Time is Money: Addons to beat the Vendors
by Amanda Miller 
Mar 6th 2009 at 9:00AM
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Earlier this week, I taught you a system for making the most gold from vendoring quest rewards that you can't use, without bogging down your computer system with addons.
If you don't like the cheat sheet, or think that "heavy items" are too difficult to remember, or you simply love the way that addons can enhance your gaming experience, I have the inside scoop on mods that will tell you which quest reward will sell for the most and that will help you manage your vendor trash.
Lightweight, unobtrusive addons:
I have always used Mobinfo2, when it wasn't broken. The latest incarnation is Mobinfo3, which will hopefully live up to its predecessor. Unfortunately, at the moment, you need to also install ItemDataCache for it to work.
This handy little addon simply adds additional information to the tooltip that appears when you mouse over something, such as an item or a corpse. It will tell you which mob(s) dropped the item, the drop percentage, vendor price, how many times you've killed that mob, information about the mob's stats, and more. It is based on your own work, so the drop information is not "the" drop information, but rather the statistics on how it has dropped for you.
While this may not be the best solution at the moment, it is something to keep in mind for the future.
If you want to keep it simple, there are two addons that will do the trick. SellFish will show you the vendor price for an item in its tooltip, and Vendorbait is a mod specifically designed to work with it. When given a choice of quest rewards, it will highlight the one that sells for the most so that you can decide at a glance.
ItemPriceTooltip is another simple, low-memory addon that will publish the vendor price of an item in the tooltip.
Heavier, more inclusive addons:
Auctioneer and WoWEcon will both give you vendor information, along with auction prices and other financial goodies you might want to know. Both use a lot of memory, and both require that you spend a bit of time syncing your addon with the server at each login. Auctioneer takes up the most time, while WoWEcon is less laborious.
Auctioneer provides you with auction information based on what items are being listed for, while WoWEcon scans what price items have actually sold for.
Choosing between the two will depend highly on personal preference. If you like to try to move items at a high price when they are in high demand, and all of the cheaper, or more "reasonably" priced items have sold, then Auctioneer might be your best bet, as it allows you to monitor the listings.
If you'd rather be given solid prices that will result in more consistent sales, then WoWEcon might be better for you.
Of course, if you really don't spend much time auctioning, then I don't recommend taking up the memory with one of these addons. Your game will run more smoothly without them.
In a future article, I will discuss how addons like these can enhance your ability to auction effectively.
Other vendoring addons:
VendorFood is a cute little addon that won't take up much room and makes vendoring your items a breeze. Once it is installed, just head over to a vendor. In the normal window that comes up, you'll notice a button that says "Feed Vendor" as pictured in the main image for this article. Clicking it will automatically sell every grey item and tally up how much money you made doing it! This is an "I was totally born yesterday" addon. No work, no fuss, completely fool-proof vendoring.
If you ever used AutoProfit, this is very similar, although currently less customizable. SellJunk is another option, and it will allow you to add other items that you would like to automatically sell, such as Fish Oil, that is technically a white quality item.
Stay tuned for more tips to help you make piles of gold on Time is Money. Kebina Trudough is dishing the dirt on coveted gold-making secrets, and you won't want to miss it! Check out my guide to choosing lucrative quest rewards for resale to a vendor.Filed under: Items, Making money, Guides, Features, Quests, Add-Ons, Economy, Tips, Analysis / Opinion, Time Is Money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
STHedgeHog Mar 6th 2009 9:07AM
Ive used Auctioneer for a good number of years and i couldnt be with out it now really. The only thing i dont like about it is stupid people putting 20items up on the AH, 1 stack at a time. Autoprofit is a great time saver too :)
sephirah Mar 6th 2009 9:19AM
Even worse is people that sell low value items that are usually used for levelling professions WITHOUT a BO price.
es: 1 Large Fang, bid 90s, no BO, 48h duration
If I buy your damned Large Fang, it's because I need it NOW, not the day after tomorrow!!!
Irshalthra Mar 6th 2009 10:03AM
@Sephirah
I get some GREAT deals because of people having no BO. I know that I do not need it "right now", I am patient and can wait. Yes, sometimes someone else bids me out, but there are usually others.
doobybob Mar 6th 2009 10:28AM
yeah i hate that, I will actually buy the large stack even if its more expensive to spite the person that puts up singles. It's really annoying and when i am ever going to want to buy 1 infinite dust or something like that. everything should sold in stacks of 5/10/20.
PeeDub Mar 6th 2009 11:45AM
I hate when people put no buyout simply because *THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG*. Yeah, you can take advantage of it, but stupidity is still stupid.
As far as stack size, I've found that it helps to experiment to see what sells. Sure, enchanters will usually buy a full stack of infinite dust, but people who are buying mats for their own enchants typically won't. One of the easiest money making strats is to buy eternals (*some* of them work this way), convert them to crystallizeds and sell them in singles or stacks of 5. Shards *never* sell for me in stacks. Cloth never sells for me in less than 20's. YMMV...
STHedgeHog Mar 6th 2009 12:10PM
Its jsut annoying to scroll through 10pages of that same item before finding a decent sized stack. If people want to sell them 1 at a time thats fine, but do you really need to sell 500 of them like it. Ive always thought Blizz should put a cap on AH's so you can only lista max no of items. But that wouldnt really work due to alts, and would prob effect the people trying to sell lots of stuff legitimately.
Xtyle Mar 6th 2009 1:50PM
Selling things 1 item at a time isn't a bad thing in many cases. It's just determined by what items are being sold. Dust? sure sell it in stacks of 5/10/15/20, but sometimes crafters need things in stacks of 2, or 4 for commonly crafted items. Knowing when to adjust and when not to can prove quite profitable.
My biggest beef with Auctioneer is when the power and simplicity completely dominates and destroys common sense.
Example: I'm a scribe and am always pushing glyphs on the AH. When I see high end glyphs moving at 20/30 silver and sometimes even less... it kinda turns my stomach. The herbs/pigments/inks are worth WAY more than the glyphs themselves. The end result is a handful of rookie scribes selling everything they have and undercutting each other. This renders the possibility of profit impossible and keeps prices below manufacturing cost for a long time, if not permanently. I'm savvy enough to adapt and move different products, but I find myself often buying glyphs from the AH when I'm a scribe myself... just because I can buy them cheaper than I can make them. I'll use my inks on other stuff.
To sum up my point. Auctioneer and similar addons are very powerful, but when put in the hands of the simple minded... it can be disruptive. If you get the tools, learn the tools.
Hatfield Mar 6th 2009 2:02PM
Not all people who put up no buyout auctions are dummies. Like I said yesterday people purposely do that because they know it will trick Auctioneer's auto-suggest into a low buyout auction for the next seller and then they swoop in and snap up the underpriced goods on the cheap to resell for profit.
Karilyn Mar 6th 2009 4:22PM
Really depends on the item. Some things I sell by the stack. Some by partial stack, and some individually.
Particularly oddball expensive items I often wind up putting individually, like Frozen Orbs. It's rare that someone will want to buy 20 Frozen Orbs. So if I'm going to sell a stack of them, I'll probably just put them all up individually.
Donaghy Mar 6th 2009 9:13AM
For those that don't want to use addons, there is a macro for selling grey items. "/run for bag=0,4,1 do for slot=1,GetContainerNumSlots(bag),1 do local name=GetContainerItemLink(bag,slot) if name and string.find(name,"ff9d9d9d") then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("- Selling "..name) UseContainerItem(bag,slot) end end end" without quotation marks will do it. Also make sure you only use it at a vendor, or it will try and equip you with any grey armour or weapons you have.
snowleopard233 Mar 6th 2009 9:14AM
Auctioneer is more than anything an addon that makes the often mind-boggling practice of selling and buying items on the AH a simple process for begginers. It uses a good chunk of memory but I found that even my five year-old toshiba sattelite with 1gb of RAM could handle running this addon just fine.
Narune Mar 6th 2009 9:27AM
You should take a look at an addon called "Postal". It allows you to check off mail in you inbox, and open the batch, or open everything, and it gets rid of the little reciept that comes with your auction money. It will also tell you how much extra (or less) gold you have after you close the mailbox. It's got plenty of options to modify your experience at the mailbox allowing you to set it up how you want.
Brian Mar 6th 2009 9:20AM
lol I love you so much. I've never thought to even look for addons like this, but I think VendorFood is my new BFF
Marveen Mar 6th 2009 10:08AM
I've been using Auctionator instead of the other one. It's fairly simple compared to Auctioneer and does the job.
Narune Mar 6th 2009 9:21AM
I personally like "Reagent Restocker" for vendoring trash because it also has an auto-repair function, and can be set to auto-buy (a certain amount) or sell pretty much anything you might find in your bag. It will also bank overstock items that you manually buy if you so choose, and pull then back to your bag later when you are running low. It can also be set to look for rep discounts. I used to have several add-ons to do this work, but found that Reagent Restocker did it all. It's definitely one on my must have list now.
Arawn Mar 6th 2009 9:22AM
FreeRefills is a nice one as well if you're a heavy ammo or reagent user. You can tell it how many stacks of something you like keeping in stock and it will make sure to stock those things whenever you open a vendor that sells them. I use it to keep my Symbol of Kings restocked.
Emma Marie Mar 6th 2009 9:28AM
Just one warning for anyone using an auto grey seller. Make sure to buyback any greys that you didn't mean to sell. I almost lost my pet rock that way!
Dude Mar 10th 2009 2:07PM
Or your mining pick. I think I picked up one in deadmines or something. It was a gouge pick or something but I used it through to level 73 when I installed autoprofit. Forgot my mining pick was grey and sold it pressing the sell junk button. Funniest thing was when I beat the oppostie faction to the mining node and it was telling me I needed a pick to mine it. wtf? I laughed all the way to the nearest mining supplies dwarf to pick up a white mining pick.
Narune Mar 6th 2009 9:29AM
Oops! replied to the wrong comment. Sorry
Farproc Mar 6th 2009 9:32AM
Its worth pointing out that WowEcon (and presumably Auctioneer) can be configured to show
1. The price you can expect if you Vendor the item
2. The price you can expect to get from the AH for the item
AND
3. The price you can expect to get from the AH if you disenchant the item and sell the dust essence and shards.