Nothing like hitting post and then seeing auction sold right away.
Winter could come any day in world of warcraft even for the best auctioneers. What I mean is that the auction house's demands could suddenly sweep away all your materials in any one market on any given day. There is no way to really prepare for this, so you have to constantly buy out all materials when it's profitable to do so. If you see 500 stacks of an item for the price you're willing to buy it out for than you need to buy all 500. The moment I stop buying materials, and even when I am buying like crazy, is when I tend to run out of them. Unlike the story of the grasshopper and the ant, world of warcraft's winters (times when you have nothing to sell in any one market) come and go at completely random times based on the demands of the player base. Sure you can predict Tuesdays for gear upgrades and patch notes for different changes, but how do you know that twenty players are going to log on and need to buy belt buckles tonight? The fact is you just can't predict demand well enough to gauge how much material you should buy, so buy it all. This strategy helps to raise the price of items as well as limit your competition's stockpile of materials.
If you doubt this strategy, you have no further to look than famous players such as
Stokpile,
Tella,
that guy everyone knows is amazing,
Milkshake, the admins at the
JTMC gold forums and a host of others. I would go so far as to say it's the number one strategy used by wow millionaires.
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auction house strategy
3 comments: on "Ant Not Grasshopper"
Shadowstep said... August 5, 2010 at 8:19 AM
Just as an fyi, looked like last night the farmers were back bought 400 stacks of saronite for 11-13g and 100 adders for 13-14g 200 tigerlily for 6-8g... let the good time roll
JayTekStorm said... August 5, 2010 at 12:00 PM
I fully use the stockpile idea when it comes to running my gold making business. I buy as much as I possibly can because I have had situations where I have ran out of supply and ended up limiting the amount of gold I was taking in.
About a month ago I had a weekend where I sold 30k worth of my stockpile in just two nights. It was amazing and probably my best 2 days ever. It just shows that you can never have enough.
Tarel said... August 5, 2010 at 6:16 PM
The issue is always at what level is profitable. There is a point in the game now where at some point a number of items will have limited value going forward. Do you need to sell all of them before cata for them to remain profitable? Some of them may be worth next to nothing going forward. Others, due to lack of supply will maintain some value and may go up.
I am on a low pop server that has had slow action on it for the last couple of months. The jc market has plummeted. The glyph market is very slow given the activity of the or lack of those playing.
It is still easy to make gold but in my view being cautious on what I buy and what I term is profitable has really changed. In my view now you should be depleting the items that you can sell now that will have limited value going forward and keep in those markets that you know have been profitable and will continue still in the early days of cata(some guess work required). Markets can always change very quickly, so a stockpile can work against you. I have no problem with aquiring items when the game is past its initial boon on prices but wow at the moment is in a declining activity position that will not be increasing until Cata. In my view, people that read this and stockpile blindly are just going to get burned. Those that understand what is happening in the marketplace on their server and understand how cata will change things will be better off. Markets can change so quickly. A stockpile of glyphs or inks that may sell for 10-40gold presently can easily be crashed to sell for 2 gold for a few months. Happened on my server can still happen as people want to dump stuff. Be aware and dont blindly stockpile. There may be a reason someone is selling say 1000 frozen orbs. Bad way to sell all at once.....but they just may have way way too many.
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