Project Lore

Oh yes, and buying the cheaper stuff and reselling is an obvious choice, but that's only if you have enough gold to actually buy the others out in the first place. I'm too spend happy for that to usually be the case, unless it's relatively cheap stuff.

If someone is posting the same item as you at a significantly lower price, why not buy it and re-post it at your price? I do it all the time.

Valaar has been getting a lot of flack that this is a buy-low sell-high situation, that he should just buy up the lower priced item, that the new price is the price that the market will bear, etc.

Let me give you another example from my server. I am also a scribe. Death Knight glyphs sell for 40g, consistently and repeatedly. A new scribe entered the market with a mindset that the highest anyone should ever pay for a glyph is 20g. At first, I would just buy his glyphs and repost them, but quickly found that he does this almost full time and has an apparent infinite supply of mats. On the infrequent days that he is sick or otherwise occupied, prices go back up to 40g per glyph and sell at the same frequency as any other day. On the days that he's on, he has regulated the price to 20g.

So all of the folks who have been posting that the WOW economy is simple supply and demand should take note. There is more at work here, just as there is in a real world market. There are times when individuals make decisions based on their own personal belief system that run counter to their own best interest.

One thing you should realize is that, when an expansion hits, there will be a huge amount of gold to be made off of it. This can last for up to two months and after that, things start to become readily available (ie: there's more out there.) There's more players out there getting higher professions and thus items are there. It's a supply and demand situation. We supply, they demand. If there's too much supply, and not enough demand, then prices will drop (I would suggest watching the fruits and veggies in your grocery store for a year to see this IRL.) If the supply is limited and there is great demand, prices will sore.

Yes, it's sick when some berk will go on and for some quick G's drop his price for an outrageous amount that throws this out of whack for a bit. The thing I look for is, how many are they selling at that price? If it's just one, then I ignore it. If there's 5 or something from the same idiot, I'd say, buy it out and sell them again at your price. You're limiting the supply when the demand is high to resell at the price of your choosing. If the berk puts over 5, then I'd be POed. Or if it happens for a period of time, again I'd be POed. If they had a Professions guild I'd take it up with the masters of the guild at the unfairness of the situation.

Seriously? Please go take an economics and business course in an actual college and STFU!

Lucivias who was that pointed at?
If it was me then im sorry that i have to work full time to help support my family if not disregarded this post.

Hello Gamers.

There are three types of AH profit that can make any player gold.

These are just like the real world.
High Risk, Risk and Low Risk.

When you start to make gold on WoW always start with the Low Risk option. Wether you think your a pro or not.

I have several ways to make 5,000 Gold in your first week of AH Buy/Sell and to start you will only need 200 Gold.

I will share one of these with you as it is the most time consuming and I have stopped actually doing it.

Install Auctioneer Advanced
Install Enchantrix

Create a Tauren Warrior (Horde) and run it to Thunder Bluff (City). Send this character 200g only.

Within the AH do the following.

Set start lvl range to 5
Leave final lvl range blank.
Set Type to Uncommen (Green)
Click on Armor
Search
Sort by Lowest Price

This will list all green (Disenchantable Items) from the lowest price which could be as small as 5 Silver buyout, Ive even seen some on there for 2 Silver. Or you may even find that the starting bid is 1 Gold.

All of the Biddable items will be on page one.

MAKE SURE AT THIS POINT - MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS 100% OF THE TIME HAVE 10 GOLD ON YOU. This will be used for relisting costs.

Bid on EVERY SINGLE item if it has a bid option with a value of LESS than 50 Silver. This means if it listed for 50 Silver and 1 Copper DO NOT BID.

This is very important. Do not bid if over 50 Silver.

When you come to the Buyout items. BUYOUT EVERY SINGLE item that sells for less than 50 Silver.

Make sure you do not leave yourself with less than 10 Gold.

Once you reach your 10 Gold remaining. Go get the items from the Mailbox.

Go back to the AH and relist every single item at 2 Gold.

Do not go higher than 2 Gold.

After much much experiaence at this, you must adhere to this rule and the reason is as follows.

If you put items on at 3g or 2 gold 50s silver etc .. this means the market value will not allow for the undercutting of other players Auctions. The reason you want to be undercut is due to other players still wanting to actually put items on the AH at lower than 50 Silver. They will relist at under 50 Silver, but I found once you up the whole market price to over 2 Gold you will not come accross any Auctions at a very cheap price after approx 2 weeks.

This I trialled on 3 realms and each time if i listed for 2 Gold only it was sustainable, but when listing over 2 gold. No auctions were relisted at a low price. Because dont foget - YOU WANT PEOPLE TO RELIST AT A LOW PRICE. If you up the market too high then to rebuy later it becaomes too expensive. and non-profit.

Now that has been explained, The steps above need to be repeated at least once every 2 hours. You dont want othrs buying them at a low price when they could hav had to buy it for your 2 gold.

After the first 2 hour slot. you will have in your mailbox approx 5 sales. and 15 outbids.

This means allready - You most likely have:
120 Auctions (240g of Auctions = 120 at 2 gold each) Already 40 Gold profit in the AH.

Made profit of at least 7 Gold 50 Silver. (Purchase 5 at 50 silver = 2 Gold 50 Silver... 5 sales at 2 Gold = 10 Gold = Profit 7 Gold 50 Silver)

Have about 15 Outbids.

Outbids is money returned to you because some one bid higher than you did.

Use the money you made from Auctions to buy more items under 50 Silver. Relist at 2 Gold. Return in 2 hours.

At the end of the first 24 hour period I averaged about 3,200 Auctions. have not made actual Gold profit yet.

This is because you Buy/Sell/Buy you use gold made to rebuy more. Leaving wyou with a low gold count.

But in fact you have 3,200 Auctions. worth 2 Gold each.
TOTAL GOLD IN AUCTIONS VALUE = 6,400 Gold in the first day.

Do this for 4 Days. the time you have is the limit you give yourself.

I averaged in the first 4 days 6,100 Items. (12,200g)
------

Simply Relist your Expired Auctions up until the 5th day.

On te 6th Day - let ALL AUCTIONS EXPIRE.

Get a good friend or if you do enchanting yourself on main.. to Disenchant all items and then list all the mats from that on the AH in whole stacks for 5g.

The most i ever made from this process in my first week was 13,890 Gold.

To everyone, ghappy bidding. and i hope this helps anyone whos looking for a great LOW RISK gold maker.

Mcnitro - Jubie Thos (Horde)

All the items are imaginary, and only worth what you're able to sell them for, a certain amount of imaginary money. Stop considering that amount as any sort of important, because it isn't.

If someone is able to sell an item for 200G that you're selling for 500, either he's taking a loss (in which case you should buy his product outright and sell it at the fair rate since he's unlikely to be flooding the market with product that looses him money) or he's pricing fairly and you're vastly overvaluing the item versus the cost to make it.

Sure, he's popping the illusory bubble of value and rarity you've created, but the fact of the matter is that you'd been taking advantage of the good faith of buyers in setting the price so far above the cost to create in the first place.

I really undestand the frustration, as selling ores and bars, i've also noticed the kind of people that just want that kick buck.
So what I've tryed to do, is to undo they're work, instead of trying to lead some kind of etiquette movement.
It's a no brainer, if I see some noob selling ores at 20g stack when the regular price is 25g, i just buyout and resell it.
By doing that, I've done 2 things, I've eliminated that noob's competition, at least for some time, and I've corrected the price of my ores.

It might seem boring, but if u are already there to sell, 5mins won't make a difference IF you care.

PS: Sorry about my english.

responding to Valaar: this is FREE ENTERPRISE. It's what has made America great. haha :-)

Or you've witnessed changing market conditions. Unsuprisingly, demand for items has dropped off significantly since WotLK's initial release. Take frozen orbs, near the start they were a rare commodity as only a handful of 80's existed that could run the heroics to get them. On top of that, they're required for the the epic level crafted BoE's. Since these were the best pre-raiding gear, people needed them in droves. Now fast forward to present. Everyone can run heroics now, so the orbs are fairly common, and people are less concerned with the top of the line crafted materials because they've got naxx on farm for even better equipment. It should be obvious to conclude that the price of orbs would have dropped substantially, and guess what... it has.

As to you're specific darkmoon card issue, again there is limited demand for it in the first place. Secondly the fact that cards are randomly produced devaule all the others. If you've ever played a trading card game, you know that out of all the cards, only a few are actually worthwhile. It's these cards that become expensive, while the rest are pretty much worthless to everyone else. So with the darkmoon, Nobles are that rare chase card, while everything is mediocre at best. Thus you're likely to have a glut of every other card since demand will be much lower for them, but they're still being produced in attempts to make the high quality cards. So it's not anything that people did conciously, but just market forces at work.

also I'd like to point out that (in WoW at least) everything boils down to time spent. From the seller's perspecitve how much time they spent gathering/processing the materials (and how much they value that time), and from the buyer's perspective, how much of their time that item is worth to them. Generally an equilibrium price will occur when both parties value their time equally.

If someone values their time less than you, they will undercut you. Sometimes this is a one time deal, such as powerlevelling a trade, here I don't really value my time for the money it makes, but for the skill-ups it brings. Thus I'm willing to sell for a loss to simply guarantee that they'll sell to allow me to recoup some of my expenditure, but at the end of the day, I'm looking at this process as a money sink, not a money source.

However If I'm getting into the market for good, and value my time less, then I'm able to consistently sell at a lower price than you. Unless you can continuously buy out my stock, I've set the new price bar (assuming that demand is not outstripping my supply). So it may drive you out of the business, but it is by no means 'unfair'. Even following you're 'undercut only a little' principle, the fact that I value my time less, means that I'm willing to ride the curve down further than you. All this merely does is delay the time it will take to force you out of the market.

Also I may value my time as much or even more than you, but if I can find a more efficient way, then I'll sell for less than you. You may go out and gather mats then mill and glyph them, but this process might have an overall low gold per time flow. Whereas me buying cheap herbs from the AH and then glyphing them might have less profit per sale, it might have an overall gold/time ratio.

Also @Valaar you seem to insiutate that anyone undercutting you must be a gold farmer. Which I think is really just relying on an ad-hominem attack. I've now listed several legitimate reasons on why you might be consistently undercut, all of which have nothing to do with ethics or morals of the situation

TLDR; If someone values their time such that they can consistently undercut you, it's not 'unfair' it's just economics.

"I often post at the same buyout as other people do (I may undercut their bid price a little)." (written by Marex)

I usually do the same when I actually sell stuff on the AH. (which I haven't done in some time due to most of it not selling)