Monday, August 31, 2009

Auction House patterns

So I guess I'll start my first "real" blog about what I enjoy most, The Auction House. Over the years I have began to notice there are a limitless amount of patterns on every server. As odd as it sounds many of the prices in the AH are directly affected by simply what day of the week it is.

With the knowledge of certain patterns you can know exactly when to buy low and sell high without even having to worry about the "what ifs" of if it doesnt sell because it will. And generally it will sell for more if sold at the right time.

One of the most common known patterns is the "raiding" patterns. Flask prices spike from 19g to 25-30g per flask. The nice thing about this is you can literally flood the market with flasks on any decent populated server and generally sell out of flasks (I've sold hundred of flasks on a tuesday night. Which btw is a great moral boost while your wiping on a progression boss). Raid supplies generally spike Tuesday and Wednesday and by Sunday / Monday they generally are bottomed out in price again.

On my Server I could buy stacks of lotus for 400g (20g per lotus) all weekend til I was broke. Tuesday rolls around and I throw up 2-3 stacks of lotus in the AH in singles for 35g each and set the time for 48 hours. By wednesday the stacks I threw in the AH were sold out and I made almost double my money for doing absolutely nothing.

Another common pattern also is affected by Tuesdays. This is the gem and enchanting markets. Tuesday more so then wednesday because arena points are distributed on Tuesdays. Thus all the pvpers are picking up their new gear they just got rating for before playing their games later in the day (or week). Plus all the raid instances reset on Tuesday and generally all the raiding guilds are raiding the easy trivial content they have on farm already. Easy boss kills means easy loot for their guildies which means gems and enchanting sales spike.

These are simply a couple of examples of the patterns that occur everyday on your server and many people don't realize it. Spend time looking at whats being sold in trade and how much its being sold for. Pay attention to auction house prices and get to know your markets and you'll be able to make money by simply "investing" money on one day and reselling on another.

Direction of the blog?

So I was thinking this morning about the direction I wanted to focus the blog on. Originally it was going to be about whatever crossed my mind and I felt like talking about but I'm not entirely sure if I should stick more to WoW economics or not. If you have any suggestions or ideas feel free to either contact me on Yahoo IM, JMTC forums or leave a comment here. I'm really clueless. :P

Yay for Monday!

Well that was an extremely long weekend. Sales were through the roof and I'm now taking the day to restock on my glyphs, gems, and enchanting mats in preparation for a crazy week starting tomorrow.

I started Friday with about 25k liquid. I was over 32k but I decided to craft my ulduar tanking boots which dropped me to roughly 25k. Looking back I'm really glad I stock piled as much as I did on the previous week because I really took a beating this weekend. I dropped to about 20k on buying a good 400 or so stacks of saronite and herbs.

I couldn't keep up on glyphs or gems all weekend. Overall I had about 4 or 5k in sales on Saturday and over 10k in sales yesterday. If this is any indication to the incomming week then it's going to put a hurting on my backstock lol.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

My journey in the AH.

I've recently started playing in the AH. In fact, I was one of those players who did dailies everyday for a measly 200g that took about an hour or two worth of work. I often farmed countless hours in the Basin for saronite ore. Back then having 800g felt like alot.

I've been playing Wow for almost 5 years. 5 years of being broke. Living from daily to daily. Taking loans mid raid to pay for repairs. I worked hard for my money but that doesn't mean I really worked smart. That changed with 3.2.

I had saved up 9 stacks of titanium ore. Patch 3.2 allowed titanium ore to be prospected for epic gems and titanium powder. Now, this was no real amount compared to some of the others on my server who had 150-200 stacks or some of the others on the JMTC forums who had 300+ stacks. But 9 stacks was a decent amount considering it was what I had personally farmed up in the previous weeks while I was farming saronite ore.

3.2 goes live and within 20 mins of the servers being up I toss up my 9 stacks in the AH. To my suprise there was nothing in the AH as far as titanium so I toss em in for 500g a stack. Figured I'd get my 4.5k and call it a day. I told my guildies I tossed it in the AH and hoped it would sell and thats when a buddy of mine offered 400g per stack. He said he'd rather hook a friend up with some sick prices rather then some random person and I agreed and didn't mind selling it for 400g a stack.

After all was said and done I was sitting on about 4-4.5k. I sold an epic or two that I had purchased with honor and heroism badges that I had layin around. And I sat on my money for a week. Afraid to spend it as it was the most I've ever had. (Both of my epic flyers were on the "rent to own" plan :P)

A week later I decided to check Saronite prices and see how the market was doing. Saronite ore was down to 13-15g a stack. I did some minor calculations and saw the potential to make some serious money selling uncut blue gems and turning the green gems into enchanting mats.

So I thought about it for a little bit (all of 20 seconds) and decided "what the hell? I've been broke my entire wow career. Worst case - I'll be broke again" lol. And proceeded to invest about 3k into saronite ore and cleaned the AH of eternal earths. All in all I spent 4k or so and was officially broke. Again.

I prospected like a madman. Made ring's and disenchanted them and sold uncut blue gems left and right just trying to make some sort of profit. I didn't cut the gems because I didnt want to get stuck with cut gems and not bein able to sell them. That was before I found out about QA. The addon that literally allowed me to make as much gold as I felt like making. If gold came out of a tree like maple syrup. QA the the tool that enabled me to do so.

After my first full week of playing in the AH I had finally broken 20k gold. I had approx. 2k or so in blue gems, 1k or so in enchanting mats (after liquidating 40 stacks of dust), 1200ish ink of the sea and 300-400 or so glyphs.

In a week's time I had leveled a scribe to 450 and jumped both feet blindly into the glyph market and slowly started taking control of my server's rare gem market.

At the time of this writing Im sitting on over 30k liquid with about 20k in various mats. I have an est. 5k in uncut rare gems, 500+ glyphs, enough mats for almost 70 darkmoon cards, 20 or so stacks of eternal earths and more enchanting mats then you could ever care to think about.

My next goal is to drop mining and level up another profession. Leaning towards Alchemy but I'm not 100% sure at the moment.

Welcome!

Welcome to my little corner of the internet. If you have stumbled upon my blog chances are you are a reader of JMTC.

This blog is pretty much about whatever I feel like rambling about. Generally it will be about current news in WoW, Economics, and of course the daily drama that occurs on chat that's worthy enough to get mentioned here.

Im a relatively new poster at the JMTC forums. I have only been posting there for about 3 weeks? or so and tend to find myself getting off track on some of my posts. So I figured I'd write a blog that way I'm not cluttering the forum's with my random thoughts and those who care enough to read them still can. :)