"Playing" the AH to make gold.

[Conquestaxe]

Hello all ^_^. I reached my new highest gold peak of 30 thousand gold recently. And its been kind of a struggle with gearing up and regemming and so and on so forth. Jewelcrafting has helped me tremendously but I was mostly lucky in a few GDKP runs where i bought boe's for next to nothing and was able to flip them.

I now want to play the AH game. I know its the best way of making gold in wow and really the easiest since you dont leave the AH/mailbox. What are some tips and tricks and how does this really work? My goal is to hit gold cap once or twice(on a sep character) before cata comes out. Any input is appreciated

If you do try to play the ah start out small and work up. buy and repost some of the pre bc gems or enchanting mats at higher prices stuff like that. (just 5-10 different items to start out) you may get burned on an item or 2 but you slowly start finding out what you can control and what you can't. Over time you let your list grow and eventually you are turning a decent profit every day.

I also recommend making a spread sheet listing the maximum price you bought the items for. (so you don't make a mistake and resell for less later) As your list grows this becomes more and more important.

[Caeldeth]

A good lesson to earning gold from the AH is to learn a single market or 2. Tailor them to your professions if possible. I am a devout enchanter and can earn more in 1 day than most people see in weeks or playing. How? Play to the strengths of being an enchanter!

2 examples:

1. I deal in rare enchants, one being 30 spellpower to weapons (best caster BoA enchant). While typically mats are reasonable, 20g for greater eternals, 5g for large brilliant shards, and 35g for golden pearls, I have cornered the golden pearl market. Buy constantly buying golden pearls posted for a lower price i have inflated them to 250g each within 1 months time, and holding it there. This now makes my scrolls (which I have earned a stock of pearls of over 400) easily priced at 550-600g and "be below cost of mats" for most cases. This is a Monopoly method.

2. Play to your profession, as an enchanter this is basically "shatters", via trade play down items like void crystals... by doing so I can buy stacks of 20 for 5g each. I shatter them for 2 large prismatics that easily sell for roughly 20g each on my server....even in really high competition spurts they are 7g each allowing me to easily compete since mine only cost me 2g50s each. Tailors can do it with specialty cloths...

[Lucifersam]

1. I deal in rare enchants, one being 30 spellpower to weapons (best caster BoA enchant). While typically mats are reasonable, 20g for greater eternals, 5g for large brilliant shards, and 35g for golden pearls, I have cornered the golden pearl market. Buy constantly buying golden pearls posted for a lower price i have inflated them to 250g each within 1 months time, and holding it there. This now makes my scrolls (which I have earned a stock of pearls of over 400) easily priced at 550-600g and "be below cost of mats" for most cases. This is a Monopoly method.

Damn, I'm jealous of your realm, there are almost NEVER any golden pearls up on AH on my realm, though I snatch the ones that do come along from time to time. I can't imagine the profit if you can snatch up 35g pearls =) Though I also have Healing Power and many lowbies put up the essence of water for quite cheap prices.

And yeah, void shatter is amazing as voids go for ~5g on my server while large prismatic shards are 10-20g.

If you're trying to make money from enchanting and scrolls, I recommend trying to get a hold of either +29sp and/or +30sp, +15 agi, crusader, and mongoose. Market is much less flooded than with all the WoTLK scrolls.

[Hipotenusa]

Whats the best items for try to play in ah actually then?

[Enkidulgaa]

A good lesson to earning gold from the AH is to learn a single market or 2. Tailor them to your professions if possible. I am a devout enchanter and can earn more in 1 day than most people see in weeks or playing. How? Play to the strengths of being an enchanter!

Listen to this man
I make money by buying the saronite from the AH and crafting it into Daunting, Tempered Saronite or Savage Saronite
There are almost no people on my server who craft them, maybe because nobody cares about items which dont sell for at least 1k.
I buy enough saronite to make two whole sets for 300g, and list them for 100g each, meaning 1600g profit if they sell, which they normally do given time
I wont reach gold cap with this method, but I make enough money to pay for enchantments and gems and maybe in 1 month I'll buy myself a chopper

The best part is that there's no risk. If they dont sell because nobody plays any alts at the moment, you just put them in the bank and sell them later. And even if you cant sell them at all, you only lose a few hundred gold.
Now if you buy a rare pet for 10k and it turns out nobody wants it?

[bubblelulz]

Has anyone noticed that after he makes 10k gold the font changes for the amount of gold he has and it is not a font used in the game ... ... .... photoshop much?

[sscavenger]

My server is messed up AH wise. There are too many people with AH mods that undercut by one silver or even one copper. So those without cut by a few gold to try to sell. It doesn't as people keep undercutting until it gets to the point you can vendor stuff and make more money. You would think this would cause prices to sky rocket once all the stuff expires. It doesn't it seeps back up some then the undercutting resumes. Basically if you want to sell something you have to try to be heard in trade, or farm something nobody else farms.

[pomop]

Try it out. as said above, it works for some, not so for others.

For me, I'm good at it. I stick to buying ores mostly because I know people buy them. On a fresh server I borrowed 200g from a friend, and 2 weeks later I have ~7k gold. I only get on my bank once a day, sometimes I'll skip a day. I'm not too hardcore about it. Stick with what you know sells.

Also unlike what people say, sell higher during peak hours. Not lower.
"But why Mr. Pomop? There are more people selling stuff too!"
Why yes, and there are twice as many people buying stuff as well.

(Higher meaning 80-90% regular price. I sell mine usually at 75-80 regular)

ALSO beware deposit costs. Saronite ore (or bars) costs 15g a stack to put on the AH. It's stupid.

[Liynrar]

Go look at just my two copper and the Greedy Goblin (*older posts). Playing the AH its self generally refers to flipping items and knowing the best times of day/week to sell. As always, turn your characters into a gold making machine by taking cheap mats off the AH and transforming them into expensive items with your professions. An example is the saronite shuffle (may or may not work for your server, depending on ore, etc.). A JC buys the saronite ore, prospects it, cuts the blue gems, makes rings out of the green gems, sends them to an enchanter who then enchants the vellums your scribe made adn sells the scrolls and cut blue gems. There are many other little operations you do like this.

[pomop]

Has anyone noticed that after he makes 10k gold the font changes for the amount of gold he has and it is not a font used in the game ... ... .... photoshop much?

Are you aware that you can change the font in WoW? Everything except the names over peoples heads for me is in Diablo.

[Liynrar]

Has anyone noticed that after he makes 10k gold the font changes for the amount of gold he has and it is not a font used in the game ... ... .... photoshop much?

you act like making 10,000 is a hard thing to do.
you also act like there're no addons that change the WoW font.

[Trork]

Scan the auction house for about 2-3 weeks. a few times a day - get Auctioneer, open the AH and type /auc getall.

Once you have a reliable database, you can go on: search, click on resale, and set the ammount you are willing to spend. but off items like enchant scrolls (some ppl post them very cheap cause they are levelling enchanting) buy em off, and keep them posted.

annother thing is stuff like primordial saronites (not today anymore, i'm afraid) when its a bit harder to get, when its new and theres a lot of demand on it, stay in trade chat and post WTB [new orb that is out] at what its worth - 200. buy a lot of those, and sell them again for the normal price. (I made a absurd ammount of gold like that)

Also battered hilt, it still goes for around 10k on my server. and I have bought around 7-8 of them for around 5-6k gold, and resold them at 8-11k gold.

just make sure you buy something that people actually want in your server.


I once bought 20 primordial saronites for 14k gold, sold them on the neutral auction house, and after the 20% cut off the neutral AH, I got 18.800 gold in the mailbox.

[Muraza]

My server is messed up AH wise. There are too many people with AH mods that undercut by one silver or even one copper. So those without cut by a few gold to try to sell. It doesn't as people keep undercutting until it gets to the point you can vendor stuff and make more money. You would think this would cause prices to sky rocket once all the stuff expires. It doesn't it seeps back up some then the undercutting resumes. Basically if you want to sell something you have to try to be heard in trade, or farm something nobody else farms.

You think your AH is bad? We have people that undercut you by 10% and then list more of the same item and undercut themselves by 5%+ more. Its ridiculous.

[johnmayer]

Most people that buy into the idea of "Playing" the AH forget that there are some that are thinking a few steps ahead. When WoTLK came out and Dragon's eyes would go for 500g+ friends would create multiple lvl 1 toons to create the illusion that there was competition in the market for Dragon's Eyes and one of those alts would place a Dragon's Eye at ridiculous prices just to mess with the % provided by Auctioneer. Seeing the prices of low level ores and herbs reminds me of those days because I am sure some of us that play the market are willing to lose the deposit for a couple of stacks of say Mithril in order to make people think that paying 70g for a stack is acceptable. Iono, I think that playing the AH is more risky than anything because everyone has this "Get Rich Quick" attitude and is too lazy to go farm gold the old way. Besides, a lot more people use AH addons and what not these days that it's difficult to eliminate competition and to be productive via the AH. I know I lost a fair share of gold buying out all the thorium expecting to one day sell it back at higher prices

[alejandrisha]

Buy cheap materials. Make stuff. Profit.

This. Also your timing is very important. Now that this content is winding down, there aren't any insanely overpriced items like there were a year or 2 ago. You might have to just grind it out making small profits or try to get lucky with some AH flipping. I know when epic gems 1st came out, I spent 20k gold on titanium ore/powder/necklaces to get all the viable cuts and made that back + 90k over the next few weeks. This is not very difficult when very few jewelcrafters can make the cuts that you can and so you can get a 50g margin between what you buy raws for and for what you sell cut gems. This obviously can't happen against until cataclysm, so be ready for it!