Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsGold Capped: WoW Prospector and mailbag
by Basil Berntsen 
Jul 28th 2010 at 9:00AM
I got an email from the creator of WoW Prospector asking me to cover it. After he assured me that his servers are housed in a fire proof room lined with asbestos and at least 300 meters from any residential zones, I agreed, mainly because it's an incredibly useful tool that has saved me a bunch of spreadsheet time. Essentially, the tool will tell you how much money you stand to make prospecting various ores, given the price of ore and what you can sell the raw gems for.
Here's a screenshot of it in action:
All the prospectable ores are listed. The example prices I put in up here are simple guesses, so do your own research. Anyone can search for their own market prices via the mobile auction house in the armory for free, and if you're lucky enough to have The Undermine Journal covering your realm and faction, that will let you get a historical perspective on these prices. Go reread the prospecting section I put into my Jewelcrafting guide. Then go melt some unsuspecting servers over at WoW Prospector!
Mailbag this week
I got a metric buttload of email since I did my last mailbag, and some of them were pretty good questions. Will wrote:
Sorry to say this, Will, but Auctioneer is built from the ground up assuming you will always bid the minimum amount. I don't know of any addons that would let you bid higher than that en masse, however I'll bet there's a way to do it with a macro. Unfortunately, I can't write it. That said, try to time it so you can drop in and check on these just before they're due to sell, and try and pick them up that way. I've long held that the AH could use some major changes to the buying interface, and grouping all similar sized stacks would be a step in the right direction.
Sometimes some jerk posts a hundred single-count infinite dust auctions for a single copper each. We all know they are worth much more and will eventually sell for much more. What is the quickest way to bid 90s on each of them? The way I've been taught to use Auctioneer (thank you!) would have me bid on each by the smallest possible increment, thus filling my mailbox repeatedly. I'd like to skip that part and get to a reasonably low yet real price ASAP.
Simon writes:
I suspect that the new supply is "organic" player farmed stock. A lot of the people I used to buy from have come out of the woodwork of late and are back farming. That said, I'm still in liquidation mode for Cataclysm. I'll buy farmed goods that I feel will retain their value in the expansion; mostly items that are used to level tradeskills.I too noticed when the herb supply dried up, and I instantly assumed there had been a drop in the number of botters, as I would regularly see giant batches of herbs, competing against each other. Then suddenly I'd see a total of 2 stacks of Lich Bloom, for 2 days!
I've seen a few start up again, one at a time, dumping enormous amouts of herbs at cut rates. Should I be buying these up still? Or leave them be? I normally wouldn't have thought twice, but your comments about the current market disappearing with the next expansion are haunting me.
John writes:
First off, I'd recommend that you evaluate your logic about whether this is one person. Put all the suspected alts on your friends list and really watch to see if only one of them are ever on, and whether they're really camping, or just logging in every hour. Secondly, AH grinding undercutters are a very hard problem to deal with, no matter whether it's one person, a group or, much less likely, a bot. The way I see it, you have three options: attack their supply, undercut deeply or try to beat them at their game.Recently I have run into a frustrating problem on my server. I have made a good amount of gold with my blacksmithing until recently another player has been undercutting all my blacksmithing auctions by 10 silver. This particular player is constantly online 20 or more hours a day on his numerous level 1 characters. He/She/It quickly undercuts any blacksmithing item within 5 minutes of posting. I have complained to Blizzard and due to privacy reasons they could only tell me that they will investigate. Well that was about 2 weeks ago and still the same things.
How do you deal with people like this who basically monopolize a whole trade skill market? I even purchased the remote auction house to keep tabs on my auctions no one but him can keep the lowest buyout at anytime of the day for any longer than maybe an hour.
If you attack their supply, bear in mind that you're going to raise your own cost at the same time as theirs. In order for your buying to have any effect on their cost, you need their direct sale farmers learn that they can get a better price on the open market than they can from your competitor. This is a very risky, very expensive, and usually unprofitable plan. A much less risky, but less effective plan would be to sell your items at or close to your cost for a few weeks, or until this person gets tired of watching a screen for 12 hours a day to break even. Lastly, if you try to beat them at their own game by logging in every hour to undercut them, you need to know their schedule. If they always log in at the same interval, you'll get a good market coverage by logging in almost as frequently, but just after they log off. This can't be maintained by any reasonable person for too long, though.
Sogo writes:
My question is, do you think the Christmas pets are going to be valuable in Cataclysm? I had a run where I set the price at 50G a piece and people kept undercutting me, so I just bought all the competition that was listed, I now have close to a hundred of each of the four Christmas pets, I really didn't think there would be that many out there when I started buying them up, considering they are only available once a year and this was in may. What's my best bet for unloading them? Or would you just wait? I'm a little nervous that Cataclysm may not be out before Christmas, and I'll end up losing out.This is the problem with trying to monopolize a market. You can contribute to demand and try to be a long term market-maker, but you can't force the natural balance of supply and demand in the direction you want. The classic monopoly scheme is to buy everything under a certain cost, and ensure that you're always the cheapest option. The two problems with doing this are:
- If you're selling the product for more than the old price, there'll be less demand. Especially on vanity items.
- As the raw producers of your goods discover that you're paying a premium and buying out all stock at the old price, the supply goes up. If it's easily farmable, they'll farm more, and if it's not (like in your situation), they'll still tell their friends and guildies, who will list their items if they have them.
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped, plus the author's Call to Auction podcast. Do you have questions about selling, reselling and building your financial empire on the auction house? Basil is now taking questions for a special series, "Ask an auctioneer," at basil@wow.com. Filed under: Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Iratio Jul 28th 2010 11:21AM
What a wonderful demonstration of how you cannot set the price that customers will pay, even as a monopoly. Its a total myth that monopolies get to charge whatever price they want if left alone.
In TBC I played the shard market (whatever the lvl 70 dream shard equiv. is/was). There was, probably still is, one major player. I played at least a little every night, and would look for blues selling below shard market price to DE once to three times an evening, plus farm heroics. Then I would always undercut by 1g so long as I made at least 1g per. If I couldn't do that, I'd just wait a night or two. Anyhow, usually I sold 2-4 to a random player, and the rest would be bought out by the major player. Now for the point: the only way I figure that could work out for him is that *most* of the time, he was the sole AH seller, so even though he sold some of his inventory at a slim margin (the stuff he bought up from myself and others like me), he was always making gold - and surely he was often able to sell from his high margin stock (his own farmed heroics).
One more observation of this major player: He would be in trade channel from time to time offering to buy shards. I figure there was enough folks with excess shards that couldn't be bothered playing the AH that it payed to spend some time seeking them out in trade channel.
Claire Jul 29th 2010 7:22AM
The power a monopoly has is limited by the elasticity of the market. That is, the intensity with which people need what the monopoly is offering. Vanity pets? No good. Not many people are burning up inside for a Winter's Helper. Even with enchanting mats or gems, there's a ceiling, a point at which most people will shrug and choose not to enchant or gem their items. A real-world monopoly on gas or electricity or computer operating systems, on the other hand ...
Mandelion Jul 28th 2010 12:08PM
In some cases, the *bar* prices may trump the price of ore and even the value of prospecting. Just something to think about!
Neirin Jul 28th 2010 2:56PM
I have my auctioneer snatch list set up to grab any ore below the vendor point for their bars. There was one day where I bought almost 1k worth of ore from a guy listing saronite at 8g a stack.
Avrus Jul 28th 2010 12:28PM
Re: the blacksmithing.
On my server when someone starts to get "cute" with enchanting mats, I just punish them. It's a free market so you can just undercut them into the dirt until they go away. At the point where they realize you're willing to take a loss on each and every stack they start to place nice and then everyone can win.
Market collusion ftw.
vazhkatsi Jul 28th 2010 12:38PM
posting dust for less than one silver is now a very very stupid idea. in the last patch blizz finally introduced a minimum deposit on ALL items including enchanting mats of 1 silver. so if you post individual dusts, you are paying for the privilege of losing money.
Ura Hero Jul 28th 2010 2:23PM
I did the undercutting and material buyout bit on my server for a while. It didn't take long before I had my guild bank and my personal bank stuffed to the gills with raw mats.
It took me over a month to move all of the mats back onto the market as crafted materials. I have to say it wasn't worth it except for the pleasure of running the gold farmers out of that particular market segment. I ended up making enough money to recoup my investment at about 10x profit over my initial investment.
Now if I could only do that in real life...
chris Jul 28th 2010 12:29PM
Hey basil I'm supriaed you never mention it but auctionlite let's u mass bid. It's also easier for me to use then auctioneer.
Rob Jul 28th 2010 1:23PM
Regarding the blacksmith, I had a few guys who were regular campers and sold glpyhs. One of them would set with the AH window open for hours, just sitting there, waiting for people so he could undercut him. There wasn't much I could do about it, so I focused on other areas until this guy got bored enough to stop camping out all the freaking time. Most people don't super focus on the AH for any long period of time, they usually get gold up to their gold then go do something else.
So basically just wait it out. It is not worth playing the AH camper game for people who likely have nothing else better to do.
spamofchaz Jul 28th 2010 2:34PM
Is there a way to see how many auctions of a specific item I have posted at a given time? For example I'd love to know that I have 300 copper bars for sale in 25 different auctions so I can judge if I need to put more up for sale or if I can hold off and reduce the amount of expired auctions I have.
Auctioneer has their Auctions tab which shows each auction separately, but it doesn't give the summary type of information I'd like and it's very easy to lose track if you try to create this manually and have to scroll through hundreds of auctions looking for 3-4 entries here, 8-10 there etc.
icepyro Jul 28th 2010 6:16PM
With auctioneer, in the Appraiser tab, if you highlight Copper Bar, it will say in a side window what it is set up to sell at as well as what you already have on the market.
Another protip is to set up the appraiser with a set number of stacks and checking the "only" checkbox. Then it will sell until you have that many stacks on the market when you click post (or batch post if you set that up). I do this for most stuff so I don't flood when I get a lot of stock and not have to worry about whether it's time to sell more or less.
Also, while this isn't its only intended purpose, Altoholic keeps up with AH and puts that in the tooltips. So in your example, open the AH window so addons can see your auctions. Mouse over a copper bar and you will see a tooltip like:
Minerjoe 587 (bags: 287, AH:300)
spamofchaz Jul 29th 2010 3:41PM
Great stuff, thanks!
Keith Jul 28th 2010 2:41PM
Learn the market on your server, and find a niche. I know I can sell glyphs of swiftmend for 45g on my server. I buy out my competition or undercut them, depending on volume/price. I've sold hundreds of the things. On the other hand, I've tried this with other glyphs and have just been undercut repeatedly. So, know your market - it's a lot more fun making 20-40g on lowish volume than constantly listing/relisting to make 2g per on higher volume.
(I also used to make thousands on vellums, but now someone else has gotten into the market so I've started looking for new niches)
Pyromelter Jul 28th 2010 3:05PM
I heartily agree. I've been selling spellweave and spellthread at ridiculous profits for many months now. Not anywhere near gold capped, but i'm finally coming up on 6 figures across all toons.
Bronwyn Jul 28th 2010 8:58PM
I just want to add- constantly be searching for little things, too. Get to know the economy- learn the value of things. For example, on my server, every time I log on I search the AH for the Robes of Arcana recipe. if I see one for 20 gold (cheap, I never buy one for more than 50), i buy it and relist it at 200g and sometimes I have to list it a couple times but it will sell. This is not a way to make oodles of gold fast, obviously, but little things like that add up.
As for consistent things, Ebonweave is a big one on my server; if I see it drop to 20g or so I will buy it all and relist at a higher price, no less than 40g and I've sold it for as much as 80. If the price goes really high I check the price on materials and if they're good enough I have my tailor make a bunch.
Surprisingly enough I'm also nearly the sole supplier of relentless earthsiege diamonds on my server- you'd think more people would make them, but evidently not. Anyway, if you have time every day, just spend some time to browse around and in a couple weeks you should have a pretty good idea of what your server economy is like.
Pyromelter Jul 28th 2010 2:43PM
He may have suspected that it was a bot. My initial reaction was the same as yours, but botting the AH can make it very frustrating. Also, if he was crafting epics, that is a very low-volume market, people are still going to buy the lower priced item even if it is just 1 copper. It can really hurt the bottom line when you can't sell anything if someone else is constantly undercutting you time and time again in a low-volume market.