I'm no economist, but...

I'm pretty sure the asking price these sellers have listed has created a no-win situation for all involved.

Keep in mind that the item shown in this picture is only needed by non-subscribers with credit limits capped at either 350K or 250K. (Preferred and Free, respectively).

You can click on this image to see a bigger version of it.

1. The going price on the Galactic Trade Network.
2. The Cartel Coin cost of pulling enough credits out of escrow
3. The Cartel Coin cost of buying the pass directly from the Cartel Market

Obviously, if I can afford 240 Cartel Coins to pull 600K out of escrow, I'm going to use those Coins to buy the pass directly and save myself over half a million credits.

Alternatively I could use two escrow transactions of 150K each, totalling 160 Cartel Coins to get a 300K temporary bump in my credit limit, which would allow me to make the purchase.

The trade off with this method is that the escrow transactions are priced in a way to offer more value for bigger packages.

Assuming that each Coin spent offers better value the more credits it releases, then by buying a smaller package of credits I'd be devaluing each Cartel Coin I spent by 25%. Meaning, I'd've cost myself the value equivalent of 200 Cartel Coins. And the unlock still costs me 650K credits over and above!

If I'm missing something here, could someone with a better grasp of economic theory explain to me how this is anything other than a fool's game, and that no non-subscriber would ever purchase this unlock when it's priced this way.

Author's Note: I concede that if you had maxxed a Preferred credit limit, and you had 300K in escrow and you only had 160 Cartel Coins, you could use the alternate method to purchase the unlock instead of the 240 directly from the Cartel Market. But that's a pretty specific scenario. And you'd be ripping yourself off.