Why is it so hard to sell battle pets?

[Deleted]

Here's my deal: I'm not really interested in pet battles, but through soloing old raids, doing LFR and just generally playing, I have almost 40 battle pets, all of them level 1, which I have no use for and which I want to sell. However, I've posted most of them 5-10 times on the AH by now, each time undercutting the lowest by whatever auctionator recommends, but none of them sell, or 1 or 2 at max.

I got some pretty rare pets from raids (kovok, menagerie custodian, mini mindslayer, Chrominius), some from rares and other mobs (some hatchlings, the microsentry, the frolicker), events (children's week, summer festival, argent tournament, peddlefeet),... I was hoping these would sell like hot buns, but the only one I've managed to sell so far is the marionette. I don't get it. I'm on a full PvP server (Kazzak EU Horde), so it would be weird that noone would want these pets.

What am I doing wrong? Am I just wrong in assuming that there is a market for them?

Note: I'm not trying to sell them this way, I just wonder why noone is interested in them and how I can get rid of my pets while still getting something for the effort.

[Justin-Sane]

All I could think of could be that it might be because you're on a PVP server? I play on a PVE server and they usually all sell within a day. I farm old raids every week on various alts and make a few K gold a week by doing that. I'm not sure why they aren't selling. Did you check the levels of the pets you're undercutting? if you're posting a pet for 1s less than one that's say level 10, it won't sell. There could also be the fact that prices are inflated aswell. I found some sell between 200-300g and some of the harder ones to get from 600g-900g

[Jester Joe]

Also some people don't want to be bothered to level them honestly, getting them to level 25 would definitely increase the chance of them selling, and the price you can sell them for.

[mysticx]

Lots of people solo raids by now, relatively few people are going "gotta catch 'em all!" over battle pets, and one specimen per pet is enough for even hardcore collectors, so there's no repeat demand.

Those are the three main factors causing battle pet prices to drop...

[PuppetShowJustice]

Most of the people who are hardcore pet collectors have already collected a lot of this stuff. Pets tend to explode in value when they're brand new and then drop off rapidly. The SoO pets were highly prized before the last wing opened in LFR. Some of the Timeless Isle pets were valuable at the start of 5.4. The Rotten Helper and Moon Moon both demanded a high price briefly when first made available. As did Pierre and the Rascal Bot.

[Delaios]

I got some pretty rare pets from raids (kovok, menagerie custodian, mini mindslayer, Chrominius), some from rares and other mobs (some hatchlings, the microsentry, the frolicker), events (children's week, summer festival, argent tournament, peddlefeet),... I was hoping these would sell like hot buns, but the only one I've managed to sell so far is the marionette. I don't get it. I'm on a full PvP server (Kazzak EU Horde), so it would be weird that noone would want these pets.

Out of the ones you listed, only Kovok would be classified as rare. Anyone serious about battle pets can manage to solo the ones that drop in Vanilla, BC and WotLK raids. Seasonal events only have a few pets that are valuable, notably the one that drops from the Midsummer Fire Festival boss. Most other seasonal pets are either very easy to get (Winterveil), or are bought with a currency that's easily available (Peddlefeet). When account-wide pets came out (another reason for the low demand), a lot of people had duplicate seasonal pets to begin with. I think I had 9 pumpkin pets from the Halloween event and ended up deleting a few and selling a few (heavy undercutting).

Being on a PvP server doesn't help either. You can get ganked while doing pet battles I think and that's a deterrence to bother with them on PvP realms.

When pricing your pet there are a few things to consider:
- Effort vs reward. Some instances are harder (or rather more annoying) to solo than others. Molten Core has one shottable bosses and nothing that can kill you. Blackwing Lair on the other hand has it's first boss as a brick wall for some. The pet from the last boss of Karazhan requires you to solo the Chess Event first, which is easy if you know what to do, but for some it's not worth the hassle. Some old raids are also more rewarding than others because they might have more popular transmog, offer achievements (Naxxramas), offer mounts or reputation. Those raids get soloed more often and as a result will add more potential sellers.
- Pet breed. For the more serious people pet breeds are important. Speed and Power are more popular than Health breeds and will sell higher.
- Pet skills. Certain pets are absolutely useless in pet battles and others offer great abilities. Chrominius for instance has Howl, which gives the opponent pet a 100% damage taken debuff. That debuff is used a lot for tougher pet battles.

[Socialhealer]

Chrominius for instance has Howl, which gives the opponent pet a 100% damage taken debuff. That debuff is used a lot for tougher pet battles.

actually it's because he has surge of power and howl, if i just want the howl i use a fox because it can also boost my teams speed, but yes you're on the right lines :P

[Toiran]

The pets from raids don't sell because they are some of the easiest to get.

Since people generally farm for transmog and achieves too, they just get the pets along the way, or aim for the achieve.

There are plenty of pets that sell for thousands though, but none of those do.

Levelling them to 25 will give you a slightly better chance but, still depends on server etc, and some of the pets are very good, they are just super common.

ToT & SoO ones have a much higher chance to sell, and even then, it's not that high.

Timing also, Timeless Isle pets were crazy high when it first popped, now, not so much.

Darkmoon tonk and zep are very strong pets that can sell fairly well, especially levelled.

[Hatredsheart]

Also some people don't want to be bothered to level them honestly, getting them to level 25 would definitely increase the chance of them selling, and the price you can sell them for.

Only prob with his is that unless the buyer has a lvl 25 pet already he cant learn it, so that's a chunk of your market gone though probably not a big one.

[the0o]

after the rush for the achievements died down and the raid pets get nerfed, The demand for them drops to near none. A seller on my server puts up level 25 pets for 3-8k and they sell. It only takes an hour (with the dailies) to get a pet from 1-25.

Listing level 24 pets may get you a few sales, since buying level 25 pets does not count toward the achievement

[Mascotte]

The people that care have em, the people that don't wont flesh out thousands of gold for a new pet.

[Splenda]

The holiday pets never sell well from my personal experience. They sell well if they are very cheap, like 100g or less. Otherwise, nope.

As far as other pets go, stuff that are harder to come by DO in fact, sell pretty well. Problem is they are harder to come by, so GL getting them in the first place :P

Ones I find aren't hard to get and sell decent:

Deviate Hatchling
Argent Tournament pets
Timeless Isle pets

etc etc, and obviously this is going to vary a LOT per realm.

[Issalice]

From the pets you listed the only that I would see selling easily is kovok. The others are really common. Yes they are drops, but they are easily solo-able. The only valuable raid pets are MoP drops. The raiding with leashes pets are too easy to come by these days to consider them rare.

[Deleted]

Those pets don't sell because everyone wants to be millionaire over night and puts a crap pet with thousands of gold and a rare pet at hundreds of thousands... I rarely visit the auction house in wow because it's full of morons.

[yetgdhfgh]

They are so easy to obtain

and there is over 500 of them so the days when you would sell your soul for the epic parrot just so you could inch your way to 50 pets are long gone

People these days have there favorites and have no reason to fork out thousands for another pointless pet they prolly wont use or can easily get

I stopped selling pets ages ago

[GirlsDontPlayWow]

Could be so many reasons:

1. people can solo old raid content
2. players can have many alts, so farming has become easier on drop chance
3. too populated server, that perhaps you need to lower cost accordingly
4. too many sellers, not enough people interested?
5. the critters you mentioned are not rare, so they won't sell quickly, if they do at all

Sorry

[Lodreh]

You could always try to sell them on a different server or faction... not to mention if you want to get rid of them... price them to move... a 10k pet that sits on AH or your bags = 0g... However sold at 8k and you are 8k richer... just a thought.

[Durinur]

I think a lot of people solo old raids, but way fewer actually play the battle-pet games.

[Raveniah]

Could be so many reasons:

1. people can solo old raid content
2. players can have many alts, so farming has become easier on drop chance
3. too populated server, that perhaps you need to lower cost accordingly
4. too many sellers, not enough people interested?
5. the critters you mentioned are not rare, so they won't sell quickly, if they do at all

Sorry

As you can now sell your pets on any server collectors and money makers uses this a lot. Kazzak is one of the best pet & mount server on EU, there is usually everything on AH the game has to offer and so much competition that the prices are reasonable. I do this myself too, mainly on Kazzak, sell pets I farm on other server (which is quiet) and buy the ones I'm missing.

[ripponesan]

There are several reasons for this:

1. Like you, not everyone is interested in battle-pets, so theres a bunch o People who wont buy it anyway
2. Really 95% of the pets are very easy to obtain. And most pet-battlers do exactly that. So in the end you got two factions.
Faction "pet-battlers", who are interested in those pets, but mostly decide to get them themselves.
Faction "indifferent about pet battles", who are not interested in the pets at all.
3. Those pets that you get while doing normal PVE stuff, well LOTS of People get those. Even lots of the faction that has no interest in them, while the interested People already got them. So there you go.