When I first began questing in Outlands, I became very bitter once I got to Gaining Mirren’sTrust and realized I had to go all the way back to the Blasted Lands in order to grab the required Nethergarde Bitter to complete the quest. It was this fated moment that led to my first “Auction House Light Bulb” going off over my (real-life) head.
How many other people run into this problem? I wonder if I could make a profit off of people’s laziness by selling them on the Auction House?
I brought my main back to the Blasted Lands and purchased 21 Nethergarde Bitters at 20 silver/per. After mailing 20 Bitters over to my AH-toon, I flew back to complete the quest.
Hmmm… Should I sell them one at a time? I’ve never foraged into the world of the auction house/market, before. God, I hate the stock market… Is this going to kill me to venture into?
I rolled into the Stormwind AH and searched for Nethergarde Bitters and found none. A smile crept up on my face. This smile, over the upcoming months, would become very familiar to me.
I can control the price! I can control how many I sell!
I decided to post them in four stacks of five Bitters with two thoughts: if someone needs only one, I want to see if they will buy five; someone might be flying back to get Bitters for a group, in which case, I again, want them to buy 5 instead of one-at-a-time. Being a newbie to the AH, I posted them at a rate of 1G/per in 12-hour auctions. I had a very limited bankroll and wanted the lowest deposit rate possible.
Several hours later, I checked my mailbox to find that all four auctions had sold! I was ecstatic! I earned just under 20G by spending just under 4G! It was an incredibly profitable markup and with no one else selling them, I had complete control of the market. Several hundred Bitters, later, I was sitting back and smiling at my very first successful AH goldmine.
Now, you may not think this is a largely relevant tip, but it explains how I learned to spot things that would make great potential "gold mines." Especially by using the "gold flip" method of buying low and selling high on the AH. It's a wonderful trick that I have applied to larger items and flipped for several hundred, if not thousand, gold profit.
FYI: CURRENT WOWHEAD.COM BUYOUT PRICE: 2g 29s 76c/per – CURRENT UNDERMINEJOURNAL.COM US ALLIANCE MARKET PRICE: 4g 47s 84c
Good find :) I used Zygor's Guide for most of my initial levelling so it told me to buy them before I got there & I didn't have the same problem that turned around to a gold making thing. I did find the cooking recipe vendor in SW very early on (in my play time) though & made a regular income out of that. I still flip vendor cooking recipes regularly & if I'm in an out of the way place, they sell especially well.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nev! Yeah, at the time I was leveling my first 1-55 toon, I didn't have Dugi's Guides, which I do now (that give the tip to buy them in advance). It was through Dugi's that I learned about vendor recipe runs (which I'm planning on posting about soon...hoping Dugi will give me a shout-out for mentioning his guides). :)
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