Putting up for sale
Putting a horse up for sale, or a whole selection. The window is short, but each of its fields commits you for several days.
The type of sale
Four choices, and the first serves to cancel:
- Not for sale: withdraws the horse from the market. A sale in progress is cancelled.
- Fixed price: the first to pay carries it off.
- Reserved: one player only can buy, the one whose nickname you give.
- Auction: a minimum price, and the offers climb until the deadline.
The detail of what each formula implies is in trading — in particular the auction rules and the penalty waiting for an insolvent bidder.
The deadline
From 1 to 7 days, and it is the field to think about, because it cannot be changed. At creation you choose a number of days; after that the window displays nothing but the date, read-only.
For a fixed price, seven days cost nothing: the sale goes as soon as somebody makes up their mind. For an auction, the duration is a real choice: too short, and buyers do not see it go by; too long, and it falls asleep. Three to four days is a good compromise — long enough to be seen, short enough to create urgency at the end.
For a reserved sale, warn your buyer by some other channel if the deadline is short: they will only be told by an internal message that they may not read in time.
The price
At least 1 sulkie. At a fixed price and in a reserved sale, it is the selling price; in an auction, it is the minimum price — the floor below which no offer is accepted.
For an auction, a low minimum draws people in and lets the market decide; a high minimum protects against a bad bargain but discourages the curious. And do not forget the 10 % commission: if you have a price in mind, it is that price divided by 0.9 that you should aim for.
The two particular fields
Reserved for, in a reserved sale: the player's nickname, exactly. If it is not found, the confirmation fails and tells you so. As soon as you save, they receive a message containing the horse's name, the price and a direct link to buy it. If you reserve several horses for the same player at once, they receive only one message listing the whole batch.
Blind auction: the offers are shown to nobody, and bidders are not warned when they are overtaken. Each one offers what they think right, without seeing the others. It is a different game from the ordinary auction, often more favourable to the seller on a coveted horse, and less lively.
In an open auction, the window recalls the best offer received: that is your indicator before the deadline.
What locks, and when
As soon as an auction has received an offer, it can no longer be changed. Neither the type of sale, nor the minimum price, nor the blind character. The window opens, the fields are greyed out, and any attempt to change formula is refused, naming the horse.
It is the normal price of an offer: a player who has committed sulkies did so on announced conditions. So think before the first offer, not after.
A fixed-price or reserved sale, on the other hand, stays changeable as long as it is not concluded: you can lower the price, change recipient, or withdraw the sale.
The refusals
Each horse in the selection is examined separately, and the refusals are listed without stopping the others from going through:
- the horse is retired;
- the auction has already received offers;
- the horse is not saleable — that is the case of a horse you created yourself, unsaleable for life, or of a horse that is no longer yours;
- the horse is entered in a claiming race: it has to stay at auction until after the race, so the fixed price, the reservation and the withdrawal are all refused.
For the screen this window comes from, see Sell a horse.