Economy Guides / Price History

Price History Guide

A field guide to reading the line behind a price: the shapes it makes, what causes each one, and why the graph is always telling you about a moment that has already passed.

A graph is a record, not a forecast

Every instinct pulls the other way. A rising line looks like an opportunity and a falling one looks like a warning, and both feelings are almost entirely misplaced. A price history describes a distance already travelled. It carries no information whatsoever about the next step.

Worse, by the time a move is visible to you it has already finished happening to someone else. There is a chain of delays between an event and the line on your screen, and every link in it is real.

Why you are always looking backwards Each step adds delay

Something changes

A patch lands, a crafting method is found, a build starts circulating.

Hour zero

The informed act

The people who noticed first buy or sell before anyone has repriced. This is where the money is made.

Minutes to hours

Listings reprice

Everyone else catches up and adjusts their asking prices. Only now does the data begin to move.

Hours

You see the line

The move renders on a graph, by which point it is a description of something finished.

You are here

By the time a move is big enough to notice on a graph, the people who caused it have already been paid.

None of which makes history useless. It makes it useful for a different job than most people try to use it for, which is covered at the end of this page.

The master shape: the league arc

Most items follow a recognisable trajectory across a league, and knowing that shape is worth more than watching any individual graph. The same percentage move means completely different things depending on which stretch of the arc you are standing in.

The trajectory most items follow Illustrative, not real data

ScarcityAlmost nothing exists. Prices peak and mean very little, because supply has not arrived yet.

FloodSupply catches up violently. The steepest falls of the league happen here and signal nothing.

SettleThe only stretch where a move genuinely describes something changing rather than the calendar.

DriftPlayers leave, farming stops. Scarce items can quietly rise while common ones keep sagging.

The practical consequence: a thirty percent fall in week one and a thirty percent fall in week five are not the same event. The first is the calendar. The second is information.

Not everything follows the same arc

Three broad categories behave differently enough that comparing their graphs directly will mislead you. Recognising which one you are looking at comes before reading anything into the shape.

Common currencyDeep supply

Moves gently and rarely spikes. Enough listings exist that no individual seller matters, so changes here reflect genuine economy-wide shifts.

Chase uniqueRestricted supply

Enormous at launch, collapses as supply arrives, then flattens low and often lifts again late as farming stops. Thin listings throughout.

Meta-dependentDemand-driven

Flat until a build makes it relevant, then a sharp step up, then a slow decay as the meta moves on. The steps have causes you can usually name.

Which category an item falls into is usually obvious from its listing count and drop restriction. Deep listings and no drop restriction means the first. Thin listings and a specific source means the second.

A field guide to chart shapes

Six shapes cover almost everything you will see. Each has a characteristic cause, and naming the shape is usually enough to work out what happened.

The launch cliff

A very high start followed by a steep, sustained fall over the first fortnight. Every item in the game does this to some degree.

Read it as: the calendar, not the market. It contains no information about the item at all.

The step

Flat, then a sudden jump or drop, then flat again at the new level. The line does not drift back.

Read it as: a real event — a patch, a recipe, a build going viral. If you cannot name the cause, find it before acting.

The slow bleed

A steady decline over weeks with no dramatic moments. Easy to miss because no single day looks bad.

Read it as: supply accumulating against static demand. If you are holding one, sell earlier than feels comfortable.

The spike and return

A sharp rise that falls back to roughly where it started within a few days.

Read it as: a temporary surge — a race, an event, a video. By the time you see the peak it is over. Do not chase it.

The flat line

No movement whatsoever across the whole window. Looks like admirable stability.

Read it as: usually no data rather than no change. Check the listing count. Too few listings and the figure simply has nothing to update from.

The late-league lift

A long decline that turns upward in the final weeks of a league.

Read it as: farming has stopped and supply is drying up. Real, but thin — volumes are low and the price is fragile.

Three questions that separate noise from signal

Before treating any move as meaningful, these three settle it almost every time. If a move fails any of them, it is a fluctuation.

How many listings sit behind the figure? A twelve percent move on nine listings is two people changing their minds. The same twelve percent on four thousand listings is a market shifting. The percentage looks identical either way, which is exactly the problem. This is the same confidence question covered in the item prices guide.

Where are you in the league? Week one moves are enormous and mean nothing, because supply is arriving faster than demand can absorb it. Identical percentages in week five describe something real. Check the calendar before the chart.

Can you name the cause? Most large genuine moves have a reason attached: a patch, a new crafting method, a build circulating, a boss becoming easier to farm. If you cannot point at one, you are not reading a trend. You are reading a fluctuation and hoping.

What price history is genuinely good for

Not prediction. Four things it does well, all of which are about the present rather than the future.

Use it for these

Sanity checking a live trade. If someone quotes a figure well outside the recent range, the graph tells you before you agree. This is the single most valuable use.
Establishing what normal looks like. You cannot recognise an unusual price without a sense of the usual one, and that sense only comes from having looked at the range.
Spotting a step you missed. If a price jumped three days ago and you were not paying attention, the graph tells you something happened and prompts you to find out what.
Timing a sale you are not in a hurry for. Knowing where the league arc usually bends is genuinely useful when nothing forces you to sell today.

What it cannot do is tell you where a price goes next, and every attempt to use it that way is a bet dressed as analysis. The common mistakes guide covers where that habit does the most damage, and the price change calculator will at least tell you honestly how far something has already moved and how far it would have to travel to come back.

Previous chapter Item Prices How one value is computed from thousands of listings, and why it skews slightly high. Next chapter Trading Mistakes Where a correct number still produces a bad trade, and the six-second check that prevents it. Chapter one Currency What prices are measured in, why the hierarchy shifts, and the denomination trap. Back to Economy Guides All four chapters, following one price from denomination through to the trade window.