Auction House

Overview

Auction Houses are facilities that allow heroes, villains and praetorians to buy and sell Enhancements, Recipes, Salvage, and Inspirations, plus some temporary powers and costume pieces too.

The Auction Houses for Heroes are Wentworth's Fine Consignments, located in Atlas Park, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, and Talos Island. Villains use the Black Market, located in Mercy Island, Port Oakes, Cap au Diable, Sharkhead Isle, and St. Martial. Praetorians can use the Trading House in Imperial City or the Underground Trader located in the Resistance Hub of Underground Imperial.

The Auction House works across servers. Items being sold from any server may be purchased on any other server. Trading now exists between all factions: Heroes, Villains, and Praetorians. Prior to Issue 18 trading between Heroes and Villains was not allowed.

At level 10, a contact becomes available that provides a training session similar to a story arc, to introduce the Invention system. Players may wish to wait until level 12, as the reward for the arc is an IO (level 12 allows the choice of a usable level 15 reward).

A character may begin using the Auction House from level 1 (provided they can safely get to it). This allows the buying and selling of items in the event the character's personal and vault storage becomes crowded.

Note: Free and Premium players may purchase access to the auction houses if they buy an Auction House License from the Paragon Market. Each license will last 30 days. A lifetime Auction House license is also a granted to these players if they have completed Tier 4 of Paragon Rewards.

Secret Bid System

Auction Houses use a secret bid system. Here is the in-game explanation of this system as provided by the Wentworth's Employee in Talos:

At Wentworth's we use a 'secret bid' auction. To make a long story short, you set the price for your item, but the Buyer does not see it. The Buyer bids what he wishes to pay and if he meets, or exceeds, your requested price he will receive the item. You may even receive more than you asked for! In order to help the Buyer with a bid, there is a history of how much that item has sold for in the past, up to 10 purchases.

The other Auction Houses uses the same secret bid system as Wentworth's.

If multiple players are selling an item for different amounts, the person with the lowest list price will sell first as long as a bid is higher than their list price. Thus, if a lot of people are listing an item for 100 inf, someone who lists the same item for 10,000 inf may never sell it even if people are paying 100,000 inf for it. Likewise, it's possible for someone who lists an item for 100 inf to sell it for 100,000 inf while someone else who lists the item for 10,000 inf only sells it for 10,000 inf.

Transaction Slots

Each character has a limited number of transaction slots that they may use at the Consignment House. A character starts with one and earns more as they advance in security/threat level (see the Leveling Chart for details). Additional transaction slots may also be earned through badges.

One transaction slot is required for each item put up for sale or for each bid placed. Salvage and recipes may be bought or sold in stacks of up to ten. Enhancements may be bought in stacks of ten but can only be sold singly.

The following badges increase the number of transaction slots: Merchant, Retailer, Auctioneer, Marketer/Black Marketeer, Power Seller and Enduring

Fixed Price Items

Market Teleporter

The vast majority of items available in the Consignment House are sold by players. However, there is also a one-use market teleporter, available either as a Consignment House Transporter (for heroes) or a Black Market Transporter (for villains). This temporary power may be purchased at a fixed price of 10,000. The teleporter will transport its user to the Consignment House of his or her choice. The Consignment House has an unlimited supply of this item. A character may not possess more than one of this item at a time. Using it disables all Consignment House teleportation powers, including those from Day Jobs, for 30 minutes. (The player may buy another copy of the power immediately. The delay only prohibits using it.)

Fees

There are two sets of fees associated with using the Consignment House. Both fees are applied to the seller, a listing fee and a transaction fee.

Because there are fees associated with selling on the Consignment House, it is possible to lose money, especially when items do not sell.

Notice, though, that you are essentially only charged one fee, since the second fee is never charged if an item doesn't sell, and if it does sell, the first fee is deducted from the second. If you put an item up for sale and it gets bought, your overall net profit is 90% of what the buyer paid for it, no matter what minimum price you asked for. (This is technically untrue at the extremely cheap end, where items are priced so low that they sell for less than 50 influence, but the extra charges in these cases are in the low single digits.)

Listing Fee

When an item is put up for auction, a fee of 5% of its listed price is charged to the seller. If you do not have enough influence/infamy to cover the fee, you will not be able to list it on the Consignment House.

Note that the minimum fee is 5 inf. If 5% of the list price is less than 5, you will still pay 5.

If your item sells, this amount will be refunded. The amount will not be refunded if the item does not sell, or if you cancel the auction.

Transaction Fee

When an item sells, a transaction fee of 10% is deducted from the amount it sold for. However, the transaction fee will be reduced by the listing fee, which will be refunded since the item sold.

Inactivity

Previously, at the time of server maintenance, any characters not logged in for 60 days would have their consignment items deleted. With the release of Issue 14 (April 07, 2009), this is no longer true.

Characters (on active accounts) who have inventories, bids or items for sale in the Black Market or in Wentworth's Consignment House will no longer have to log into the game within 60 days to avoid item or influence/infamy expiration. In-game Black Market and Wentworth's employees will still give their friendly reminder; however, if your account is "active", they won't take your "stuff".

Note: The definition of "inactive" now refers to an account whose subscription is no longer paid for. Yet there is still some question as to whether the consignment item deletion for inactive accounts also has the 60 day grace period.

Influence Transfers

Main article: Influence Transfer

Influence can now be transferred to characters on your account, or to other players, using in-game email. This is the only recommended way to transfer Influence.

Though not an intended use of the consignment house (and is neither supported nor recommended), it is possible to use the consignment house to transfer influence between characters on the same account, cross server. This system was more common before the ability to transfer via email was available. See Influence Transfer for details.