Mommar here.
Every so often as I'm looking at a market I get a wild idea to try something. But first I must preface this with a conversation I had with a fellow gold goblin on my home server. One day I was listing some Jewelcrafting items up and noticed that someone had started a couple of the more popular gems at the astronomical price of 750g a piece. Now I'm not a huge fan of going for the home run ball in this way but I figured I would give it a try and take a look at what happened.
Later that day as I was doing some market cleanup and collecting gold I saw one of my gems had sold. This surprised me a lot because why would someone want to pay 750g for a gem when they can get a black for 125g and offer a 25g tip. Was someone's time worth that much that they would pay 4 times what the gem was worth?
So back to the story at hand. I wanted to take my idea of Zero Point Investment to an extreme and see just how much I could squeeze out of a couple of markets. The Ghost iron bar market had been pretty light even with the opening of the thunderforge. The curve had not kicked in from players stocking up on cheap ore previous to the patch. Combine that with ore itself still not at an extremely expensive level bars just were not selling as much as they probably should. So I went ahead and purchased all of the bars on the market at that time for a reasonable amount, then flipped them all at 3 times the amount. I fully expected to just eat the Auction house cost and go my merry way.
But after my normal 12 hour listing I went back to my mailbox and watched 3 of the lots had sold at this extreme amount. This more than paid for the investment in the bars themselves, plus a decent profit. Now I probably shouldn't be surprised at one of my ideas actually being profitable. It was a whim to put the bars up for that price and gain a profit.
So when you see a weak market as your looking at your local auction house, take a chance and throw an incredible number out there and see who is fishing in your waters. This doesn't mean go for the million dollar gold bar, but listing a flip at 3-4 times the amount you paid for can net you some interesting reactions. And some extra gold in your pocket.
P.S. Hoppy Easter Weekend
Good Luck and Good Hunting
Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbearjoe @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up and I will buy you a glass of juice.
Previous Entries
Prepping For the Death Of PVP
Patience is a Virtue.
I Choose You....: Reputation Choices
Thunderforge Ready for Business
Determine Value: Spirits of Harmony
Hearthstone: The New Wow Killer?
What Days Do You Sell?
Loot Pinata
Taking Advantage of The Market
The Inportance of being Hot(fixes)
Don't Fret Young Farmer
Patch 5.2: First Take
Do you Own Your Tree?
1 comments:
Anonymous said... April 15, 2013 at 3:43 PM
I take advantage of this occasionally, I'm at the point economically in the game (2M+ gold, tons of mats stockpiled) that if anything I'm trying to clear out some goods to cut down on my mailbox flipping (if you want an interesting academic exercise, figure out how much in real $ you'd be willing to pay for everything to stack 10x higher... single items to 10, 20 to 200, etc... what AH player wouldn't buy that at almost any price?) but I'll still do this occasionally, especially for items that sell in singles, stack to 20 and are stuck behind some sort of barrier to mass production (caster leg enchants are a prime example). There are times when the price seems low just because it's low, in those cases I'll buy everything and list high, I'll generally make back my investment and have a few extra items stockpiled for my trouble/risk.
The reason why this does work occasionally is that there are times that someone just needs something in a hurry and as long as the actual gold cost isn't completely ridiculous (not vs normal price for the item, I mean vs what someone would notice missing from their gold balance), it's worth it just to buy it rather than trying to source it elsewhere. Not everyone has stockpiles like some AH players do.
On a more baffling note, at least a dozen times lately I've noticed people buy something I've listed even when there were cheaper items up at the same stack size, sometimes at significantly lower prices than my listing (half or lower). This doesn't happen often enough to make it a regular part of my posting technique (post some at the price I intend to sell at, post a few more at a higher price because... who knows) but in cases where I'm low stock on something, I'll often list them high because... who knows. :)
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