The Billion ISK Primae

This is a tale of how I am covered in epic fail.

I was puttering around The Forge, buying BPOs, scouting out offices. One the side, I was looking for Covetor BPCs. The Alliance was just coming out of its latest war, so I was looking at local.

Already, I'm doing several things I don't normally do.

Someone in local posted a link to a Primae auction. I was curious as to how much these worthless little things were going for. The auction had just started, and was starting at 1,000,000.00 ISK.

I didn't expect it to stay at 1 Million ISK. I expect it to get between 10 and 20 Million. I didn't have any interest in a Primae, and wasn't going to bid. But I figured, sure, I'll be the first bidder. I'll get the little auction rolling. And when I get outbid, I really won't care.

The next day, I'm not in New Eden. I'm at my office, most everyone is gone. I'm just trudging through some annoying work. I start to think about the Primae, just in general terms. Then I think... wait... did that auction say 1 Million or 1 Billion?

In a panic, I pull out my iPhone and fire up Capsuleer and refresh. My wallet drops by 1 Billion ISK.

Somehow I had missed it. Somehow I had missed that there was already a bid on that auction of 1 Billion. I was not bidding 1 Thousand over a 1 Million ISK bid, I was bidding 1 Million over a 1 Billion ISK bid. All of this for something that I didn't want, and didn't expect to win. Just because I was poking around in Contracts while warping from gate to gate in The Forge.

And to add insult to injury, I had built up that money as commissions and dividends since September. This month, Odinsdagrting was planning on having a public stock offering. That 1 Billion ISK, in fact, nearly all of the ISK I had, was going into that investment.

Now, not only did I lose 1 Billion of my ISK, the vast majority of my ISK, but Odinsdagrting loses out on that Billion ISK. And since the number of shares offered will be limited to the number of shares I can buy (since I want to maintain control), the corporation loses out on the potential for 2 Billion ISK (mind you, I doubt there are that many interested investors).

It is safe to say that my emorage meter spiked. But, whatever, I've demonstrated before that I'm a loser. There is, however, some adolescent griefer that just creamed his shorts.

I can now completely identify with his girlfriends: It's a regrettable hassle and not nearly as satisfying for me.

Lessons Learned

I should've taken all of that money and dumped it into the wallet of a character that I don't use. The corporation has several wallets, so I can spread its money around. The wallets act like firewalls, to keep stupid mistakes like this, or corp thefts, from doing but so much damage.

As an example: on the same day, I accidentally bought 23 copies of a 675,000.00 BPO when I only meant to buy 2. The three is next to the Enter. Fortunately, they were small, and they really are worth 675 Thousand, so I can recover.