Riding the Wave - How to Sell Items with Random Supply and Demand

Time to learn to ride the wave of supply and demand with Pygmy Oil!

One of my favorite items to sell are Pygmy oil because of how much the demand for this item can flip flop on any given day. I do this for fun, the profit is minimal (50-200 gold a day) but it's a great excercise in suppy and demand for a new aucitoneer. What's more, you can take the following strategy and apply it to much more expensive items such as pets and epic weapons or enchants.

Day 1 Pre-Game:
Pygmy Suckerfish 2 gold per stack
Pygmy Oil ranging from 8-12 gold per stack, lots on auction house
Oil in Bags: 260

Day 1 Action:
Buy out all suckerfish and craft into oils.
Oil in Bags: 343
Post 15 stacks of pygmy oil for 5 gold a stack.

Day 3 Pre-Game:
Pygmy Suckerfish 4 gold per stack
Pygmy Oil ranging from 4-6 gold per stack
Oil in Bags: 223

Day 3 Action:
Post 10 stacks of pygmy oil for 3.50 gold a stack.

Day 5 Pre-Game:
Pygmy Suckerfish 2.50 gold per stack
Pygmy oil market empty except for 2 half stacks at 2 gold.

Day 5 Action:
Buy out all suckerfish and craft into oils.
But out oils.
Oil in Bags: 127
Post Pygmy Oils at 20 gold a stack.

Gold made in one week:
240 gold Time Invested: Maybe 10 minutes, 90% of which was crafting, but luckily you can post and craft at the same time, as well as craft while openning your mail.

Eventually the market will recrash and as a result pygmy suckerfish will as well. What's important is that regardless of how low pygmy oils get, suckerfish will still yield 1-2 oils, making you a profit even if fish and oils are identical prices.

This makes pygmy oil one of the most successful markets that can 'ride' and thrive off random supply/demand changes. Regardless of whether you're crashing or riding the wave of demand you will always make money. Even if one person buys a stack of oils you more than cover all your costs of posting 10-15 stacks.

Try applying this concept to other markets... Comment!

12 comments: on "Riding the Wave - How to Sell Items with Random Supply and Demand"

  1. Much in the same way, there's gold to be made by buying ore on the auctionhouse, melting it into bars and posting the bars on the auctionhouse.
    Tailors can do this with cloth (into bolts)

  2. What is pygmy oil used for?

  3. @Trembar

    The oils turn you into a litte voodoo gnome.

  4. i love u markus!!!!!

  5. At least if you assume your price is the only one there, the market has a demand and thus they all sold.

    (goes to buy out and relist all pygmy's on his server \o/)

  6. Pygmy oils can also be used to make Guru Elixir, a decent buff for anyone - +20 to all stats, as I recall. I haven't found it to be a good seller, though, on my server anyway.

    Given the high vendor value of pygmy oil (1.5g/stack), I haven't considered the risk/reward ratio reasonable enough to AH them. (My server is medium pop at best, too.) I've done a bit of advertising in trade channel for it, and sold some that way, and found some regular buyers to COD to.

    So thanks, Marco, for mentioning pygmy oil earlier. Instead of vendoring the supply I get off my fishing expeditions, I decided to recheck the market and got some extra from it.

  7. The most important use of the oils is in crafting Potions of Speed.

  8. Also used in Flask of Pure Mojo.

  9. Thanks for the info. I usually vendor it also. It doesn't seem to sell on my server. But, I haven't checked in a while.

  10. I rarely sell the oil but I have been making the guru's elixir. My Holy Priest is an Alchemist. I buy the fish, make the oils which i turn into flasks.

    As mentioned already it's a fairly decent buff. I've found that on my server the best days & time to sell is early morning around 7:00 EST and before raids in the evenings. I don't have too much competition so the items usually sell. I imagine some use them in raids others I imagine use it in instances or questing.

  11. hmm... I have a huge stock of pygmy fish sitting in my bank... might have to check prices and actually put that to use (been just kinda stockpiling it from my fishing dailies - didn't really have anything better to do with it)

  12. I'm afraid either I don't "get" the pygmy oil thing, or there's way too many fishermen on my server. Pygmy oil sells for only a few silver each on both Horde and Alliance AH's whenever I've checked. You typically get a few oils in most Bags of Fishing Treasures.

    Am I missing something?

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