dude .... speaking from pandemonium server here. I have to say i have seen it go for 2k, and the reality of the situation is that people will sell it for what they can get, supply and demand. You cant sit there and say that if they price it over 1k it wont sell, because that is simply not true. Just because you wont buy it doesn't mean other people wont.
Secondly, zinc has other uses other than the Tenshodo quest *shock* I know. Personally i find if you don't want to pay AH prices, then go to boyz nick nack shop, buy some pickaxes and mine some.
p.s. did i mention i'm tired of hearing people moaning about zinc AH prices?
Chocobo Diggers, such as me, who dig in altepa desert get up a lot of these.
It's a common digup and I assume many just NPC them or just try to AH them (not enough demand to meet how many we get up daily).
What I'd suggest is, if you need Norg fame for your utsusemi quest, hit a chocobo digger up and they'll probably give you cheap zinc ores after a digging session, I know I would, would save me a lot of time muling and selling.
I think you need about a 100 zinc ores in total for level 3 Norg fame, I may be wrong.
If you are going to farm these for tenshodo reputation, the best place is giddeus, since the worms in the tunnels have a pretty good drop rate, and the yagudos can also be farmed for necklaces.
With the Guild Salesperson Teerth, in Bastok Markets Goldsmithing Guild, these can now be bought for 200 gil each all the time. If you are doing the Shady Business quest with these it still will be a loss on it, but makes it a lot easier. You need 109 ores (1 for prequest 108 traded for main quest) to get level 4 fame at 200 gil each it costs 21,800 gil, but you get 9,450 gil back from the quest. So, total cost would be 12,350 gil not bad considering Utsusemi: Ichi alone goes for 150k gil atm and you don't have to farm worms forever.
Back a few years ago, this item was normally 1k on the AH at it's lowest price and would go up to 3k during the night when supply became dangerously low. I would wait until night for this very reason and sometimes make a enormous profit.
Course, others figured this out by looking at the history and supply at night was pretty steady and kept the price normal. The power of supply and demand.
Started out with 168g per rice ball, traded 25 times with Zinc Ore, and traded 12 times with Yagudo Necklaces. Brought me down to 152g.
(100 Zinc Ore, 48 Yagudo Necklaces) Averaged about 2k per each, 296,000G.
If your a crafter it's WAY cheaper to just go to zeruhn mines located in bastok and mine them then you can craft with synthesis support (or if your skill is higher than 3 without)and craft brass ingots which stacked is like 30000
