Empathy for Big Tobacco -or- Making Big Space Bucks

This is an EVE Online story, so those of you uninterested in my latest MMORPGing please turn back now.

The EVE game is fascinating in that it makes seemingly mundane tasks, fun.  Not fun as in "Disney world" fun -- more like "getting off of work" fun.  My big thing these days is teamstering.  I put out these big-ass orders of trade goods such as frozen food, panes of glass, wine, depleted uranium, hydrogen batteries and tobacco.  Then, after all sorts of people get rewarded for killing pirates and rescuing helpless space miners with a couple of packs of cigarettes, they collectively say "Crap! What am I gonna do with 100 packs of virtual smokes?  Well," they continue, "I guess I could try to sell them.  Let me look at the market."  They then pull up a market window and see that they can sell their 100 packs of cigs for 60 bucks each (smoking is expensive in the future) but they have to go across the galaxy to sell them at the good rate -- in the game that translates to 6000 bucks for about 30 minutes of effort.  Any player worth their salt can make ten times that amount other ways -- so frequently people just toss the smokes, or hold onto them for a better deal later.

This is where I come in.  I am that better deal later.  I put out a galaxy-wide order for smokes, not at the high price of 60 bucks a pack, but a more reasonable 10 bucks a pack.  This way when the guy with 100 packs of red apples looks at the market, they have a choice: hold onto those cancer sticks hoping that they might find their way over to the $60 deal.  -Or-  Right now, they can sell them to me for $10 each.  They get a quick $1000 for their effort.

Now its a real pain for me to make money on this deal.  After all, now I have to go to place the cigs were sold (remember I put out a galaxy-wide order, people can sell them to me from anywhere) pick up the cigs, and then haul over where I can get $60 for a pack.  I have probably doubled the effort required to do the trade.  BUT if I get a lot of people doing the "sell me 100 packs" all over the galaxy, then I can sweep from solar system to solar system picking up 100 packs here, 100 packs there, et cetera.  And then I can haul over to Secondhandsmokus and sell them at my bitchin' x6 markup at 60 bucks a pack.

This little trick has netted me tons of cash.  I guess its really not a trick and it's hardly little.  But its all about quantity, baby!

On the downside of being a teamster, I am a huge target to other players.  I do these trades in big industrial ships that are slow slow slow.  If some less-than-savory soul spies me and scans my cargo hold they may get dollar signs in their eyes salivating over taking all my smokes for themselves.

Fortunately I am a member of a corporation with some (though not a ton of) firepower.  Me and my virtual co-workers (which are actually, real-life co-workers, ironically) team up hauling stuff everywhere with a couple trigger-happy cowboys packing shotguns for the ride.  It really gives quite a wild west flavor as three of us move around in these lumbering tugs while two or more decked out space cruisers ride astride keepin' us all warm and safe.

Like I said, more like “getting’ off of work” fun.