the seller technically sold 27 Keys (about current worth of buds) for over half a scrap each. This happens with alot of high tier items where people would have to overpay because they lack the Keys to make a fair trade. With less and less people wanting to sell their Keys for Metal or buying Keys with their Metal, I could see overpays in higher tier items happening more often.

[F CHARLIE]

With that, can it be argued that Bills and Buds are not actually worth 8 and 27 keys respectively considering that those two items share no properties with the key.  That they, and other high tier item's prices should be reevaluated as none share properties with the key and that they only retain their price because of legacy.  After all, did the Bills increase in value by 50% from its previous value 4 months ago?

[Arry Waters]

With that, can it be argued that Bills and Buds are not actually worth 8 and 27 keys respectively considering that those two items share no properties with the key.  That they, and other high tier item's prices should be reevaluated as none share properties with the key and that they only retain their price because of legacy.  After all, did the Bills increase in value by 50% from its previous value 4 months ago?

 

Since when did buds and bills not share any properties with Keys? In fact in most cases they have more buying power than Keys do. The issue here is, Metal is directly affected by Keys whereas Bills, Buds and all other items as such are not directly affecting Metal but rather indirectly. Basically Keys aren't the only thing making Metal be so devalued.