Right now, players can buy Acoins, and then buy Pearl boxes. Next, players open their Pearl boxes to get Pearls, which they then use to buy items on the Pearl shop. Then, players can take some (but not all) Pearl shop items, and post them onto the Central marketplace for other players to buy.  The goal of the whale-player is to get silver, so they will choose to by Pearl shop items that sell best, to get the most silver for their money. This means some Pearl shop items are in better supply than others in the in-game marketplace - and of course some Pearl shop items are simply not available on the in-game silver marketplace at all. 

I propose a simplification to this process.  

1: remove all existing pearl shop item listings from the marketplace (costumes, pets, value packs, etc - remove them all and make them not able to be lsited on marketplace)

2: allow players to list unopened Pearl Boxes on the marketplace

This way, whales can sell pearl boxes for silver directly to a big list of player preorders. There is no need to determine the best value items, which costumes are on sale, etc - the whale simnply buys a pearl box and lists it, and someone will order it. And no player who wants a specific item will have to wait for that specific item - they can just put up a competitive bid for pearls and get their preorder eventually filled. If all pearl items o nthe marketplace were effectively "consolidated" into the single supply stream of "Pearl box to silver", I think listings and preorders would meet each other far more efficiently and with less frustration for players in general. 

I believe that if the transaction of cash to pearl to silver was simplified into one gigantic stream (trading pearl boxes directly on the marketplace), it'd have several other small benefits as well. 

Searching for items on the marketplace will be easier -- costume boxes and costume pieces all add up to quite a lot of different items and clutter search results. Next, players who simply place orders for costumes hoping a whale will sell them so that the ordering player can melt it for cron stones -- right now they have to check sales and hope to order whichever costume they believe will be in greatest supply. If pearls just sold directly, players could simply put up a bid on the massive singular raging river-like flow of pearl boxes, and they'd get their order filled and then could use the pearls they get to do whatever.  

Additionally, more players would be able to get value packs this way. Whales will sell whatever items have best pearl to silver ratio, so they buy costumes that are on sale and sell those on the marketplace. This means value packs are rarely sold on the marketplace because the ratio is not competitive. But if pearl boxes were sold directly, this gives everyone greater freedom of choice. 

Lastly, I want to mention that this shouldn't cause any loss in real cash revenue for Pearl Abyss. For every item or pearl purchased with silver on the marketplace, there *must* have been an original cash buyer who lsited that item o nthe marketplace to start with. So players using silver to purchase pearls in this fashion, are not causing "lost sales" in real world terms. Pearl Abyss gets the cash when a player buys the Acoins and the pearl box, and it frankly doesn't matter after that *which* precise player opens the pearl box - it was already purchased at the start. 

I can imagine several valid counteragruments to this proposal, but I'll discuss one that has occurred to me. The scarcity of Value Packs in the in-game marketplace may be by smart design. A lot of players certainly want to get value packs, and right now other than waiting for event reward value packs, you can really only get them by spending cash for Acoins to get your own Pearls to get your own value pack. This means a player MUST engage with the cash shop to keep their value pack consistent, which means the player has their "foot in the door" with the cash shop and becomes familiar with it. Naturally, the first step of enticing a player to spend cash is to introduce them to the shop, so I can see that it is reasonable why Pearl Abyss might want Value Packs to be scarce - to encourage each player to buy it for themselves in hopes they'll eventually be comfortable enough with the shop process in general to buy even more as well. If this is a strong reason/principle for why Pearl Abyss would prefer not to allow pearl boxes to be traded between players via the silver marketplace, then I do not have a strong rebuttal because I recognize that there is business sense in this idea. 

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Sounds good, removed an unnecessary step, and should make everyone involved happier. People who want to trade pearls for silver will have an easier time, people who want to buy cash shop items with silver, PA should see an increase in revenue. It's not without precedent either, Albion Online does just fine having an open market for their premium currency, premium gold is traded for in game silver seamlessly to the point that its trivial for players who don't want to spend money to maintain the premium subscription.

As long as the prices follow the current value silvers/Pearls. Ratio ^^

Yeah it would be nice.

This is an excellent suggestion, this if only because it allows people to get limited edition outfits and tents, because if they didnt swipe there would be absolutely no way to get them. For example, I would really like to get the Vespena outfit among other things such as the cooking outfit and shark suit to start, but I cannot get it without paying for it and I do not have the disposable income to buy all the pearl items I want. This change would be great for people like me as well as the sellers.

Very good idea, but will never happen because they make a lot of money from people begrudging swiping for unlistables like weight and inventory.