I always seem to have an idea for a post, but very little substance to bring it onto the page. Plenty of drafts with a few paragraphs that don’t get published for one reason or another so this year I am going to try to post monthly. It might be a bit chaotic and unfocused, but a goal is a goal so lets get right to it.
My Alt was running errands and MTU had popped up on the auto scan that occurs when you jump into a system. It remained present for over an hour each time I jumped that gate. The Alt isn’t equipped to take advantage of space garbage and my main was 18 jumps away. The Alt was farming to keep its wallet expanding and as every good trader knows, if you run out of stuff to sell you can’t make money, so do I drop everything and log in my main just to pop an abandoned MTU for zero financial gain?
Of course I do!
My main was in it’s home staging area about 19 jumps away. Check ammo and undock then gate after endless gate watching the local lists and looking for corpses, more on that later. It took twenty five minutes to get into system and my heart sank. The MTU wasn’t on scan. I had come in on the wrong gate and soon realized the problem. MTU Down.
Contracts and Corpses:
My Corp wallet is fed with a gentle trickle of Isk each week through contracts. I sell items that aren’t listed on the market, but readily available in game. While CCP have made great strides in bringing items onto the actual market listings they haven’t captured everything. It is the small things that amuse me if I can find them.
So how did I get into that?
Simple really, I make a habit of checking everything to see if it is available on the market or on contract.
Right clicking on an item brings up its availability. In the case of the 5MN Microwarpdrive, in the first picture, there is an option to ‘View Market Details’. Right clicking on the Test Bong doesn’t have that option. It is exclusively available on contract.
Let’s go to contracts and find out how many Test Bong’s are out there.
Just the one lumped in with a pile of hanger junk. Michael Shamus has returned to clean house or someone has hacked his account. I think I have mentioned it before, but you can check the finished contract history of any player.
Here is Michael’s.
In the last few days he has contracted his entire stash of ships and fittings and several billion Isk has changed hands.
Ok, what has that got to do with Test Bongs, nothing really, but it highlights some of the ways I determine if something has contractual value. In this case I won’t be trying to find a bunch of Test Bongs since there is only one on contract and it is in a bundle. Having said that, there is a market for them, they normally list for anywhere between 7 and 13 million Isk at Jita and I must admit I am a bit surprised there weren’t any when this was done.
So how did I know that?
I use a bunch of other tools to see if an item has history. Adam4Eve is a great tool.
What I don’t know is where Test Bongs come from, chances are a mission relic or similar. My guess is that they are reasonably easy to find or they would be more expensive, although that is not always the case. If I had checked contracts and there weren’t any listed I might be tempted take one from the hanger and list it for 100 mill just to see what happens. Eve players buy the strangest stuff and for that my Corp wallet is eternally grateful.
My Alt acquires stuff and drops it in a corp hanger. Another character creatres a courier contract so that it ends up in the Corp Deliveries hanger in Jita. From there it is put on contract and the Isk trickles in. Money for old rope as the saying goes.
He hasn’t mentioned corpses and it was in the subheading?
Chribba is possibly the most trusted and well known player in Eve, but I wonder how many of you know that he will accept contacts made up entirely of corpses if the price is right – I think the going rate is 100k per corpse.
Wilhelm over on TAGN did an article about Corpses and their place in New Eden back in 2017 and the information is still sound.
Chribba isn’t the only corpse collector 🙂
So there you have it, that’s what I have been up to in January.
I miss Omega, but not enough to pay for it.
Fly Safe as always,
Yad
Yadot 