In EVE Online, i’m still- and will likely continue to be for a while- doing career agent missions. Having finished the Industry career agent missions, i’m in the process of doing business missions. For one of those, i needed to get hold of a tracking computer. The agents generally don’t care if you produce these items yourself or simply buy them off the market. After thinking about it for a bit, i chose to buy it- because to produce it, i’d need to get ore, reprocess it, get a blueprint for the tracking computer and manufacture it in a station. Each of these steps leads to some losses- of time, materials and money.
The blueprint might be worth an investment, though. It’s available for around 100k ISK and in my home station one of those tracking computers goes for 40k – manufacturing one costs me around 10k ISK. As i’m in one of those training stations where pilots start off with their career agent missions, it’s clear that the tracking computer is more expensive here than in Jita. As Jita is only 4 jumps away, i decided to take a look (it’s very possible that i’m able to check Jita prices from the distance, but i haven’t looked into that for now) and fly over. Indeed, the tracking computer was traded for about 9.5k ISK in Jita.
I thought about that for a while and decided that i’ll take the opportunity to try a small trade to gain some profit and see if the computers sell quick enough to be anything else than a money sink. I bought one for myself and 10 to try it out, transported everything over to my home station, finished the mission and put the remaining 10 tracking computers on the market- undercutting the 40k price by 10 ISK. To my surprise and excitement, half of them sold before i logged out an hour later- granting me 200k ISK and thereby already being a profitable trade.
Bear in mind: this is, again, pocket change. Even if i sold all ten, it would be a profit of around 300k ISK. It’s not really one to pursue for very long as i think the demand is limited and the profit is miniscule. But for me, this is a small victory – the first profitable trade.
Party Business 