Buying and Selling At The Right Times

Posted by The Lost Meeple at 8:00 AM

I've been asked this quetion and have seen it been asked a thousand more times in other places such as the forums. When is the right time to sell stuff? How about buying?

Well the answer is and always be the same. It's server dependent. You need to figure this stuff out for yourself, the is only a couple times I can think of when you should buy/sell stuff, apart from those couple times you need to figure out what the best times to sell and buy things are.

When to Buy
There is a number of occasions where you should be buying stuff. The first is weekends. Weekends brings whole bunch of activity to the AH and most of the time it turns into an undercutting war resulting in extremely cheap stuff. The slur of casuals who don't have enough time to play during the weekend shows in the prices of items during the weekend. You should be buying this cheap stuff ( whatever it is ) as you'll most likely not it this cheap until the next weekend.

The next time you'll want to buy things if possible is right at the crack of dawn. This is where I personally pick up most of my deals. People leave their auctions up overnight and they're undercut multiple times overnight, resulting in cheap materials. Not only this, but this is the time I pick up the cheap stuff that's posted by the botters. 15g Obsidium Ore stacks? Check.

Last but not least, Summer. Summers lets all the kiddies out of school and allows them to play even more than they could with the restricted game time they had while they were at school. You'll be amazed how cheap you'll be seeing stuff this summer. Hell I personally expect ores to drop below the 15-20g mark easily. You'll definitely want to buy during Summer as it's a one time event that lasts a month or two and only happens once a year.

When to Sell
This part is mostly related to your server. You're going to want to do some research on your server, see when items are posted by people via The Undermine Journal.You'll generally want to sell when prices are on the rise. Beware for market manipulators, if you spot one find their threshold and start listing like a maniac. Aeg managed to make 85,000g in a day due to someone trying to manipulate the belt buckle market. Hats off to him.

One thing I can suggest though is to sell raid related things during raid prime times. Gems, Flasks, Enchants, Etc will sell the best during those prime raid hours ( 6-9pm ish server time ). Raid related items sell especially well on Tuesday's as raids reset and you'll see the major raiding guilds wanting to jump back into the content, thus creating a need for gems, enchants and such before, during and even after the raid.

You definitely do not want to sell during the weekend as this is where you will see the lowest prices during the week. Simply wait out the 1-2 days and sell during the weekdays. You'll get the most bang for your buck this way and not come out short handed.

In the end, sure there are a couple times where you can safely buy and sell materials, but be careful when you see that cheap ore and drop 25,000g on it only to find out that next week the same ore you just bought at 25g per drops down to 15g per. Know your markets before spending a large amount of gold on anything, and always, always , always ask yourself: Why is this happening rather than what is happening. Without the why you could possibly be buying yourself into a market that just died ( TweetyBird said this and I 100% agree ).