Playing the AH?

[Gavano]

I'm currently saving up for my epic flyer and was asking my guild for money making tips. Most common was obvious things i.e. mining, skinning, grinding.
One said, however, play the AH, I got my epic mount in a week doing this... And wow, this is guy hardly ever comes online. So yea, what does playing the AH mean? What I'm doing at the moment is buying things that're underpriced with Auctioneer. But still have a feeling I'm doing something wrong...

What came in my mind, dunno if it's playing the AH, but was to buy (almost) ALL of one item (say mithril ore) for 8-9g a stack and sell em for 11-12g a stack. But wouldn't this be false inflation, and wouldn't that be against the rules?

[Khab]

I think buying things that are priced cheap and selling them higher is part of Playing the AH. I didn't realize buying up an item and then posting for more $$$ was against the rules.

[dgrampa]

It is not against the rules.

[rottentomato]

it is and isnt against the rules...its not frowned upon to inflate to a reasonable amount... IE your example...

what is frowned upon by blizz and may get you a temp ban is

buying all the mithril ore at 8g a stack, and relisting at 100g a stack, and never allowing any to flow onto the market at a reasonable price.

blizz would deem this as overinflation and doing this repeatedly will cause them to scold you, and possibly even give a 2 day ban, which will bring the market down naturally.

[Gavano]

it is and isnt against the rules...its not frowned upon to inflate to a reasonable amount... IE your example...

what is frowned upon by blizz and may get you a temp ban is

buying all the mithril ore at 8g a stack, and relisting at 100g a stack, and never allowing any to flow onto the market at a reasonable price.

blizz would deem this as overinflation and doing this repeatedly will cause them to scold you, and possibly even give a 2 day ban, which will bring the market down naturally.

This is what I was looking for, what if I sold the mithril at 15-16g a stack?
I'd inflate them by (on my server) by 2-3g. And thus, if sold, making a profit of 2-3g a stack, but would this be seen as OVER-inflation?

[Navhead]

This is what I was looking for, what if I sold the mithril at 15-16g a stack?
I'd inflate them by (on my server) by 2-3g. And thus, if sold, making a profit of 2-3g a stack, but would this be seen as OVER-inflation?

No, didn't you read what you quoted? Your 100% (or even less on your server) inflation in this context can hardly be considered significant, but the over 1000% artificial inflation rottentomato took as an example would probably be punishable.

[Khab]

I decided to try putting gold into buying low and selling high. I have 1100G right now so I can afford to "invest" in the AH. My first item was a Tome that normally sells for 145G, someone had a buyout price of 70G. I bought it and immediately listed it for 143G and it sold in 3 hrs. I was very happy.

[Baboon]

I decided to try putting gold into buying low and selling high. I have 1100G right now so I can afford to "invest" in the AH. My first item was a Tome that normally sells for 145G, someone had a buyout price of 70G. I bought it and immediately listed it for 143G and it sold in 3 hrs. I was very happy.

Those are nice profits, but I keep forgetting about prices. I always think about Widowmaker, a dagger that is sometimes put on 30 BO, while rogues pay 75 for it.

But that only works once in a while. My everyday profit is from buying items, dissing them and selling the dust/essences. You have to spend some time noticing where the money is. A lot of people don't realize what the current price is on enchanting mats when they sell their green loot.

[Gavano]

Those are nice profits, but I keep forgetting about prices. I always think about Widowmaker, a dagger that is sometimes put on 30 BO, while rogues pay 75 for it.

But that only works once in a while. My everyday profit is from buying items, dissing them and selling the dust/essences. You have to spend some time noticing where the money is. A lot of people don't realize what the current price is on enchanting mats when they sell their green loot.

I started this on my mage, tough sometimes a green goes for 25-30g on my server. Say a 1H weapon "of agility", hunters pay a fortune for em. While enchanting mats are only 5-6g

[xDarkDrifterx]

I started this on my mage, tough sometimes a green goes for 25-30g on my server. Say a 1H weapon "of agility", hunters pay a fortune for em. While enchanting mats are only 5-6g

Yeah, you have to pick and choose. if I have a bunch of items to DE - pretty much everything with spirit gets DE (yes I know priests use it but they rarely sell) but if I had a +8stam and +8 agil weapon it's gonna get a shot at being AH'd and if it doesn't sell then I'll DE it. Certain "Of the Eagle" and "Of The Monkey" etc you always want to AH first IMO.

[piscene]

I decided to try putting gold into buying low and selling high. I have 1100G right now so I can afford to "invest" in the AH. My first item was a Tome that normally sells for 145G, someone had a buyout price of 70G. I bought it and immediately listed it for 143G and it sold in 3 hrs. I was very happy.


Just be sure to look at the number of times an item has been seen at auction. I really like to see it over 20 before I necessarily believe the price.

Someone can list an item for 5 times what its worth, and they could do this repeatedly, but Auctioneer is just going to keep looking at the listing price, and raising the recommended sell price, while no one will pay that much for the item.

Also, if possible, look at comparable items to see if the recommended price seems appropriate or not.

[Khab]

Just be sure to look at the number of times an item has been seen at auction. I really like to see it over 20 before I necessarily believe the price.

Someone can list an item for 5 times what its worth, and they could do this repeatedly, but Auctioneer is just going to keep looking at the listing price, and raising the recommended sell price, while no one will pay that much for the item.

Also, if possible, look at comparable items to see if the recommended price seems appropriate or not.

Yeah, I don't trust what I see with Auctioneer a lot of time so I do scan the current auctions to see what the other prices are.

[Gavano]

Just a quick heads-up. I've tried "playing the AH" and found out I'm on quite a crowded server, and that most of the AH is already controlled by lvl 1 bank accounts. So yea, what to do now? I'm sure I don't have as much time as all the other people to check the AH every minute for bargains, nor do I want to spend my time like that playing WoW. Any ways of taking away this business to make it my own?

Edit: Are there any items that buy/sell like crazy? I've already checked primals and I'm starting to check prices everyday to see when they're cheapest and most expensive. So yea, breath of wind maybe?

[Baboon]

Just a quick heads-up. I've tried "playing the AH" and found out I'm on quite a crowded server, and that most of the AH is already controlled by lvl 1 bank accounts. So yea, what to do now? I'm sure I don't have as much time as all the other people to check the AH every minute for bargains, nor do I want to spend my time like that playing WoW. Any ways of taking away this business to make it my own?

Edit: Are there any items that buy/sell like crazy? I've already checked primals and I'm starting to check prices everyday to see when they're cheapest and most expensive. So yea, breath of wind maybe?

Every other Wow player wants to "play" the AH so it's never easy, unlike a lot of people keep telling. If you want to do it, you have to spend a lot of time learning it.

I don't do it, besides buying items and disenchanting them.

[Baboon]

I started this on my mage, tough sometimes a green goes for 25-30g on my server. Say a 1H weapon "of agility", hunters pay a fortune for em. While enchanting mats are only 5-6g

It doesn't work for 60-70 weapons because they are pretty expensive and the essence aren't worth much. You have to find the level ranges where it's the other way around ;)

A lot of people sell items for the same price as the enchanting mats, but everyday I find 3-4 items sold by lazy people who thought the item is worthless and ignored the disenchant mats. With 25g spent I make around 50g usually. But you can only do that as often as people sell the stuff for those low prices. Still, it's a nice bonus everyday.

Example: A level 51 green weapon is often sold for 6-9g by lazy people (but for around 13G by most people). If you dis it, you have a 70% chance to get 1 or 2 Greater Eternal Essences, which are around 12G each on my server and sell within a few hours. If you get unlucky you get 1 or 2 Illusion Dust which are still 2.5G on my server, so it's a small loss versus a huge gain when you get 2 Essences.

So I always check the 51-56 green weapon range a few times each night.

[infernoxrocks]

the AH is dominated by bank alts because (most wow vets) know that its a large time save to use the gathering professions and mail the stuff to an alt near the AH to sell. My 15 rogue on a new server has 21g just from selling ore/leather. Playing the AH is not fun IMO - the most i do is scan 2 times a day so i know what to sell at and scan once with the bottem scanner to see if i can make profit on vendorable goods.

Suggested to sell for good profit: Neatherwe Spider Silk ~50g a stack and farming them you get some nice greys some blue/greens and other AH able trash (vendom sacks sell for ~5g a stack)

[mesonm]

it is and isnt against the rules...its not frowned upon to inflate to a reasonable amount... IE your example...

what is frowned upon by blizz and may get you a temp ban is

buying all the mithril ore at 8g a stack, and relisting at 100g a stack, and never allowing any to flow onto the market at a reasonable price.

Blizz would deem this as overinflation and doing this repeatedly will cause them to scold you, and possibly even give a 2 day ban, which will bring the market down naturally.

To start, the below info is merely meant to show that I disagree....Any hostile tone is unintended... :)

You talk about "may".....Please cite ANY example where this specific thing caused a temp ban.

I claim that blizz would be pleased for you to buy all of the ore and keep it....Nobody in their right mind would buy it at 100g, and you'd be buying everyone elses ore, so nobody would care.

[Gameliel]

To all of you who are saying it's harder than it sounds and you have to learn it, etc.

Wrong. Wrong. Totally wrong.

I'll list 5 steps to earn gold easy.

1. Get Auctioneer and scan daily. I usually try to scan atleast 2x, if not 3x. Do this for a week or two to build a reliable amount of pricing data for your server.

2. Once you have that week's worth of data, start looking for bargains: 50% off or less. You'll be surprised at how many you catch. The newer auctioneer has an option to color auctions by price: blue for really cheap, green for average, orange for overpriced, red for really overpriced. Blue is what you're lookin for here.

I personally don't bother with profession mats at all, or bags, or whatever. I go for RARES and EPICS. Rares are the ones I buy most often, but occasionally there'll be an epic marked down cheap as well. Why go for these? Simple: mo money than the mats.

3. So you've found a rare or epic that is really cheap. DON'T buy it yet! Go check Thottbot, Allakhazam, Wowhead, or whatever site you like for the average AH price. I use Allakhazam exclusively and it works very well.

On Alla: DO NOT just take the price that comes up in the initial search under the "AH" heading. Click on the link to go to the item page, then click on the MORE DETAILS link next to the median AH price listing. Look at the Median, Average, and Most Common.

4. Compare the price of the item on your AH to the price you've found on the site. Is it cheap by the site's standards? If so, BUY it and RESELL it AT the site price.

Here's an example from my AH inventory list (I record what I bought an item for, when I bought it, and what I sell it for.)

3 Mugthol's Helm I found at cheap prices just by using that blue indicator for cheap:

Mugthol's Helm: 10g BO / SOLD for 48g 98s 97c / PROFIT: 38g 98s 97c (Bought 12/9/07, sold same day)
Mugthol's Helm: 15g BO / SOLD for 47g 1s 61c / PROFIT: 32g 1s 61c (Bought 1/6/08, sold 1/7/08)
Mugthol's Helm: 17g BO / SOLD for 47g 1s 61c / PROFIT: 30g 1s 61c (Bought 1/17/08, sold 1/19/08)

Here are some other good examples of just buying and reselling.

Speedsteel Rapier: 35g BO / SOLD for 94g 48s 13c / PROFIT: 59g 48s 13c (Bought 12/10/07, sold 12/11/07)
Crystalblade of the Draenei: 29g BO / SOLD for 109g 76s 13c / PROFIT: 80g 76s 13c (Bought 12/12/07, sold same day)
Stylin' Adventure Hat: 38g BO / SOLD for 119g 87s 13c / PROFIT: 81g 87s 13c (Bought 1/8/08, sold same day)
Underworld Band: 50g BO / SOLD for 236g 72s 63c / PROFIT: 186g 72s 63c (Bought 1/19/08, sold same day)
Magician's Mantle: 10g BO / SOLD for 33g 27s 9c / PROFIT: 23g 27s 9c (Bought 12/9/07, sold 12/13/07)

5. As you can see, profit! Note that this isn't gonna earn you 5k gold in one week's time unless you get insanely lucky with epics. It'll be more like a steady upwards trend of gold.

As an example: I created a twink in beginning december, had 800g + stuff I was selling.. twink musta cost atleast 1500g if not more than that for gear and enchants. Just buying and selling, I was able to fully twink that char and I ended up with 90g left around the middle of december, 20th or so. I did not make any more money expenditures after that besides to buy and sell items like I outlined.

As of last night, I've earned 2.9k gold, almost 3k and I have maybe 14 blues I'm gonna list on the AH tonight.. total worth of all of them (if they sell at Most Common price) probably 800-1kg. IF I had not created that twink I would already be at probably 4k or 5k gold by now in less than 2 months (dec to right now.)

NOTES ON BUYING AND SELLING (V. IMPORTANT):

Accept that you are not going to sell your items right away.
Accept that you will most likely have to relist items several times, and maybe lower your price a bit, before they sell.
Accept that some items you buy will be DOGS and it will take a very long time to sell them and earn a profit.
Accept that you will not be rich overnight!!!

SOME TIPS:

It's important to do a cursory INSPECTION of the item in question before you buy it. Is it a good item? Would SOMEONE want this if they had enough gold? This can prevent some of your items from becoming "dogs".. that is, it will take awhile before they sell. I haven't had even 1 item that hasn't sold at a profit, though.. worst that can happen is it takes awhile.

Check the comments on the various database sites. Oftentimes there will be insightful and good comments about the item that confirm its worth and tell you who is likely to buy that item.

I do BUYOUTS ONLY, I almost never look at bids. There've been times where once or twice I've bid on an item but it takes too much time IMO, cos you have to mark when it's likely to end, THEN time it so that you're on around that time, SIT there and bid, tensely waiting for it to end.. ugg. Y'know how goblins say time is money? TRUTH. Bidding on rares and epics takes too much time, even if its really cheap.. if you can do it without spending too much time on it, fine. If not don't bother.

Before you list an item on the AH, SEARCH for it first. Are there other people selling it? If yes, is it lower or higher than what you want to sell it for? If it's LOWER then just don't list it and WAIT until either no one's selling or they're selling for higher than you want to sell it for.

IF no one is selling it, you might want to try listing it for a higher price than you originally meant to. If no one buys you can always drop the price back to average and it will eventually sell.

----

In conclusion: All that's required to make steady, good gold is: Auctioneer, a site that has pricing data, a bit of seed money (say 100g), PATIENCE, and some luck. Keep at it!

[Gavano]

Thanks for the post Liel, I had a look around and found the "The Green Tower" for 45g BO, looked around like you told me to and median is around 140g. Auctioneer said it would be around 120-130g so I bought it. Also got a "Lei of Lilies" for 30g, which would be around 30g profit. I'm hoping they actually sell for that price though, how long would you say it takes before an item actually sells?

[mesonm]

The time it takes an item to sell may vary, depending on many factors. If you are selling something that is intended for someone below 60, it may take a bit longer, unless it is a twink item.

If its a level 70 blue, it may take much less, if priced right.

The Green Tower is a level 36 purple that has a small chance of inflicting +3 nature damage when struck. Perhaps there is a twink that uses shields that may need this for PVP. If so, it would sell soon to someone who has a 70 supplying the gold.

Most of my auction house wins have been enchanting mats and ore.

[rgirty]

it is and isnt against the rules...its not frowned upon to inflate to a reasonable amount... IE your example...

what is frowned upon by blizz and may get you a temp ban is

buying all the mithril ore at 8g a stack, and relisting at 100g a stack, and never allowing any to flow onto the market at a reasonable price.

blizz would deem this as overinflation and doing this repeatedly will cause them to scold you, and possibly even give a 2 day ban, which will bring the market down naturally.

Is this really true?

[Gavano]

Is this really true?

Well, I think if you had the money to it in the first place. I don't think you'd get a ban or anything. Maybe a warning from a GM tops. Cause really, in real life, if someone buys all the... salami, and sells em for 100 dollars per kilo. The world would just be without salami, right? Nothing we can do about it...

[rgirty]

Well, I think if you had the money to it in the first place. I don't think you'd get a ban or anything. Maybe a warning from a GM tops. Cause really, in real life, if someone buys all the... salami, and sells em for 100 dollars per kilo. The world would just be without salami, right? Nothing we can do about it...

Eh...the reason I ask is because i've kinda used this method before.

I didn't try to buy everything to prevent it from coming on the market for people to use, I just artificially inflated the price of an item for users of auctioneer.


Basically I posted 100 stacks of enchanting materials (illusion dust) on the ah for 99g per stack for 2 weeks.

The average price of each illusion dust went up by 1g due to the fact of everyone scanning with auctioneer and getting the inflated reading.

I think posted my 2000 illusion dust and made around 2000 gold.

I didn't get any ban, but I didn't try to prevent people from obtaining illusion dust either.

[Gavano]

Since nothing happened, I don't think anything in this direction will. I do find it a rather unfair way of making money doing it like that though, basically you're manipulating the addon to make money. Sure people should pay attention, but you're still doing something that, in my view, isn't correct.

[mesonm]

Since nothing happened, I don't think anything in this direction will. I do find it a rather unfair way of making money doing it like that though, basically you're manipulating the addon to make money. Sure people should pay attention, but you're still doing something that, in my view, isn't correct.

Not manipulating the addon at all. The script language was built for a reason, with legal functionality...and, it has existed long enough to be turned off, if the devs decided it wasn't in concert with the intent of the game.

But, I can see that there can be more than one opinion. My opinion is there is nothing wrong with it.

[Navhead]

Is this really true?

I reckon the bold part was why Blizzard might not like it:

"buying all the mithril ore at 8g a stack, and relisting at 100g a stack, and never allowing any to flow onto the market at a reasonable price."

[Aerath]

Since nothing happened, I don't think anything in this direction will. I do find it a rather unfair way of making money doing it like that though, basically you're manipulating the addon to make money. Sure people should pay attention, but you're still doing something that, in my view, isn't correct.

It's taking advantage of dumb people who trust addons over common sense.
Nothing about it in the rules.

[Illiana]

Do what Gameliel advised you to do, I do pretty much exactly the same, and it works very well. You won't get 5000 gold in one week, but you will see a steady flow of gold all the same.

One of the things I like to do, is keep an eye on the Arcane tome/Fel armament market. On my main server, for some reason Arcane tomes are worth about twice as much as Fel armaments. Yet, I very often see people advertising in /trade that they want to trade thier Arcane tomes for someone else's Fel Armaments. I make sure to buy fel armaments when they are cheap, and always try to have a stack of 20 of them available.

Last night, I found someone spamming the trade channel lf fel armaments, I whispered him, and I traded my 20 fel armaments for his 20 Arcane tomes. Kerching, instant 200 gold profit.

[mesonm]

I reckon the bold part was why Blizzard might not like it:

"buying all the mithril ore at 8g a stack, and relisting at 100g a stack, and never allowing any to flow onto the market at a reasonable price."

I contend that you ARE a part of the market, and you ARE buying at a price that others want to sell at, which is thus reasonable.

If I saw such activity, I'd merely mine ore myself, and would keep putting it up on AH...which is also part of the market process.

[Gavano]

A quick update, I followed liels "guide" and already made 400-500g. All the items have yet to sell but they will eventually. Also, I got a Elementals Deck for 27g, which wasnt buyout, but bid. I scanned and it had short on it, I placed a bid and almost 3 seconds later I got the "You won the auction" message. Thanks liel :grin:

[joejanko]

If you want to play the AH, turn off Auctioneer and get WowEcon-- it will tell you the average price items have SOLD for, not listed for. It also shows how many were sold. Of course, this only includes players who use WowEcon, so it doesn't include all sales, but I use it to set BO prices and almost always sell on the first attempt.

[Khab]

I just installed the latest Auctioneer and it's either terribly buggy or something is going on with the AH. Auctioneer was showing things as having a profit potential of 1000G and would list like 50 of the same item, even though only 10 were actually listed on the AH. First time I've seen auctioneer fall apart like that.

[Gameliel]

If you have installed it previously, MAKE SURE you deleted the auctioneer saved variables file in your WTF folder and start fresh.. this prevents a lot of problems. Beyond that I have no idea, might want to delete THAT saved variables file and start fresh again. Might fix it.

[Khab]

Thanks for the tip. I deleted all of the stuff from the add-on dir, I didn't think about the WTF dir.

[front243]

Here is what I usually do when I roll on a new server (like new to me, if the server is a new realm then playing the AH game don't work so well due to people not having money)

1. Get Auctioneer Advanced from their site

2. Grab two gathering professions. Skinning and either Mining or Herbalism. I tend to choose Mining or Herbalism based on whether I am a caster or Melee char. I think there is a bit of a roleplayer inside me :)

3. Open AH window and click the BtmScan tab. Press the Configuration button.

4. Disable all evaluators except "Vendor". Set your lowest reserve to 1 copper, and max price to 100 gold.

5. Press the play button in the BtmScan tab. Go back to the main auction tab and click the scan button (looks like a play button as well).

6. Wait until its done. Whenever something pops up that can be vendored buy it. (and vendor it later, doh!)

7. Do the scannings for a week at least once per day. Also do your gathering while playing and auction your stuff to build up a base moneywise.

8. Now you have scanned for a week and your auctioneer database should be pretty accurate for many items (unless they are really rare).

9. Drop skinning. Pick either Jewelcrafting or Enchanting instead. If you got Mining it makes sense to pick jewelcrafting.

10. Now configure BtmScan again. Turn on either the Prospecting or Disenchanting evaluator depending on which profession you picked in #9. Note that you you need 20 skill in JC to prospect. Additionally you probably want to raise your reserve a bit so as not to loose all your money if you are unlucky. You can also turn on the appraiser evaluator if you wish to try reselling.

11. Scan again with btmscan. Now you get deals for disenchanting/prospecting as well, up to you whether to buy or not. If you turned on the appraiser evaluator you will get deals for resale as well and now its up to you whether to decide whether to trust auctioneer. DONT'T BLINDLY TRUST IT! I constantly get offered all sorts of vendor trash which auctioneer believes is worth 100's of gold because some moron auctioned it for that price previously.

12. Profit :)

[xxtuttle]

yea definattly play the ah it just takes time

[Twoflower]

in RL, we have many laws agains monopolising markets. we also have laws against cartels.

in WoW, nothing of that sort. controlling markets is a often seen and somewhat risky, but very profitable tactic. I have never ever heared of anyone getting a ban or even a warning for this. The market will eventualy regulate itself, anyway.

So yes, go ahead and buy out all the copper and relist it for 100g a ore. Blizzard surely will not stop you. You will just run out of gold sooner or later :)

[rgirty]

If you buy ALL of the copper ore that comes onto the AH (or the vast majority of it) and re-list for 100g you can get banned.

I recently learned this. It is due to not allowing goods to be available at a reasonable price.

[xhepera]

If you buy ALL of the copper ore that comes onto the AH (or the vast majority of it) and re-list for 100g you can get banned.

I recently learned this. It is due to not allowing goods to be available at a reasonable price.

I have never seen this happen. And I've been making quite a lot of money on the AH for at least a couple of years now. I've seen people dominate the market for short periods of time. But there will always be an influx of fresh goods into the AH. Blizzard purposely set the system up as a free-market economy. At its most basic that means that goods will sell for whatever the market will bear, period. And it varies from server to server, just like the fact that you can buy a 2 dollar hamburger in the U.S. that will cost you 20 dollars in Japan. Many players don't understand this and these are the ones that you hear complaining that "all of item xyz is overpriced." Blizzard will not interfere, in my experience. If someone has concrete evidence to the contrary I'd be quite interested in seeing it, as well as Blizz's rationale for said interference.

[xhepera]

If you want to play the AH, turn off Auctioneer and get WowEcon-- it will tell you the average price items have SOLD for, not listed for. It also shows how many were sold. Of course, this only includes players who use WowEcon, so it doesn't include all sales, but I use it to set BO prices and almost always sell on the first attempt.

Terrible advice really. If you happen to be playing on a server where few or none use Wowecon, then all you're going to get are the global averages and/or stats from items that have been sold at way too low a price for you to base any true profit from. Auctioneer, used properly, is the single best Auction House tool out there next to a spreadsheet, calculator, pen and paper, and the computer that sits at the top of your neck. That being said, most people DON'T use it properly or wisely. Don't get me wrong. I love Wowecon and am, in fact, a premium subscriber to the service. But I use it in conjunction with Auctioneer. In fact, Auctioneer Advanced has hooks for Wowecon such that it's data can be included in your pricing stats for determination. Putting all your eggs in one tool is cruisin' for a bruisin' imo. I use not only Auctioneer and Wowhead, but Thotbott, Allakhazam, and Wowhead to make my determinations on many buying AND selling decisions. And I'm not just talking the pricing data. I also read comments on items to guage probable demand, availability and current pricing considerations.

[Aerath]

Auctioneer is overrated and not needed.

Provided you got a brain and can use. Most people don't and/or can't, which does speak for Auctioneer, I suppose.

It's too easy to trick wannabe marketeers who freshly discovered auctioneer and make a buck off of 'em.

Blizzard does occasionally step in on people dominating the AH/a single market by the way. It doesn't happen often, but it's happened. If the market corrects itself in a week or so there's no real need, but if someone actually owns the market for a good time, odds are they'll step in to correct matters.

[caldepen]

Auctioneer is overrated and not needed.

agreed.

keep an eye for stuff that is cheaper than it should be and buy it and resell it! Simple as. Depending on your moral code as well, another trick is to buy recipes and books throughout your travels and resell them for much higher prices. I bought a bunch of copies of heavy silk and mageweave books in Arathi and am selling them slowly (don't want to flood the market). I bought them for 20s (close enough) and sell them for 3-4g. People are too lazy to leave Ironforge or Orgrimmar. All this little stuff adds up.

[xhepera]

Auctioneer is overrated and not needed.



Auctioneer is a tool. Nothing more and nothing less. If people choose to use Auctioneer or Wowecon or any other addon, and not use their brains and common sense. . .well, that's just foolish and asking to be humiliated. Not to mention, poor. But to say it's overrated and not needed is like saying calculators and spreadsheets are overrated and not needed. The fact of the matter is Auctioneer, Wowecon, and my own research and reasoning skills have made me a very wealthy WoW character. Could I have done it without the addons? Sure, with a pencil, paper, Excel and a decent statistical calculator. And much much more time than I'm willing to spend making money in a game. But why bother just to prove I "got a brain?"

[piscene]

Auctioneer is overrated and not needed.


I disagree completely. I use Auctioneer as a tool to tell me about items that I am unfamiliar with. I then look into those items myself before making a decision.

The best thing about Auctioneer is the function that will scan all auctions and then tell you which items it considers to be underpriced. I frequently don't buy anything, because the scanned prices are so easily manipulated. Just because the program says its a good deal, doesn't mean it really is.

But if it looks good, I will buy the item. I make anywhere from 5 to 50 gold per item this way, and have only ever lost money two times.

[Dextarious]

This is an example of one of the many things i do when AH gambling!
Arcanite! a pally mount item..take a few days to buy arcane crystals usually 3-6g a piece and i'll buy a stack of thorium for 25g...then ship it all to a friend or alt to transmute into arcanite...on my server its 50g for 1 arcanite bar all it take is a 1 thorium bar and 1 arcane crystal no more then 8g to make 42g...don't allways think about instant money sometimes investing in the long run makes up for it...i just farm and everytime i unload i buy junk that no one thinks of and turn it into something valuable! BUt then again i also wake up at 3:30am server time and farm primals while the kiddies sleep...lol muahahaha