Meta 3 and 4 item prices soar as the farmer CNR armada remains grounded

Again with the macro farmers!

The past week has seen a strong increase in the prices of "best named" (a.k.a. Meta 4) and Meta 3 items. The reason? Oh, let's just say the armada of stereotypical CNR's and Golems running missions non stop has been nerfed a notch by CCP.

But how much of this price increase is natural market reaction and how much is artificially induced by market manipulators? This is indeed a great opportunity for anyone with a fat wallet and some patience to obtain an even fatter wallet.

Take for instance the best named 10MN Microwarp Drive, the "y-t8": it is generally used on cruiser and battlecruiser (and their T2 versions) sized ships for the following reasons:

• Less fitting requirements which may just be enough to "fit"
  
• Less cap usage than T2
  
• Comparable to T2 performance-wise

Six months ago, one of these babies cost around 3-3.5mil; yesterday in Jita the going price for one was 14mil. In other systems of The Forge and the surrounding regions you could still find some for 8-10mil, which means a certain degree of market manipulation is underway.

How much exactly is difficult to pinpoint, given the "lag" with wich prices elsewhere allign to Jita prices; but given the previous trend, I'd say anywhere up to about 30%.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as usually this kind of manipulation implies a price spike for a few days, but afterwards, depending on the daily demand, supply and quantity left on the market, the price stabilizes, sometimes lower than before the spike.

I'm anxious to see how the price increases are going to affect PVP... watch the killboards :)