Just like the diamond trade right?

Your odds are pretty high if you think about it. Ask yourself these questions.

1. How many Dust players actually read the forums... at all? Take a look at Eve Online where it's been confirmed for 10 years now that there are plenty of Eve players who don't visit the forums at all.

2. How many Dust players will even bother to do their research before recklessly clicking on the "BUY NOW" button?

3. How infinite is human stupidity?

im going to make a long term investment when P2P trading drops, everyones gonna be like "FIRE SAIL EVERYTHING MUST GO!" and im going to keep my officer stuff and buy everyone elses when the price goes so low there worthless and then i will have almost full control of the officer weapons then when the price is high i will slowly flood the market and stomp out any competition

How many of these weapons actually exist? Anyone have a ballpark on the number of Thale's, for example, that are running around New Eden? It'd be interesting to see how many actually make it to market (and how quickly).

If the smart money is on hanging on to these weapons to sell a later date at a substantial profit, why is everyone expecting the market to flood with cheap weapons on day one? I'm guessing most expectations revolve around prepubescent idiots selling their sparse stock at clear out prices, but who in Dust hasn't heard of the Thale's sniper rifle, much less been assaulted by one from two maps over?

Thale's is the most reviled weapon in the game, one everyone thinks should cost seven or eight figures. I wouldn't be surprised to see the average asking price to hover around the 15m ISK range (I'd think the world is ending if prices hover in the low six figures (or Dust was populated by concussed gamers)).

So the real question is, does a big corporation like for example AE buy up literally hundreds to thousands of these officer weapons and try to create artificial scarcity to drive up the price? (kind of like how diamond suppliers do it).

So whenever the long anticipated P2P market comes out, its believed that many people will be selling their officer weapons for profit. But you see..... Almost everyone ive talked to has said pretty much the same stuff "ohhhh yeahhhh im going to make a killing off these officer weapons" But realistically...... if everyone is selling them...... will they really be that valuable? If every active merc in the game has between 20-50 balac assault rifles, are they really all that rare?

I mean, as people burn through them I suppose they will actually become valuable but I feel like day 1 market trading is going to be filled with all sorts of scams and other such stuff.

How much do you guys think these rifles will sell for? Surely they wont sell for "that" much. Several hundred thousand? A million each? What do you guys think?

Ah such silly humans.
I won't sell my officer weapons.
They are mine, no human is allowed to set his hands on them

Viktor, you should have a pretty decent amount of isk at this point. Several billion at least. Would it be reasonable to assume you'll try and buy as low as you can and stock up until the market prices rise a few months later?

So the real question is, does a big corporation like for example AE buy up literally hundreds to thousands of these officer weapons and try to create artificial scarcity to drive up the price? (kind of like how diamond suppliers do it).

So the real question is, does a big corporation like for example AE buy up literally hundreds to thousands of these officer weapons and try to create artificial scarcity to drive up the price? (kind of like how diamond suppliers do it).

That is what I am planning to do with the sidearms so yes.
I will dry up the Officer Sidearm well so badly that even the scarcity of users will not prevent me from charging high.

The thing I do not understand is how the P2P market will correlate with Eve. Eve players have to make jumps and long distance trips to sell items. The immediate problem of moving items around space in Dust is that it presents a level of unfairness compared to eve players where they need to take risk moving their product and eventually Dust players will have hold of Eve items. Combined with corp hangers I do not see how a player market could be implemented so easily.

Well it wouldn't be easy but it is possible. Technically we would only need a means to transport gear from location to location. The simple way of doing that would be to add an NPC corp that you can pay a certain rate based off distance of transport. This would create varying rates and so on. You could balance it in eve by just making it so Dust characters cant have ownership of eve gear. This would be a temporary means of game balance until a more developed transport system is implemented. Basically it would be like clone packs in PC. Right now you either make your clones or buy them from an NPC corp. Theoretically CCP wants EVE pilots to transport these clones in the future. But there using NPC corps as place holders for the time being. Same concept really.

The thing I do not understand is how the P2P market will correlate with Eve. Eve players have to make jumps and long distance trips to sell items. The immediate problem of moving items around space in Dust is that it presents a level of unfairness compared to eve players where they need to take risk moving their product and eventually Dust players will have hold of Eve items. Combined with corp hangers I do not see how a player market could be implemented so easily.

Alternatively that can expand on an already-existing system in Eve Online to move Dust-owned gear. Two systems actually.

First System: NPC Transport Ships
You see this little transports everywhere in New Eden especially in high-sec space. They are often loaded with loot that you can salvage assuming you know how to attack them without drawing the attention of the station guns (which is possible by the way). CCP can implement stronger NPC transport ships whenever a Dust players uses them to move from station to station.

The current drawback with this idea is that currently the NPC transports that go from station to station are restricted to movement inside a single star system only. CCP could implement special NPC transports that can ferry Dust-related gear from system to system while still facing the risk of getting suicide ganked by Eve players along the way. This can be used a temporary (but cheap) measure until the second system is expanded upon.

Second System: Courier Contracts
Currently Eve Online players often provide courier services via contracts that are setup either publicly or privately. While ferrying the goods, the goods are locked up by the issuer of the courier contract in a special container that can't be scanned or opened in the event that the courier either loses his ship carrying the goods to gankers or decides to try to steal the goods for himself.

At the same time, the carrier must give up collateral (be it in ISK or an asset) that can only be held by the issuer of the contract temporarily but put into limbo to prevent the issuer from selling the collateral in the meantime until the contract has been fulfilled. If the contract has been fulfilled, the collateral is automatically taken out of limbo and given back to the courier. If the contract has not been fulfilled in the allotted time, the contract closes, collateral is taken out of the limbo and given to the issuer instead as compensation for the loss of the goods and the courier is left with a useless container he can't access and nobody wants.

The Courier Contracts would be much more expensive as they are driven by market forces and player greed, but the system is much more secure and has a much higher guarantee of the goods reaching their destination.