By all accounts, STO’s Exchange is buggy and hard-to-navigate. About the only way I can sell something on the Exchange is by undercutting everyone else’s prices, and that makes me part of the problem, not the solution.
However, like in most long-term MMOs, there’s still a developing history behind the economy. I was just made acutely aware of this in the comments of my last post: the price of the Galor-class cruiser has apparently been on the upswing over the past several months. And a tad bit of research has uncovered that the Dilithium:Zen exchange rate was once lower than the value it is at now, the price of 1 Zen having risen over the past several months from roughly 90D to its current present of roughly 130D.
STO doesn’t have the in-game tools necessary to analyze long-term economic trends, but that hasn’t stopped one man, Walshicus, from breaking down the game’s economy. His website, MMO-Economics.com, is absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend it — it’s been an invaluable tool getting me up-to-speed on how STO has changed since I’ve been gone.
The Self-Aware Colony 
With the announcement today about the retired boxes coming back for a limited time, I bet your Galor will drop in price!
Maybe! The boxes are here for just a limited time, though, and I don’t know in what capacity they’ll be coming back, i.e. simply random drops, or also purchasable from the dilithium store. But a few more Galor in circulation could definitely help lower the price a bit.
“About the only way I can sell something on the Exchange is by undercutting everyone else’s prices, and that makes me part of the problem, not the solution.”
Trying to figure out how there is a problem here or how you are part of it. Sounds like typical market forces at work. You certainly can’t expect to post stuff at exorbitant prices and have people buy. People may want the best, but they will always pay the lowest price for the best they can get.
Well, undercutting works, but I’m just concerned that I’m selling things too cheaply when I should price slightly higher and wait.
True. I wouldn’t try to post anything more expensive than the bottom three. You run the risk of never getting it sold. I usually run a quick analysis of the current market before pricing, even 1 credit below the next identical item will lead to a sale. I’ve never gotten rich off any AH sale, except that one time I doubled my investment on an very underpriced Firefly. But I’m never hurting for money either. As Long as you’re not sell below vendor price, have at it. Now, if you have something super rare, then you might want to do more trend analysis before posting it.
It sounds like we are of similar minds. I consider making anything above vendor price a good thing, and so am not too worried about maximizing my profit; after all, optimization takes time, and time is definitely something I don’t have in much supply.
That said, I’m flabbergasted when people sell things on the market for under the vendor price. I mean, I buy and then resell them… but why would you do that in the first place?
Ignorance is the only thing I can think of. GW2 AH is a little worse, because they don’t allow sales below vendor price, but you can still lose money due to the sales fee.
I was thinking one issue with STO’s economic system is that the price shown on the Item tooltip is how much it would cost to purchase it from the vendor. This always throws me because, if I am not mistaken, WoW’s Item tooltips do show the sell-to vendor price. I’m also always worried that the Replicator Recycle price is less than I would get from a vendor, even though I have verified it is the same.
In my experience, the most you can hope to get from vendors is 50% of the shown price. However, the replicator and some vendors purchases goods at 40% of the shown price. So for the biggest items (deflector dishes, impulse engines, etc.) I wait until I’m back “home” to sell.