Finally - 10,000 gold!

This is a repost from the Hellscream realm forums. The hints for making money in the AH may be of interest to a wider audience.

Posted 9/5/2005:
I am happy to announce that my AH slave Cancela has hit 10,000 gold by just trading the AH, buying low and selling high.

I seeded Cancela with 10g early May this year as an experiment after my main hit 60 to see if I could work the system and understand the laws of supply and demand well enough to make money. Blue daggers and epic weapons has been the mainstay of my business but there are many surprising areas where bargains can be found. My goal was to reach 10k gold and having achieved that I will be winding down my trading.

http://img5.picsplace.to/img.php?file=img5/3/WoWScrnShot_090505_152101.jpg

The picture is not photo shopped (I can’t even use it) and no, you can’t have my stuff :)

Posted 9/7/2005:
First, thanks for all the feedback, good as well as bad. It is even nice to hear from the obvious trolls and non-believers :)

After some thinking, I have decided to share my methods with everyone. I have reached my goal so it is only fair that others try their luck if they want to. I'll start with a couple of disclaimers :

a) There are some generalizations below. While they may not be correct all the time every time, they are correct almost all of the time.

b) These are my personal observations only. They are not facts. They worked for me but they may not work for you.

c) One possible effect of me posting this is that the number of bargains in the AH is reduced since many more people will know what to look for. Fewer people will then get really rich but more people will gain some money.

Now on to my methods:

1) Learn the prices before trying to enter the market. While looking at what other people ask for an item is a good indication, it doesn't actually tell you if if sells for that price or not. The absolute best way is to sell items yourself. The second best is to get the item pricing from Allakhazam.com. They list the 200 last prices for every AH item.

2) Blue daggers always sell at high prices. This is especially true for daggers below lvl 34 (if I remember right) since there are no blue dagger quest rewards below that lvl.

3) People will always spend money on weapons before spending money on armor. Blue and purple weapons are therefore a mainstay of my trading.

4) On the alliance side, these weapon types are the easiest to sell (in order easy to hard): Daggers, 1h sword, staves, 1h axes, 2h sword, 2h axes, 1h maces, ranged weapons, wands, 2h maces. There are of course a number of individual exceptions to this.

5) Do not try to trade in items that can be crafted. You can never compete with someone who dumps items just to lvl skill. A good example is 1h swords lvl 40-50. There is a multitude of craftable 1h swords in this lvl range so prices are very depressed.

6) People will pay a lot to twink their alts. As a result, blue weapons lvl 15-20 can command higher prices than blue weapons lvl 30-40.

7) People will pay exorbitant amounts to have the best. Good examples of this is Glowing Brightwood staff (epic lvl 49) going for 800-1000g while Hammer of the Northern Wind (epic lvl 49) goes for less than 100g.

8) Never carry more than 2 items of the same kind. Even if you can snap up more to what seems to be a good price, you may end up being overstocked and having to dump them off cheap.

9) There are bargains to be had anywhere if you know the pricing. I almsot exclusively trade weapons/armor and recipes but trade goods have bargains too fo you know the pricing.

10) Be patient. If something doesn't sell, relist and try again. I usually list 24 hr except if it costs me more than 1g to list, then I list 8 hr.

11) The AH charge of 5% will eat into your profits. Remember this when you buy out and relist.

12) If you find something at a good price, consider carefully whether to take it on buyout or whether to just put a bid on it. I normally only do buyout if I know that someone else will snap it up before the auction time is up. Often I just put a bid in and hope for the best. Note that you will loose a lot of items if you do this, but depending on how many you are bidding on you will also win a lot of them.

13) Items that do not have a buyout on them will usually go for less than items with buyout. The reason is simple: When people buy, the want the item now. Therefore less people will bid on items without buyout and there are some nice bargains to be had here.

14) When listing items, I usually try to put up a price that I can live with with a buyout just 5-10% higher. This is because I want people to take the buyout to increase my turnover. When there are several items of the same listed, you have to decide if you want to undercut or not. This is a matter of preference. I usually undercut by a little, but that's up to you.

15) Crosstrading between the horde and alliance AH using the Gadgetzan AH can be extremely profitable, but only if you have 2 accounts. The Gadget AH has a very high percentage fee on what you sell, so unless you can buy and sell stuff through the Gadgetzan AH at a very low price the fee will kill your profit. With 2 accounts, you can list items for 1s buyout and as soon as you list it with your horde char, buy it with your alliance char or vice versa. This way nobody else can snap up the auction and the fee (10%? can't remember) gets taken only as a percentage of the 1s price, ie costing almost nothing. If you pay attention to the pricing in the horde and alliance AH you can make a lot of money. For example, I have bought several purple epics (Krol blade, Glowing Brightwood staff, Brain Hacker) for 350-500g on the horde side and sold them for 700-900g on the alliance side.

16) There are some obvious things to look for when crosstrading. Look for pally items on horde side where they are priced lower. Same with shaman items on the alliance side.

17) If you want to crosstrade, you will be most profitable if you can send items both ways and never have to send money from one side to the other. If all the bargains are on the horde side, you will quickly end up with a pile of alliance money and no horde gold. Therefore, look for items that can go the other way, even if you dont make any money on them. It just has to be better than the fee that you pay for gold transfers through Gadgetzan AH.

Happy trading!
10,000 gold