TOPIC: 2015 Treasure Chip Market

There's been a fair amount of spirited discussion about the value of treasure pulls, and I thought it would be interesting to try to use the "wisdom of the crowd" to figure out this value - about which I am very curious myself.

	Current Price	Prior Price
Buying At	$2.80	$2.47
Selling At	$4.17	$3.12

There are two ways to participate:

1. Immediate order: if you would like to buy or sell at the current prices above, send me a PM with the number of treasure chips you would like to buy or sell.
2. Limit order: If the prices above are not appealing, but there is some price at which you would like to buy or sell, PM me with whether you want to buy or sell, the price you want, and the desired number of treasure chips at that price. If the market ever reaches the levels you have selected, I will process your order. For example, if you would like to:
   • Buy 100 Treasure chips at $0.99 each.
   • Sell 10 treasure chips at $5.00
   • Sell 60 treasure chips at $6.99
   You could send me these preferences in a limit order, and if the market ever reaches these prices, your sell/buy would be automatically acted on (see "Details" below about actual settlement of funds in July and chips in August).

Historical price charts:
Transaction Price Chart (link)

Buy/Sell Price History Chart (link)

Detailed historical data: Link to Spreadsheet

Details:

• All transactions to be finalized in July and August
  • Payments for purchases will be made in July via PayPal before GenCon
  • Purchased tokens will be delivered at GenCon
  • With an abundance of caution with regard to GenCon policies, under no circumstances will payment be accepted at GenCon, and hand off of the treasure chips will occur off of GenCon convention space, perhaps in an agreed upon hotel lobby or restaurant.
  • I understand that stuff happens, if you enter a transaction and then can't fulfill your half of the deal (e.g. you won't be attending GenCon, you're doing less runs than you guessed, you lost your HoP) please let me know before July.
• Prices will respond to demand, usually adjusting after 10 or so tokens have sold
  • If my inventory is rising buy and sell prices will drop
  • If my inventory is falling buy and sell prices will rise
• While I'll try to keep the price here updated, events may overtake the prices listed in this post, no transactions should be considered confirmed till I respond to your PM
  • For example, if 100 buy orders come in over night, I'd honor the first few, then raise the prices, then notify the other interested parties of the updated price
• I reserve the right to reject transactions that I think are intended to manipulate the market or that I think are substantially at risk of not being fulfilled (e.g. I don't have that much treasure chip inventory)

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I wish you luck in this endeavor. I see a surfeit of chips in your future

From a purely financial viewpoint I'm tempted to sell a bunch of token draws, but from a fun viewpoint I will probably hold onto them.

I love it. We now have a Treasure Chip Futures market.

Coming up next, "Short" sellers.

Step 1: Fill Thursday with as many runs as I can before collapsing
Step 2: Pray for max treasure stamps & 9 other CoGF holders each run
Step 3: ????
Step 4: Profit

Seriously, I'll make $1.44 a run if ticket prices stay at $48. I could totally buy myself dinner at Steak 'n Shake's finest table by the end of the day!

I'm curious to see how this plays out, I wish you luck in your endeavor, Matt!

Did you factor in the value of the two completion tokens (assuming you run nightmare)?

I did not!

Add another $20 per run (because of completion token value for 2015 Ring of Heroism recipe, estimated of course).

Matt, you might be my new best friend the first day of GenCon.

joshua baessler wrote: I did not!

Add another $20 per run (because of completion token value for 2015 Ring of Heroism recipe, estimated of course).

Matt, you might be my new best friend the first day of GenCon.

Well - if everyone starts selling and no one is buying, the price will drop - but it's interesting to see how the value of the pulls matters to different people - my pricing was based on a taking a stab at what I think the secondary market value of the pulled tokens would be, but you seem to be coming at it from how to fund more play time in the dungeon at a lower cost.

If it turns out there are 50/50 people who value the things this way, this market could end up narrowing the spread and basically acting as a matching service for people who want to run for cheap, and people who want the loot.

I wouldn't actually sell off all of my treasure tokens, I love pulling loot as much as the next person. However, I think it's a great idea what you're doing and I could see people using it to offset their costs. It will make for a great experiment.

Given the estimated distribution of tokens:

•Uncommons 38%
•Rares 38%
•Monster Bits 23%
•Special 1%

and these (approximate) average values:

•Uncommons $1
•Rares $3
•Monster Bits $7

99% of pulls should be worth up to $3.13 on average, with a 1/5 chance of it being worth $7, 1/5 being worth $3, and a 2/5 chance of it being worth only $1 (I'm not counting specials because there is far too much variation in the valuation of Special tokens - this year saw everything from Boots of the Marauder up to 25k Eldritch Bars. Yikes.)

Those are pretty decent odds of getting something worth $3 to $7, if I'm doing my math correctly (which I'm probably not). My prediction is your average token value will go up by the end of GenCon.

Maybe you should consider doing cash or GP, then you could buy tokens on the spot, using the current rate of 1 GP = $.02. You'd have to bankroll a lot of GP up front though.

George wrote: I love it. We now have a Treasure Chip Futures market.

Coming up next, "Short" sellers.

Haha, this was the first thing I thought of. With current prices I would maybe be interested.

I think this is my favorite part of the TD token community. The top end of the token trade attracts some people with serious disposable income so you end up with relatively successful and intelligent folks having economic discussions about the secondary market. Even just in the last few months the quantitative analysis, experiments and models being displayed are very impressive.

Josh Rayden wrote:

George wrote: I love it. We now have a Treasure Chip Futures market.

Coming up next, "Short" sellers.

Haha, this was the first thing I thought of. With current prices I would maybe be interested.

Anyone who sells a chip now is, by definition, selling short.

I'm... not entirely certain what I think of this idea. It's yet another step in the direction of TD being completely controlled by financial motives, I feel.