It’s still a complete BS scam, as long as it’s an item that is available on the market.
The only interest is for items that don’t go on the market : limited values, BPCs, researched BPOs, rigged ships, …?
So most offers are sh¡t anyhow.
should the seller buy the remaining tickets ?
TLDR : he should 100%.
Let’s say there are M tickets total, and N remain to be purchased to conclude the raffle.
Let’s call E the effective price E=M×ticket_price ; let’s call V the item’s market value.
Let’s call S the scam value, as S = E-V (that’s the total price added over the item’s market price. if the market value is 512M but the sale is in 512 tickets of 1.5M, S = 512×1.5-512 = 512).
We consider the price of putting his hyperscam already paid ; so we don’t care about this value, it makes no sens to consider sunken costs.
If he does not pay for the tickets, he gets his item back. The gain is therefore V, the value of the item.
If he does, let’s call p = N/M . Its the part of the effetive value he has to pay to complete the hyperscam a swell as the probability to win his item back.
he buys N tickets out of M at a total value of E so he paid p×E, and anyhow he gets paid back E the total value of the tickets so its base gain is E - p×E, plus
- chance p that he wins his own raffle, that is to get back the item value V , => p×V
- chance (1-p) that he dos not win the item => (1-p)×0 .
=> average gain is p×V + E -p×E = E + p×(V-E)
We can replace in the previous gain formula with scam value : E= S+V ; and V-E = -S so
- gain if he does not buy the remaining tickets is V (no change)
- gain if he does buy the tickets is E + p×(V-E) = V+S - p×S = V + (1-p)×S
from this last formulas, we know it’s always better for seller to buy his own tickets back, unless S < 0 (but in that case he was making the raffle at loss) ; or unless 1-p=0 so p=1 that is, nobody paid for his ■■■■. Also if all tickets are sold, his gain becomes V+S = E which is consistent.
Therefore any seller should always buy his own tickets back.