Lead Designer Damion Schubert took to the forums today to address a thread, amazingly titled “I’m Terrible Disappointed By Cartel Packs”.  He gave some pretty interesting figures on how the Cartel Pack items have been selling and items they plan to address.

According to Damion, this item is a great example of scarcity economics!

Posted by Damion Schubert

Do items put in the Galactic Trade Network sell?
Yes. We have metrics, as well, on what sells, and for what price, which we compare to their drop rates. This gives us a great idea on adjustments we should make for future packs (the drop rates and the pack contents themselves) – which means that our next round of packs will be better, and the ones after that will be better again.

Here are some fun stats
* The White indestructible crystal Median Buyout price = 1.4 million credits
* The Overlord’s Command Throne Median Buyout Price = 1.75 million credits
* The Dominator’s Command Throne Median buyout price = 1.50 million credits
* The imperial banner Median buyout price = 250 credits
* Ruddyscale Kowakian Monkey-Lizard median buyout price = 500,000 credits
* Elegant Loungewear Top median buyout price = 22,000 credits

This is interesting, in that the thrones are much less rare than the crystal. The metrics we have on what sells and what doesn’t are excellent, which means that we should get better and better at pushing our resources towards things that players actually want.
Are there any truly absurd prices out there?
Absolutely. I can tell you one person bought an Imperial Banner off the GTN for 310000 credits.
Are we aware that some items can’t be sold on the GTN (i.e. the game won’t let you)?
Yeah, those are bugs, and in the case of the lightsaber crystals, ones that we should have caught easily, since it’s happened multiple times. In every case I can think of off the top of my head, these are unintentional bugs, and should get fixed. It’s not our intention that people should be standing around spamming the fleet about these.
Are you guys aware that there’s a ton of dupe items clogging our inventory?
We totally are. This is particularly true of the more common bonus items that are repeated through multiple packs. We are constructing our next round of packs (i.e. the round that will start when Rise of the Hutt Cartel ships) with a definite eye on reducing this level of suck.
Why can’t I sell some of this junk that is worthless on the GTN?
We are examining that possibility, and even if we did so, we would likely make the sale price negligible, to avoid having too harsh an effect on the economy (I don’t want buying Cartel Packs to be a particularly effective and reliable way to get credits). That being said, there’s a very good chance that some of these items may be retired in the future – an Imperial Banner or Dominator Throne that enjoys a certain value now might find that value greatly increased once the packs that sell these disappear – so you might want to selectively choose some of these to bank, rather than junk. This retirement may be permanent, or a temporary removal from service (like the McRib or the Disney DvD releases) That being said, we are still developing our strategy for how these items are retired and/or cycled into service. Once we have a plan, I will be sure we communicate it to the community at large.
It sucks that the Cartel Market/Cartel Packs takes away resources that could be spent on (my pet feature)!
It’s quite the opposite, actually. The success of the market (and it has been quite successful) has given us the time and resources to do some ambitious things on Makeb, and plan some very ambitious things beyond. The success of the Cartel Market means that there will be more good stuff for ALL players, paying, subscribers, and free.

Its hard to argue with a man who uses the McRib as an analogy for scarcity.  What say you, TORWarriors?