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[My Name is Immaterial]

Data!(Also known as my 5 month long project of data entry for fun.)(Or videogame economics by a person who took one econ class.)(Whatever floats your boat.)

I won’t be going into detail on the game in this thread, but if you want to get more information, there are links at the bottom, in case you like links.
   

Spoiler: Here’s what you need to know about it for the purposes of this: (click to show/hide)

1. The in-game marketplace is called The Mall, and for a not insubstantial fee, players can buy a store from which players can sell items.
   2. The game’s currency is called meat, and thats how I will refer to money here, unless it’s USD. When it is USD, I will endeavor to make that clear.
   3. The only thing you can buy (donate, technically) with (10) USD in KOL is a Mr. Accessory, an item that gives your character higher stats when worn. This can be traded for special items or sold on the Mall for meat, currently around 12,000,000, which is a lot. It could be considered buying power, but skill and leveling is still required.

Spoiler: A brief history and explanation of the project. (click to show/hide)

While doing some bored internet searching, I stumbled upon this forum post. It quoted Mr. A prices as being 5.5 million meat, and, continuing to be bored, I looked up the current price: 12 million. I was taking an economics class (I've only taken one, so take this whole thing with a pinch of salt.), in which we had just talked about inflation. I calculated that the price had gone up about 125% since that thread in August-September 2009. I thought to myself “If that isn't inflation, I don’t know what is. I wonder if I can see it in action.”

Since late February, I have been logging on at around 7:30 (7:00 before Daylight savings time), and checking the prices of eight items: Mr. Accessory, Ten Leaf and Disassembled Clover, Red Pixel Potion, Milk of Magnesium , Grog, Meat Maid, and Long Pork. They were selected pseudo-randomly from items in my inventory. In addition, I have recorded which store has sold these items, how many, if there was a limit to the number that could be purchased, any other stores with the same price, and any outliers. I have decided to throw out my February and March data as I had not yet agreed with my self as to what an outlier was and much of it is corrupted by those outliers.

Spoiler: A more detailed explanation/analysis. (click to show/hide)

Overall: This is an edited version of the data. I have a complete data sheet, but my real name is connected to it, and stalkers. So you get this data sheet instead.

     As I said in the last wall of text, I threw out February and March. I am currently publishing the April through June data as the July data is obviously not finished. Once it is, I will transfer it into the published data sheet.

     I am not including outliers in this sheet, as they elongate the cells to ludicrous levels.

     Any day with no time and store data is a day that I missed. The price is an average of the days before and after.

     Please point out any other weird things you notice.

Mr. Accessory: This market is dominated by a healthy mix of small one time sellers and 'major' market figures. There often small and large quantities traded. It is a rather active and healthy market, with the price rarely staying stagnant.

Ten Leaf Clover and Disassembled Clover: While these two are listed as different products, the are actually the same, as a quick look at the wiki can tell you. It is common to see the price of one be higher than the other by many meat. Also, this market is often hit by people who sell TLCs and DCs for 200 meat, at a limit of 1/day, in quantities of thousands. Those sales disappear within the day. DC is considerably less active then TLC.
Overall: A stable but active market.
Remember, dont tell the noobs how to kill the hermit.

Red Pixel Potion: Stable within a couple hundred. Prices are always changing. Someone bought a huge amount of them once. Messed the market for the next few weeks.

Milk of Magnesium: Varies between stable within a hundred meat, to stable within 25. Not much more to say.

Grog:Very susceptible to the price jumping around. When not crazy, stable within 25.

Meat maid: A completely stagnant market. Its been dominated by one person who I've labeled as an outlier, as the price difference was too great. Between 5 and 10 are sold a day.

Long Pork: The MOST unstable market I survey. Just go look at the graph.

Spoiler: Links, in case you like links (click to show/hide)

The main page: http://www.kingdomofloathing.com
Our thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=26011.0 (We also have clan called !!carp!!)
The wiki: http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Main_Page
Their forums (Who have yet to be informed that this is happening, and I would like it to stay that way for now. I know and trust you people more.): http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/

Please excuse my massive parentheses.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Reserved for recruiting help.

One of the main reasons that I finally forced myself to post this was the fact that I will be backpacking in Point Reyes for a week, and need someone to cover for me. I don't mind losing a day, as averages can easily fill in for me, but very interesting things could happen in a week. I wanted to see if anyone could help me by logging the prices, shops, etc from August the fifth to tenth, or, if this is something that interests you, longer. (Send me a PM, and we can work something out.) If you can, please log on at around 7:30 PM PST, 10:30 PM EST, or 3:30 AM GMT, and fill out the forms below. I'll make these later. I really appreciate any help you can give me.
   Please note that you need to get to level five and complete the meat car quest for the people in your guild hall to be able to access the mall.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Reserved because I understand the cool kids reserve twice.

[Capntastic]

I've been playing the KoL Market (more than playing the actual game) for like 9 years.  In that time I've amassed (and spent) hundreds of millions of meat.

You know there's a site that already logs market data for every item, right?

http://kol.coldfront.net/index.php/content/view/1903/146/

The above site also logs volume, which is much more useful than just base price.  At least, for someone who speculates.

[Dwarvinator]

I played KOL a few years ago - and mucked about with the market a bit. I would pick a relatively high value item, that was well represented on the day (i.e. the market was stuffed with them) as my target and put up half a dozen or so for sale...at rock bottom prices..
Competition being what it is, other vendors would see me selling stock they weren't themselves shifting - so they would drop their prices in response. Once or twice, once the ball got rolling, this produced spectacular, though temporary, price crashes for certain commodities.
Then a matter of buying up as much stock as possible as things bottom out. After, I could still sell the items at below market value and still make a profit. They loved me on there...

[Aoi]

The price of a Mr. A is actually rather stable, in terms of how many turns worth of farming it takes to purchase one. Using the best techniques of the day six years ago and the best techniques of today, it only takes about 3 more days, give or take a bit depending on market flux. And the trends are pretty predictable.

Also: Capntastic's link has pretty much all the records you'd want regarding the economy, doubly so if you combine it with tracking game changes on the wiki (also on that site) for why things go into flux.

[My Name is Immaterial]

This has been abandoned. Just wanted to make it official.
If anyone wants me to put up the July data, I will.