I have consolidated all of my junk loot from around the universe and it turns out I have about 1.26 bil worth of loot which is only as valuable as the materials gained from reprocessing. The volume of the loot is about 100.000 m3, the volume of the materials (when reprocessed in an NPC station) is more than 400.000 m3, so it’s effectively 4x compression.
My question is - is there a market for this (bulk junk loot used as 4x mineral compression) or should I just reprocess it and get the materials?
I have put these things up for sale on occasion to test the water, the answer is some stuff sells, some sits there, so I just go on listing sprees and whatever comes back to me after the 90 days gets reprocessed.
weapons, prop/inertia stab/nanofibre modules and tackle stuff (scrams, webs) etc seem to sell, range/tracking things less so but some still move.
Armor plating, target painters, tracking disruptors and burst/damp modules sit for months.
However, I’m not really into market play for low value items and would rather sell everything in bulk. The batch has 583 distinct items, and all of that is worth only 1.26 bil ISK. If possible, I would like to avoid managing that many orders for just over 1 bil ISK of profit.
If there is a fair bulk market for it, I’d just rather sell it. If not, it goes into the grinder and I’ll have just 7 distinct types of minerals to sell.
Reprocess every stack below 250.000 ISK (careful, make sure you don’t have containers in the selection!)
Bring the remaining stuff to Jita, Amarr or Dodixie, whatever is closest. Sell all items to buy orders immediately for which you get at least 90% market value.
Put your own sell orders up for everything else, undercuttng existing orders and just wait, it will sell.
OR
Use HighsecBuyback™ and save yourself all the effort.
I have seen this advice on many posts and YouTube videos, but it’s not exactly good. What carries the most value are smartbombs, AB, MWD, grapplers, BS guns, warp disruption field generators,… These items are from 500.000 to 4.000.000 each, but they are all worth less on the market than they are worth reprocessed (or they are worth the same as their minerals, at best). On the other hand, a small autocannon priced at 150.000 is worth selling, because the reprocess value is about 10.000.
That’s the thing. Buy orders are lower than mineral value of these items. The buyers are doing one of these things:
reprocessing right away and making profit on minerals;
re-selling them (station trading)
using the items as compressed minerals and exporting them to null or w-space
Since I am not sure which is the case, my question is about option 3, whether that exists or not.
The thing is, if the market for these items in bulk exists and they are used as compressed materials, I may set up a supply shop as well for a client that needs this kind of loot on regular basis. If the market does not exists, I will just reprocess this batch and keep reprocessing whatever I loot in the future.
Opportunity costs my friend. In the time you waste to find ways to grab some more crumbs from the bottom of your stinky craploot container, you could have made 10 times more ISK by just doing something that is really worth spending time on. The key is ‘efficiency’, not perfection. Time is actually the most valuable currency you have available and you aren’t spending it well by trying to squeeze the maximum ISK out of every little item you looted. Your goal should be to get rid of that pile of crap and turn it into ISK with as little time and effort spent as possible.
