Spectrumecons 7 Week Challenge – Challenge 1: Buying and Selling Game

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the Spectrumecons 7 Week Challenge. Over the course of the next two months, I will be running an economics challenge series. This series will consist of 7 challenges. Some of these challenges will be familiar to my followers, while others will be completely different to any previous challenges or contests I have run.

Each challenge will reward winners with as much as 60 Hive. The value of the prize will depend on the level of participation. For each new participant, the prize will increase by 5 Hive. This will continue until 60 Hive is reached (12 participants). The first 12 participants will also receive a 50% upvote from this account. In addition to the prize money, the top few participants will be given points. These points will be used to determine the overall challenge series winner. This winner may receive as much as 80 Hive. The value of the prize will equal the sum of the number of participants across all challenges. This will continue until 80 Hive is reached.

For more information on the challenge series and the upcoming challenges, read my post Spectrumecons Seven-Week Challenge (Coming Soon).

Welcome to Challenge 1 – The ‘Buying and Selling’ Game.

How to play?

The ‘Buying and Selling’ Game involves three simple steps.

Choose one or more of six goods to buy.
Choose the city or town where you will be buying these goods.
Choose the city or town where you will be selling these goods.

All the information you need to know to play the game is provided in the question; i.e. no external research is required as all prices are hypothetical and locations are fictitious.

All entries must be made in the comments section of this post.

Each account is only permitted one entry.

Objectives of the game

The objective of the game is to make the highest profit from the sale of all the goods you have bought. If two participants make the exact same profit, the participant that entered first wins.

Game assumptions

All goods of the same type are identical; for example, Good A bought in Town X is the same as Good A bought in Town Y.

There are zero transaction and transport costs.

All cities and towns use the same currency.

What information is provided?

All the cities and towns are provided.
All the goods that can be bought in the game are provided.
All the buying prices of the goods are provided.
None of the selling prices of the goods are provided. Instead, a possible range of prices is provided. This range is represented by maximum, minimum, and mode prices (i.e. most frequently occurring price). See diagram below.

Selling Price Distribution

Note: Triangular Distribution

How are the results of the game determined?

A Microsoft Excel Model is used to determine the selling prices of each good in each city or town. These prices will be used to calculate the profits made by each participant. In the results post, the calculation of the selling price will be presented in a video. Below is a results post from the monthly series.

Contest Prizes

The account with the winning entry may receive up to 60 Hive. The number of participants determines the value of the prize. For every entry, the prize is increased by 5 Hive until a value of 60 Hive is reached. The first 12 entries will be given upvotes. The most profitable buying and selling price combination is also calculated. If the winner adopts this strategy and the value of the prize is below 60 Hive, he or she will receive an additional 5 Hive. The winner of this challenge will be given 20 points, second place 10 points, and third place 5 points. These points will be tallied at the end of the challenge series to determine the overall winner.

Let the challenge begin

Participants have been allocated a budget of $300,000 to buy 1 or more cars (automobiles or motorcars) from any of the 5 towns or cities. These towns and cities are as follows:

Streat Town
Rode Town
Lain City
Avenew Town
Bowlavard City

All types of cars listed in the challenge are available in all 5 towns and cities. The available cars are as follows:

Compact
Sedan
SUV
Sports
Estate
Minivan

Different Types of Cars

Table 1 contains the prices of each type of car for each town and city.

Table 1: Prices of cars for each town and city

Note: cars can only be bought as whole pieces. For example, a participant could only buy 33 Compact Cars from Streat Town, as there is insufficient money to buy the 34^th Compact Car.

After buying the cars, the participant must then sell all the cars he or she has bought in just one of the towns or cities named in the question. Remember, the selling prices are revealed in the results post. These prices are determined using the information provided in Tables 2, 3, and 4.

Table 2: Minimum, maximum, and mode (Streat Town & Rode Town)

Table 3: Minimum, maximum, and mode (Lain City & Avenew Town)

Table 4: Minimum, maximum, and mode (Bowlavard City)

Entry format

For this challenge, I expect to see entries made in the following format:

Buying
Name of Place:
Goods purchased:
Number purchased:
Amount spent on goods:

Selling
Name of Place:

Example of entry

Buying
Name of Place: Avenew Town
Goods purchased: Sports Cars
Number purchased: 7
Amount spent on goods: $280,000

Selling
Name of Place: Streat Town

The closing date and time for this contest is 6PM coordinated universal time (UTC) 12/07/2021. Responses after this time will not be accepted. The answers will be provided in the results post along with the video containing the generation of selling prices using the model.

I hope everyone has fun and enjoys this first challenge. I look forward to your participation in the second challenge.

More information

If you want to know more about the ‘Buying and Selling’ Game, I suggest that you watch the following video:

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments section.

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These 'Collection of Works' posts have been updated to contain links to the Hive versions of my posts.

My New CBA Udemy Course

The course contains over 10 hours of video, over 60 downloadable resources, over 40 multiple-choice questions, 2 sample case studies, 1 practice CBA, life time access and a certificate on completion. The course is priced at the Tier 1 price of £20. I believe it is frequently available at half-price.