Market for Medallions

[Daddicus.6128]

I've noticed that there is an incredibly active market for medallions. The prices for buy and sell are nearly always a copper apart. And, there are always hundreds being bought at that price.

 

But, I can't figure out what they're being used for. What do people do with all those things?

[MikeG.6389]

I might be wrong but I have a feeling that you meant [Crests. ](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crest "Crests. ") Have a quick look through [here.](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amalgamated_Gemstone/Recipes "Have a quick look through here.") These things are used in the recipes on this page.

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

Nah, Medallions have a solid market as well. Mostly they're MFed I expect.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Tanner Blackfeather.6509" said:

> Nah, Medallions have a solid market as well. Mostly they're MFed I expect.

 

Yes. There's a tiny chance that you can get an Amalgamated Gemstone and you have a 20% chance that they'll upgrade to a Crest or Orb-level gemstone, which have their own market since they directly convert to AmGems.

 

If you choose your buy offers and sell listings carefully, it's a tiny, steady profit, almost risk free (just tedious).

[Khisanth.2948]

It never seems very active when I try to buy them ...

[Daddicus.6128]

> @"MikeG.6389" said:

> I might be wrong but I have a feeling that you meant [Crests. ](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crest "Crests. ") Have a quick look through [here.](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amalgamated_Gemstone/Recipes "Have a quick look through here.") These things are used in the recipes on this page.

 

No, I definitely mean medallions. The brown ones with a yellowish symbol in the middle. Medallion of the Rabid right now has a buy price of 2s 88c and a sell price of 2s 89c. There are 4405 offers at 2.88 and 447 offers at 2.89. Refresh (in the time I took to write this paragraph, maybe 15-30 seconds) shows 17 bought and 2 more offered for sale.

[Daddicus.6128]

Mystic Forging them might explain it. Amalgamated Gemstones are over a gold each.

 

What really interested me the most is that the buyers frequently skip to one copper below the sell price, and they buy thousands at a time. The aforementioned Rabid has another 500+ at one copper lower, and then it drops a whole silver and change. I think some people are still fooled by the reversal of the terms "buyer" and "seller" for the columns.

[Daddicus.6128]

I just did a test with a dozen sets, and the wiki's percentages are pretty accurate. I got 8 tier 5 items and 4 tier 6.

 

However, the wiki doesn't mention the chance of getting an amalgamated gemstone. **Is that an error (on the wiki)?** (I didn't either, but in only a dozen tests, that's not surprising.)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Daddicus.6128" said:

> I just did a test with a dozen sets, and the wiki's percentages are pretty accurate. I got 8 tier 5 items and 4 tier 6.

>

> However, the wiki doesn't mention the chance of getting an amalgamated gemstone. **Is that an error (on the wiki)?** (I didn't either, but in only a dozen tests, that's not surprising.)

 

It's not an "error;" there's just no place to mention it, since it's one of those once-in-a-blue-moon situations. It's on the talk pages

* https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Amalgamated_Gemstone#4_Crystals_rates, which in turn points to

* https://redd.it/4glfnn, which has its data source at

* https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12cthZUVC9M-UC3YATnqRmNPJoBRCTbK1meOpiTLU7dY/pubhtml

 

**tl;dr The drop rate was around ~3%.**

 

Gory details:

* Researcher bought 8000 crystals (which work the same as medallions for our purposes).

* Any T5 drops were reforged; T6 drops were forged into AmGems (requiring purchase of crystalline dust)

* Total of 2500 forges (2000+extra rolls, per previous bullet)

* Entire process took them nearly _four hours_ (not including breaks to stretch their fingers, oil the mouse)

* At 2016 prices, they made well over 40 gold an hour. (~~I'll add their data to my spreadsheet to come up with an estimate using 2019 market values, brb~~).

* **UPDATE:** With 2019 prices, it looks as if it's closer to 11-12g/hour (mostly because AmGems are a gold cheaper than 3 years ago, with orbs correspondingly less, too)

 

Caution: before trying this at home, recognize that this requires the law of large numbers working for you. Unless you're extremely lucky, you really do need to invest 3-4 hours (more than 2k forges, more than 9k clicks) to make sure you're getting a steady stream of AmGems. Also, the initial investment for this sample is worth ~232 gold (interestingly, that's hardly changed since 2016, when it was ~229g).