Playing the AH game

[HTeam]

Another thing to mention is that enchanting mats have no deposit cost, so they can be fairly forgiving to start with. Watch them over the course of a week or so, figure out what the lower prices are and start buying there. Then start selling a little higher later. The weekend is usually best, people pick up gear in longer runs and want to get it enchanted.

I've done well buying and selling gems. I stay almost exclusively with red gems as they turn over quickly with people wanting dps type stuff (str, sp, agility, etc...)

[Ualaa]

I'm actually making fairly decent coin with vendor unlimited quantity pets.

Basically have lower toons I'm not leveling, at the vendors.
Purchase more as they sell, usually at 40s each.
Run to a mail box, and send to my transfer team.

Log on the transfer team.
Which is a toon at the Everlook, Gadgetzan, Booty Bay (by bank) and Booty Bay (bottom of house) neutral auction houses.
When it's clear at all the neutral houses, I list a bunch of pets for 1 copper each.
And buy them with the other faction.

Then deposit them into the guild bank.
And use the auction toon, to list them.
Most things are selling for 10g to 15g, which isn't bad for 40s purchase prices.

I sell 3-5 pets a day, which isn't necessarily a ton.
But its still 350g a week, for 5 mins of logged in time to do transfers.
Plus the normal time I spend doing AH stuff anyway.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I just been playing AH while I upgrading all my computers to 8Meg and Win7.

Make at least one of all profesions (got my Alk guy to 450 yesterday big step).

I started with zero gold and made my base monies with bags, mostly netherweave as frostweave is just undercut to the bone, because you can use it to get to 450 in tailorning people make a ton and dump. I tired to corner the market on netherweave but just to much was coming in to buy it all. Still you just cant lose buying up netherweave at 5-6G a stack and selling the bags at 9-10G. I was getting 17G a bag when competitors was lagging and not posting all the time.

Always put out common items for 12H, your competitiors are lazy and putting out for 48H. You put out 10 bags at 15G for 12h, he puts out all his bags at 14G then you hit with another 10 at 13G and when your initial 10 come back to you you can undercut him with those also!

There is no "rule". You scan and scan and scan, anything selling at 20percent or lower buy it up lol .... Im buying any blues or better under 20 percent and have like 30 items now (level 80). The more you log in and check everything the more you can find stuff people sell who dont know the value. Auctioneer for the win.

Items that were rare a week ago could be common as dirt this week, everything changes. Just buy low.

I have over 400 items listed right now; you NEVER know when something will sell or not.

Components for some reason always seem to sell better then the finished product. I really don't understand it. Like they said heavy borean leather will sell for more then the items you can make from it. So just make the heavy leathers and transmute the raw stones and sell them, don't make anything into a finished product.

There are to many people in WoW who look up the components of what they want and buy them so someone else can craft them and have no idea that heavy boean leather is made from boerean leather and the same tailor who they get to craft the item they want can make the componts from lessor componets so they buy the heavy borean leather and not the regular leather ... same with stones etc.

Like I bought some purple sword for 10G and sold it 3 weeks later after listing everyday for 150G.

Iv corned the market on Golden Dranitite getting an unbelivable 29G each lol ....

Prospect ores, espically adamitite as you can make mercural adamite with it which I get an incredible 59G for ...

No one item is winner all the time you have to just do everything.

And if you box guild bank is instant transfer. Iv been stockpiling herbs and have a 100 slot tab in bank filled for when I do more alk characters; just buy low for a few weeks and then you can run your guy to 420 or so easy in a day then spend another 1000G or so to get 450.

[Gadzooks]

People buy mats to powerlevel professions, they're the new reroll. (Actually, it's always been like that). From what I see on my server, nobody wants to spend one second more in Outland than they have to, and will buy mats from those levels for good prices.

Older enchants can still sell, too - Mongoose sells for 400g on my server, all you have to do is grind the mats, or buy them cheap when they show up.

Perfect gems are a good market too - because gear is so easy now from badges, I see people commenting a lot in Trade to just buy perfect gems for blues and AH/Crafted epics, don't waste money on epic gems until you get badge gear.

Cooking is a good steady source of income.

People are lazy. Write that on a sticky, and put it over your monitor, it's your motto for playing the AH. So many players have piles of gold, that they're willing to spend on things like professions, pets, and gear for alts. The Heirloom gear has had an effect, but the older stuff does sell - especially tailoring.

And yes, it should be said again - bags, bags, and more bags. They sell.

[Daeri]

One thing to be carefull with when you're playing with the AH : if an item is listed at a given price, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will be sold at this price. Addons like Auctionneer record all prices whether the items will be sold or not.

My best advice would be to find a niche (there are tons of them, with very few vendors but enough buyers for them). The more competition the more risky market. Some people just buy reagents when price is low enough, and craft blue quality low levels items that sells well because they're almost the only one to sell them. Niches are different on every server.

[Ualaa]

Arbitrage is incredibly boring, but fairly safe.

Make an excel spreadsheet, the chances of getting each enchanting mat, when you DE an item.
Basically weapons DE one way, and everything else another.
And it is generally an item level range, where anything in that range has the same chances.

So an iLV 146 or higher green might be:
01-70% chance of 3-7 (average 5) Infinite Dust.
71-95% chance of 1-2 (average 1.5) Greater Cosmic Essences.
96-00% chance of 1 Dream shard.

Then you use the formula 0.95 (The amount you get after the AH cut) x 0.70 (70% chance) x Current Avg. Price of 1x Inifinite Dust + 0.25 (25% chance) x 1.50 (1.5 average number) x1 Greater Cosmic Essence + 0.05 (5% chance) x1 Dream Shard Average Price.

Then search for green items of level 68 to 80th.
And buy every single item which has a buyout lower then your number.
Maybe give yourself at least 50s or 1g margin, for profit to be worthwhile purchasing.

I found the greatest profit in Northrend gear, but a decent profit in armors that can DE into Lesser/Greater Nether Essences.
Pretty much, every other item level range, was not worth the scan time.

This is incredibly boring.
Cannot understate that.
Looking at game statistics (Y for achievements, then statistics tab), my AH mule has over 20,000 items DE'd.
You'll want Postal, to empty out the Mailbox.
And I believe it was Panda something for DE's.... DE's everything green (or whatever you set), just left click anywhere inside the window that lists all the items in inventory.

I had four "farmers", who would sell be greens at a fixed rate, rather then listing them on the AH.
But while the gold is good, 3.5 hours of DE's per day, every day, while watching a movie...
Well that's not so fun.

[EsaJunttila]

I have one advice in addition what's been said (Well Ualaa said to buy gems and enchant mats before new season gear so this is close to it).

Read coming patch info. Two years ago I happened to notice a month in advance that Void shards will be possible to enchant to two Large prismatic shards. Voids costed some 10g, Large prismatics some 30g. So I bought during three weeks nearly two hundred Voids and later sold them with nice 300-400% profit after patch. At that time 10 000g was a HUGE amount.

[Nemis79]

Also, exploit people who list stuff in stacks of 20 way cheaper than the price for a single item. Ie buy a stack of eternal fire for 20g, total 400g, and then split them up and put them back on the AH for 30g each (or whatever single eternal fires sell for on your server), 50% profit right there.

[Seldum]

You can also try an speculate in buying fx. cloth, then tailor stuff, DE it and sell the Mats on AH.

You can find items which gives a fair margin.

For me, all crafted items ends up being DE in the end.

Tailor - Cloth to Item - Item gets DE
Leather - Leather to item - Item gets DE

When I level the above professions I always make stuff I can DE. Always!
And my Enchanting is the last ability I level - Always.

I usually lvl my professions all at once. It's usually when my guild bank gets to crowded.

[heyaz]

Also, exploit people who list stuff in stacks of 20 way cheaper than the price for a single item

That actually happens? If anything all I ever see is people thinking bulk pricing means more per unit. For pretty much every trade item, there is always someone selling a stack of 20 for 150% cost per unit, as if its some kind of convenience fee. This has been pretty much constant on every server I've played on since pre-bc. I don't know why people do it.