Sometimes when using auctioneer the program makes mistakes. Well we can't really call them mistakes because it's doing just what it's been told to do but have you ever been tricked into bidding on an item that was way overpriced?
Auctioneer scans are stored on your computer and the average value of these scans are considered to be the market value of each item. These values are usually spot on accurate and update as the market changes with each scan. It's very hard to fool an auctioneer that has been scanning for months with his tool. However, it's very easy to trick someone who has just started using auctioneer by creating items that appear to be great deals.
You can accomplish a seemingly good deal two ways. First, you could post items at a ridiculous price (I'm talking many thousands of gold) and then a few items at the rate you want to sell them for. A fresh auctioneer (the addon itself) with little market knowledge will believe your normal posted items at 10 gold a piece are a great deal because the market average will be inflated several thousand gold. The second way to trick auctioneer is to post an item with a buyout of several thousand gold but a bid of the price you want to sell at. Your bid to buyout comparison will be so large that auctioneer will almost always flag it as a deal, especially if there are few competing items on the market.
So which markets should you watch out for this happenning in?
Weapons and armor are the chief culprits of these auction house shinanigans. Since very rarely the same green weapons or armor will be posted on the same day, and if an item is posted which never would normally see the light of day (64 fire resist helm for instance) then auctioneer is almost gauranteed to be tricked by the pricing. More often than not a poster will use the second method when dealing with weapons/armor since they will not usually have multiple items of the same name to post.
Remember to pay attention when purchasing for resale and these dirty tricks won't affect you.
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4 comments: on "Tricking Auctioneer"
Unknown said... February 1, 2009 at 11:10 AM
This is why I only buy items that I know 100% are profitable and sell fast.
Anonymous said... February 1, 2009 at 12:13 PM
This is why in the SearchUI you should have it set to limiting Seen count by 100 so you know the prices are accurate. I generally look and feel safe if the seen count on an item is in the thousands though.
Markco said... February 1, 2009 at 1:33 PM
Great post Bitwise! The searchUI is full of helpful tools like that. Thanks for pointing it out.
Anonymous said... February 2, 2009 at 12:44 PM
There are also ways to eliminate categories you don't like, and I don't remember how... I saw it on the Auctioneer forum. Say you don't feel comfortable reselling glyphs, you can just make is so no glyphs show up. I'm being kind of lazy not looking up how that's done, but I'm at work so I have an excuse. :)
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