A starter tip for station traders

Kilbey in glorious 80's-O-Phonics - video

"The man at the desk who takes everything he can find..."

Faction Ammo Trading

If you're just getting started in the buying and selling of items in stations, I've found a good starter item: Caldari Navy blaster ammo charges, small size.  Fly your trader to Jita and find, just to pick one of the 8 or so flavors, "Caldari Navy Thorium Charge S".  Click the "Browse to category" icon near the top of the screen; looks like a target reticle) and the left side of your market window will navigate to the folder where all the Cal Navy small blaster charges live.

Click each one and notice all the sell orders average around 500 ISK per bullet, and the buy orders average around 300 ISK per bullet. I've been trading them for a while and these numbers haven't moved, so I feel confident recommending this category as a good starting point. Set up buy orders for a few of the different ammo types, say 10,000 rounds to start with, then sell what you've bought on sell orders; easy-peasy :)

There are occasional spikes and dips in all these flavors. If you can buy and hold, acquire as much as you can of any type when the price is under 300 ISK (some are, right now, close to 200 ISK). When supplies dry up, sellers can achieve around 900 ISK per bullet. Antimatter is the most popular and thus the most stable; I'd avoid it.

Interestingly, even though Federation Navy small charges are functionally identical, there is much less trade in them at Jita, since they are "Gallente" and thus tainted with frog poo.

The nice feature of it is that all the different flavors of ammo cost the same amount to make, so you only need to remember one price range: 300-500 ISK.

Public Contracts and Region-Wide Buy Orders

I have been buying five different items on region wide buy orders, items with a good margin between the Essence (link to region map) region-wide buy order and a Jita sell order. i.e I buy a thing for 1.5M and sell it at Jita for 3M. The hard part is taking the time to pick the items up from the random places I bought them, getting them into decent sized piles and getting them to market.

I was going to create a new alt to use as a high-sec hauler, picking up items I buy and collecting them together for me, in preparation for shipping to Jita. But I've found that public contracts get the job done very quickly and at reasonable cost. I offer 25K to move stuff within a system, and 50-100K per jump between systems. These prices are fine for highsec-only travel; you have to offer more for trips that pass through lowsec, hence my problem with the highsec islands of Allebin and Drosselory.

The items tend to cluster around four main systems: Arnon, Charmerout, Oursulaert and Villore. So I'm using those as staging areas and made the following list of systems that are close to each hub.

Public Contracts for Rat Loot

Jumps to Jita - Collection Point - Systems encompassed

15 - Villore (move stuff to VII-7) : allamotte,pemene,derrintel,mesybier,cat,arant,ommare,vale: atlangeins (3)

12 - charmerout:noghere,yona,jolevier,adrel,

16 - arnon: laurvier,ignebaener

13 - oursulaert:renyn,algogille, duripant, mies,luminaire,synchelle, couster (four jumps from oursu, but whatevs),wysalan (3),

Problems: Allebin,Drosselory (high sec islands), Lisbaetanne (near Arnon, low sec)

You may find a similar arrangement works in your neck of the space-woods: give it a try!