User:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Price checks/How much are zoins worth

How much are zoins worth?
(I wrote the original article on zoin values before the update that made them tradeable. Prices and text have been updated since.)

How much are zoins worth? About 4-25 each, which translates to roughly 3-12 per gold zoin.

The value of a Zaishen Coin depends greatly on what you choose to purchase with it.
 * Use them to buy points for the primary consumable titles (e.g. Sweet Tooth), and each zoin is worth about 4.5. Really, that little? Yeah: it takes 20 and 10 to purchase just one Sparkler, which you could have bought in Kamadan for a mere 100 &rarr; 90 of net-value for 20 &rarr; 4.5/.
 * Things don't improve much until you earn enough zoinage to purchase Zaishen Keys (11.5 /) and, at best, if you are good at finding trades quickly, you can get up to 17-24 / by selling Equipment Packs.

That means that the 150 zoin value of completing the Thunderhead Keep Zaishen Quest in Hard mode is a mere in title points and an anemic  in zkeys. (Should you choose to spend an extra 20 minutes trading kit packs, you might realize .) That's not a lot of reward for 40 minutes of effort (difficult to complete it faster than that because of the timing of assaults).

Tradeable zoins
The demand for PvP unlocks continues to drive the market for silvers; a somewhat smaller demand is driving the gold zoin market. As of 00:26, 12 July 2011 (UTC), zoin tradeability is having little/no impact on the prices of items available via the zoin NPCs. People are still offering the prices listed below for 20-slot kit packs, zkeys, elite rit tomes, and ordinary rit tomes.



! Zoin !! Imputed value May 2011 !! Imputed value June 2011 !! Trade price June 2011 !! Trade price July 2011 !! Notes Very few WTB observed. Observed sales: WTB 1.4 – WTS 2.1 Observed: WTB 10 – WTS 2.5.
 * - style="background:lightgray;"
 * || 3–21 || 4–25 || ||   || No notable (recent) changes.
 * || 3–21 || 4–25 || ||   || No notable (recent) changes.
 * || 250–600 || 200–850 || 1–2.5 || 1.4–2.1 || Modest increase in imputed values, but huge demand for PvP unlocks.
 * || 250–600 || 200–850 || 1–2.5 || 1.4–2.1 || Modest increase in imputed values, but huge demand for PvP unlocks.
 * || 6–12 || 6–12 || 5–22 || 10–22 || Market values didn't change; Envoy Weapons sparked demand for gold zoin.
 * || 6–12 || 6–12 || 5–22 || 10–22 || Market values didn't change; Envoy Weapons sparked demand for gold zoin.
 * }


 * Imputed values: see below (the price you can get for an item divided by the number of zoins needed).
 * Trade prices: observed in GToB or reported to me in-game as confirmed prices.

Related volatility
Zkeys and ectos continue to bound:
 * Ectos have varied at the material trader from WTB 5.5 – WTS 9 since zoins were made tradeable (the spread isn't unusual, but the volatility is).
 * Zkeys are selling at anything from 1:1, WTS 7, down to WTB 4.5.

Other notes: despite there being four types of strongboxes — each with different content — people are still offering WTB/WTS prices on strongboxes. This is another market that has gone crazy.

Other points of comparison
As a rule of thumb, you shouldn't re-arrange your priorities to fit the Zaishen schedule; the rewards are insufficient to justify it unless the activity is quick (e.g. Augury Rock), offers other bonuses (e.g. faction/reputation points), or you plan to use the tokens to purchase your own Equipment Packs.


 * Equivalent cash value of zcoins is 11.5 (converting to zkeys and selling, at current market conditions); these are still the most fungible on the list.
 * The added value of zaishen quests is substantially less than above, since you typically can earn 1,000-3,000 from gathering loot while adventuring.

Caveats
I expect considerable volatility in prices for 4-8 weeks (longer, if ANet continues to tweak and/or release new items). Things could be very different in August.


 * Newly available items tend to spike in price, regardless of any true value (just watch the prices of tokens every festival).
 * The new tradeability of zoins should tend to depress their value.
 * The existence of new weapons should tend to increase their value.
 * The reduced z-cost of some items will mean that their market prices fall.
 * All of these things are interrelated.

Data

 * ''See also: Original table, before the 2 June 2011 update that changed zoin conversion ratios and made them tradeable.