Battered Hilt - Profit Analysis by Wow Confidential

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Flip High Priced Items for Large Profit

This is a guest post by Will from WoWConfidential.com Where he runs a blog posting daily WoW gold making articles.

Auction house buying and selling is one of the best ways to make gold in WoW and can be done very quickly if you utilize the /auc getall command to scan the auction house in a couple minutes.
However for those with deeper pockets there is a more lucrative side to buy low sell normal that isn't done on the auction house but is actually accomplished via the trade channel, a channel I usually avoid since it takes up valuable time to barter when you could just throw the items on the AH and move on with your gold making.
This method entails buying up high priced items with lowball offers via the trade channel but you must know a few vital things before partaking in this risky but potentially extremely profitable activity.

How to Find a Flip

Many high ticket items are announced for sale by players in the trade channel because they are so excited to have won a roll on a high priced BoE that they know can fetch upwards of 10k and are eager to get rid of it so they can buy up the other items they always wanted.
Most of the time you can count on people broadcasting items in trade chat to be a bit on the desperate and impatient end, many of these items take a little bit of time to sell since the niche of players that have 10k on hand to buy them are few.
You can usually lowball these offers but the trick in negotiating is to know what your profit margins are and most importantly to know inside and out the average price and demand for that particular item.

Know When To Flip and How Much

The most important element of a successful high priced item flip is to be very sure of the items current value and if the price trend is stable (headed up, down or steady).
There are a few ways to accomplish this:

1. Obviously step #1 is to first check the auction house for the item and see if there are any lower auctions than the average.
2. Download the addon Market Watcher and run scans daily on a few high priced items, this will show a graph of the average and lowest priced item currently on the auction house in a graph. If the line is stable for a few weeks you can be sure the item won't drop dramatically, if the graph has extreme high's and lows be sure to grab it at the lowest point possible.
   Stable - Battered hilts sell for 10k or more almost always.
   
   Unstable - Artic fur can go from 25g to 75g overnight.
   
3. By following these graphs you will start to develop a feel for the item and know what constitutes a high price, an average price and a good buying price. You are now ready to act on any flipping opportunities announced in trade chat.

Figuring out a Price

Armed with this knowledge you are now ready to act on a flip, here's a quick case study of a typical flip:
Battered Hilt
Price: Sells consistently for 10k - 11k gold on my server, never seen it below this price on the auction house.
Auction House Cut: 5%  or 500g
Acceptable Profit: 2,000g
Spot someone in trade channel announcing a high priced item you're looking for.

Sometimes people will be tough, just know you're desired profit margin and don't go below that, reply with a polite "no ty"  they will either accept your offer or hold onto the item.

And other times you'll get a desperate seller accept the offer right off the cuff

In the latter case, I knew I already had 1 battered hilt now for 8k and decided if I was to pick up another I'd go lower to 7.5k,  looks like it worked.
Potential Profit gained in 15 minutes of buying/selling flipped items: 4,500g

Suggested High Priced Items to Flip

Here are some suggestions I have based on current market conditions, make sure you keep in mind to not invest more than 30% (or a large portion) of your total gold amount into flips.
Battered Hilt
Primordial Saronite (Item is on a downward trend on most servers, buy at a very discounted price)
ICC BoE's (These always fall in price a week before new content patch, so stop flipping or expect dramatic drop in prices beforehand)
Rare Gems (not usually found at a discount but a very stable and easy to flip item. Keep in mind that when Honor token change comes in effect that there will be a flood of players turning in tokens for gems thus lowering the price)
Darkmoon Card: Greatness and Nobles Deck (People desperate to sell Nobles Decks when the Darkmoon Faire isn't on, hang on to these until you can convert them to cards)
Rare Companion Pets - ex: Razzashi Hatchling
Bulk Sales of Eternal Fire/Eternal Life - You'll sometimes see players shouting in trade WTS 20 STACKS of eternal fire fast PST, great buying opportunity to lowball and offer 50% of value. (keep in mind frozen orb trade in change incoming 3.3.3)
That is it for now, good luck with your flips and be sure to take into consideration speculation on item demand and not to buy up items just before a major content patch, unless you know that item will go up in value. Markco discusses major shifts in item prices and patch speculation on his podcast Call to Auction.

This was a guest post by Will from WoWConfidential.com Where he runs a blog posting daily WoW gold making articles.