Econ 403: Advanced Auctioneering

So I promised more substance, less fluff and this post will be about as substantive as I can get.

How to make gold through the Auction House.

So, we have already had two posts about the auction house, the gist of these posts contained the following information:

1. Use the add-on Auctioneer for Pricing
2. Use Allakhazam for supplemental pricing, when Auctioneer does not have any info.
3. Scan Auctioneer often to make sure it is useful
4. Watch out for inflation & deflation

So for our advance class in Auction House Economy we will be focusing on the following:

1. Day of the week fluctuations
2. Posting your item to maximize profit

So day of the week fluctuation: I touched on this briefly in a post, but I want to give more detail, because some items go up in price and some go down. If you need to buy Leather, cloth and some of the herbs (maybe ore too, but I rarely buy it) you should wait until Saturday or Sunday to buy it. Why? Because there will be more people on the servers on the weekend and they will be skinning, picking, killing and mining, hence the availability of these items will be abundant and as more people post them on the AH, the price will decline.

Other crafting items? You're not so lucky. As motes become more and more farmed the drop rates reduce and Primals are under higher demand because of more people on the server needing them, so the price on those go up.

Other items can go either way. Look for crafted items to be cheaper as people level their skills and try and sell the stuff they make. Also, with more people posting items on the AH and more eyeballs to see and bid on them, the prices should come down a little on uncommon and rare items. The really nice stuff? Through the roof. Those special recipes, forget it. However, by Tuesday things should have calmed down on the servers and you can post your Knothide Leather and Netherweave Cloth and you should get 1-3 more gold per stack primals may have come down 1-3 gold, so if you're not in a rush to buy stuff make sure you pick the right time.

Which leads me to my second point: Posting your item to maximize profit.

Now, armed with the advice I outlined above, you could buy 10 primal airs on Wednesday at 25 gold each and sell them on Saturday for 30 for a quick fifty gold. You can also buy 20 stacks of Knothide Leather on Sunday for 6 gold and sell them for 8 gold on Wednesday. But that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about leather you skin or that rare drop you got off of a crocolisk, that just happened to stray into your path when you were landing to pick a flower or skin a dead animals. (Doesn't it always happen that way?)

But whatever it is, a stack of leather or a nice drop, when you take it to the AH, you will hit a nice button called "Update" on the "Post Auction" page and it will quickly scan the price of all the same items in the AH, and then it will put your item up for sale at 5% off the highest price if it can. Please note that there is a threshold at which it feels your item is selling for too low, at which it will note that it cannot match the competition. When it tells you that take a look at what else is for sale, sometimes you have a stack of 20 that you are selling and there is just one item at a very low price. You should ignore or buy that item and set your own price. What that price is depends on what you are selling. Sometimes, for the good of the economy you just have to ignore what auctioneer tells you. For Netherweave Cloth, I usually ignore auctioneer and sell it for just above the lowest stack of 20. (Usually 3.5 to 4 gold). But always remember, if too many items are selling too low for your liking don't sell the item at that time, you can always wait.

This whole post really boils down to one thing: timing and getting a feel for when is the right time.

As for the age old question 24 hours or 8 hour posts... I always do 24 hours, because if the item sells you get that deposit back, so it seems to give yourself the best chance of selling put it up there for as many people to see as possible.

Oh, and that level 70 two handed Axe of the Whale? Don't even bother, just vendor it for the 9 gold.