I don't understand auction house prices

[Hans!!!]

So a GT-R V-spec 1997 is only worth 37 k stock, but there everyone in the suction sets a 150 k to 200 k buyout price and 100+ k starting bid or so.

I understand some have tuner ranks and legendary livery that will shoot the available max buyout up but most of them have none and is selling stock cars. Like stock no modifications, livery skins or tuning just stock. I just want to save some money by buying cheaper cars because I'm on a mission to tune and own all cars in the game including limited cars from past events that I missed out on. Limited cars SURE! TAKE MY MONEY! BUT CARS THAT ONLY WORTH 100K TO 200K OR LESS! NO, I AM NOT PAYING 2 TO 3 X THE MARKUP.

LET ALONE A STOCK LAMBO OF 1.5 MIL MARKED UP TO 20 MIL.

I don't understand how they keep doing that without ranks and bone stock mark up.

[Psyringe]

Some of the inner workings of the auction house are a bit different than what you might expect. Here's an example:

Note that unless you're a veteran who published several popular liveries or tunes, you're not free to set the price when you want to sell a car. Instead, the game keeps track of what people are willing to pay for a certain car, and gives sellers only a very small degree of freedom in setting the price around that value. Sometimes the prices are even completely predetermined, or can only be adjusted in a ridiculously small window, like e.g. a choice between 99k, 100k, or 110k - but nothing lower or higher.

Note also that many players don't understand the auction house very well, but that credits are incredibly easy to come by. There's a substantial amount of players who are willing to spend hours afk-farming XP (and, by extension, credits) in certain Event Lab creations, and who will then spend that money at the auction house.

What this means, is that the game tries to limit sellers to min and max prices that it deems "reasonable", but it gauges that simply by tracking how much people are willing to pay for a certain car - and in an environment where everyone can easily farm as much money as they want without even actually playing the game, this naturally leads to inflated prices. As a result, sellers can't even offer their cars at cheaper prices if they want to, because the game doesn't let them lower the price.

An additional factor is that the bidding process is extremely unreliable. You only have a chance to win an auction if the game refreshes its information in time so that your bid won't fail, and then you need to be lucky to be the one person (out of all those for whom the information did refresh in time) who sniped the last bid just at the right moment. You learn pretty quickly that in the majority of cases, you'll lose auctions to bids that the game never told you about and never gave you a chance to raise. So if you really want a car, the only reliable way of obtaining it is a buyout. And the game then registers (and remembers) that someone was willing to pay 10m credits for that car, and takes that into account when it determines the "reasonable price" for that car.

While I can't be sure, I also think that some players are simply unaware that a) they can often get cars cheaper from the autoshow, b) they can tune any car in any way they like for around 120k max, and c) they can find and download any livery they want for free. This probably contributes to inflate auction house prices.

But all that said, it is definitely possible to find good prices on the auction house every now and then. You just have to keep looking. Just yesterday I snagged a reward-only car that usually sold for several millions for just 150k.

Also of note: Reward-only cars that you missed when they were available, will usually come back in the festival playlist at some point. There's no need to pay millions for those cars if you're not in a hurry.

[Hans!!!]

Originally posted by Psyringe:

Some of the inner workings of the auction house are a bit different than what you might expect. Here's an example:

Note that unless you're a veteran who published several popular liveries or tunes, you're not free to set the price when you want to sell a car. Instead, the game keeps track of what people are willing to pay for a certain car, and gives sellers only a very small degree of freedom in setting the price around that value. Sometimes the prices are even completely predetermined, or can only be adjusted in a ridiculously small window, like e.g. a choice between 99k, 100k, or 110k - but nothing lower or higher.

Note also that many players don't understand the auction house very well, but that credits are incredibly easy to come by. There's a substantial amount of players who are willing to spend hours afk-farming XP (and, by extension, credits) in certain Event Lab creations, and who will then spend that money at the auction house.

What this means, is that the game tries to limit sellers to min and max prices that it deems "reasonable", but it gauges that simply by tracking how much people are willing to pay for a certain car - and in an environment where everyone can easily farm as much money as they want without even actually playing the game, this naturally leads to inflated prices. As a result, sellers can't even offer their cars at cheaper prices if they want to, because the game doesn't let them lower the price.

An additional factor is that the bidding process is extremely unreliable. You only have a chance to win an auction if the game refreshes its information in time so that your bid won't fail, and then you need to be lucky to be the one person (out of all those for whom the information did refresh in time) who sniped the last bid just at the right moment. You learn pretty quickly that in the majority of cases, you'll lose auctions to bids that the game never told you about and never gave you a chance to raise. So if you really want a car, the only reliable way of obtaining it is a buyout. And the game then registers (and remembers) that someone was willing to pay 10m credits for that car, and takes that into account when it determines the "reasonable price" for that car.

While I can't be sure, I also think that some players are simply unaware that a) they can often get cars cheaper from the autoshow, b) they can tune any car in any way they like for around 120k max, and c) they can find and download any livery they want for free. This probably contributes to inflate auction house prices.

But all that said, it is definitely possible to find good prices on the auction house every now and then. You just have to keep looking. Just yesterday I snagged a reward-only car that usually sold for several millions for just 150k.

Also of note: Reward-only cars that you missed when they were available, will usually come back in the festival playlist at some point. There's no need to pay millions for those cars if you're not in a hurry.

I guess that makes sense.
Still, I can't believe some JDM fanboys are too dumb to figure out the r 34 they paid for is 150k the marked up price they paid for.

Don't get me wrong, I like myself some JDM cars. Currently focusing on acquiring and tuning all legendary JDM cars. That's why I was finding that model in the first place. Not insulting the JDM community that is.

Thank god I found this app that tracks cars owned and cost