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Chapter 4 - Horse Sales Other than racing and breeding, the buying and selling of horses is one of the primary activities in PF. Horses go to auction or pass hands in privately arranged sales, sometimes as part of a trade or swap of stock. As a new stable beginning with 5 stalls, two of those filled for free, your next step may be to purchase more horses. When making those initial buys, be careful not to spend too much of your initial bank account, as you’ll need to pay your stable’s bills. There are four ways to go about buying more stock. One is offering to buy more horses from Endless Vista. Racers at EV are seldom for open sale, however, and are usually reserved for assignment to new players. This can, however, be a place to pick up breeding stock if that’s what you’re after. Breeders are almost always for sale at EV, just email the steward and make an offer on any horse you may be interested in. Foals and Yearlings are usually reserved for the yearly auction. The second way is to email the current owner of a horse you may be interested in and offer to buy the horse. Many owners are willing to entertain offers for their horses, and will let you know if they have any horses they will consider selling. The third way is to announce on the Forum in the Sales area that you are looking for horses to buy. Other players will respond with what they may be willing to part with or can point you to where to look for more horses. The last and most direct way is the online horse sales system. Horses that are currently up for sale by other players will be listed on this system, where you can place bids or buy outright the horses offered. Using The Online Sales System You can access the online sales system from your stable login page. Go to the Stables link from the main web page, and log into your stable. One of the links at the top of your stable page is View Sales List. This link will take you to the complete listing of horses currently for sale in the system. The horses are broken down into three categories on the listing: Buy It Now horses, Auction horses, and Sold horses. Sales on the system are handled similarly to Ebay for those familiar with that site. The Buy It Now horse list shows all the horses available for immediate sale. Each horse has its ID number, name, age and gender, current owner, status, and price listed. To buy a horse from this list, simply click the Buy It Now button. The horse will be moved to the Sold listing, with your stable listed as the new owner. The Auction horse list shows all the horses that are being auctioned off. These horses must be bid on, and the highest bidder wins. Listed for each horse is its ID number, name, age and gender, current owner, status, the current high bid and bidder, and the date and time at which the auction for that horse will end. Keep in mind that all times listed in the game are in Eastern U.S. Time (GMT –5). If you live in a different time zone or country, remember to adjust for your own local time. To bid on an Auction horse, simply click the Bid Now button next to that horse, and input your bid. For both Buy It Now and Auction horses there is a Comments area. The horse’s current owner will sometimes leave this blank, but usually it holds some notes about the horse and its ability or even a complete AR. The Sold list shows all the horses that have already been sold for the current week. Each horse has listed its ID number, name, age and gender, original owner, status, the winning bidder, and two dollar amounts. The High Bid column will hold the highest bid on that horse for Auction horses, or $0 for Buy It Now horses. If the column has a dash, it was a horse that nobody opted to buy and its auction ended. The Reserve column shows what the reserve price was for an Auction horse, or the price paid for Buy It Now horses. If the horse was an Auction horse, and the highest bid listed is less than the listed Reserve, then that horse remains the property of its original owner and was not sold. If you are the winning bidder but did not meet the reserve, you should email the owner of the horse and see if you can work out an arrangement for the sale. Unless the steward receives an email from the horse’s current owner that week stating that he has worked out a sale price, the horse will revert back to his stable when sales for the week are processed. Sales Processing Horses on the Sold list do not immediately transfer to their new owners. The sales system handles bids and records sales, but the sales are processed only once each week by the racing steward. Sales are processed each week usually on Sunday or Monday, after the race results for that week have been posted. For the purpose of sales processing, a week ends on the racing day of that week. That means that a week begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. Any sales which closed on or before racing day (Saturday) will be processed that week on Sunday. Any sales which close after Saturday will not be processed until the following week. For expample, if the current week’s race day is 4/17, and a horse is sold on 4/16, its sale will be processed that week, on 4/18 or 4/19, depending on when the steward processes updates for the week. If a horse was sold on 4/18, it will not be processed until the following week, on 4/25. If a horse is entered in a race during the week it is offered for sale, any winnings for that race go to the original owner, not the new owner, regardless of the actual close date of the sale. It is generally a courtesy not to race a horse during the week you are selling it, so that it is well rested and uninjured when it passes to its new owner. The new owner may not enter the horse into any races until the sale has been processed and the horse appears on his stable page. Illegal Sales Some sales are not allowed and are considered cheating. Stables are not allowed to sell horses to their friends at unfairly low prices or for free. You may give away horses for free as part of a trade for horses and/or cash with another stable, but not simply give away horses, especially those of high value. If you decide to leave the game, please be considerate and email the Steward to let her know. When you leave the game, your horses are forfeit and return to the pool at Endless Vista to be assigned to other new players. You may NOT give them all away or sell them previous to leaving the game.
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(c) Copyright 2007-2008 Laurie J. Brown |
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