Playing the Long Haul on the Auction House

Part of becoming an auction house guru is realizing that you're in it for the long haul, not just the instantly gratifying sale. With this being said, there are several bad habbits you should avoid which prevent you from playing the 'long haul.'

1. Overreacting
I see this all the time, especially with newer players. That first time your stuff doesn't sell, or that time when someone undercuts you and you freak out. You dump all your items in a fit of anger and someone else makes a killing off your stuff.

2. Ignoring Cycles
The cycles of wow economics provide savvy auctioneers with the oppurtunity to create oppurtunities for themselves. By being ignorant of the price cycles for the items you are selling on your server you are basically cheating yourself. Start writing stuff down if you have trouble remembering when markets shift. Don't post infinite dust the day that they plumet to 3 gold a piece when in two days they will shift to 6 gold a piece.

3. Posting only what your character doesn't need
This goes back to being ignorant, but is focused on living in your own little world. If you only focus on tossing away items you know your own character doesn't need then you are probably putting them up for far too little. Just get some cloth from a chest but aren't a tailor? Going to just dump it on the ah for the lowest price? This is a fine oppurtunity to educate yourself on the value of cloth over the coarse of the next week.

4. Assuming investments are risks.
Have some faith in your own ability to read markets and feel comfortable investing money into good profits. Don't doubt yourself into missing up deals!

Ignore these bad habbits and you will surely start playing for the long haul!

5 comments: on "Playing the Long Haul on the Auction House"

  1. > 1. Overreacting

    And the reverse. Don't sell at a small loss although the item drops more and more in value.

  2. One of the mistakes I made early, and am still working on breaking myself of, is only watching the per unit profit, and not the whole picture, so I lose out on money when I try to sell a small quanity for a larger per unit price, then the reverse.

    For instance I figured out I can make infinite dust for about 1.4G a piece by crafting JC greens, and disenchanting them. I can make quite a few of these a day. So I will make more money posting larger quanities of cheaper dust, and I can just replace what I sold low and keep making money, then if I were to slowly sell it all at a high price and be stuck with a large inventory I couldn't move faster then I could stock.

  3. Spot-on advice. I'm amazed how much variation I see with your Item# 2: Cycles. One weekend adamantite ore is an insane 60g per stack... yesterday = 15g. Khorium ore, etc... the list goes on.

  4. One big difference between the Wow economy and RL:
    Buy and Hold rarely works!!!

    Cycles are short, and, managed effectively, can work well.

    On my server, titanium ore has been around 19g for a couple weeks. On Saturday, tons of ore was listed for 15g. I bought all of it. It's back up to 16.5g now, but many people were 'forced' to drop their prices to keep up with whoever was dumping their ore. I'm holding for prices to get back to 18g before trickling mine back in, and I'm relatively confident it will. I'm a little worried that one more more gold farmers moved to my server which is borking supply and demand but I'll hold.... for now.

    Unfortunately, one can't hold for too long, because inevitably, prices in wow trend down. epic gems will drop in value over time, decreasing ore demand. Also, in tying up so much capital, one is losing opportunity for making gold with that capital.

    Watch the trends, make money. But sometimes be willing to take a hit to avoid holding too long.

  5. I really have to second number 4. Just today I saw titanium fairly cheap, but was cautious and only bought a single stack. In about an hour it had shot back up 7 gold per ore.

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