The Undermine Journal reboots with AH sales profiles
by Basil Berntsen 
Feb 9th 2011 at 5:00PM
This site is an amazing tool for stalking the auction house efficiently when you can't be directly in front of an AH. Combined with the Remote Auction House, this allows people to keep a semi-persistent presence on the market without needing to be in game all day. It's also invaluable for researching new markets and strategizing against your serious competitors. In fact, the only feature people have really voiced a lot of concern about is the seller activity page. The heat map can tell people when it's worth logging in to undercut, which can lead to people feeling like they're being unfairly targeted. The current items section tells interested players what other markets they could target someone in.
The standard response to concerns is that this is all just data, and what people do with it is not the fault of site that makes the data accessible. There is no privacy in an open market, and just like you can hardly be upset if someone puts a photo of a sale sign in your storefront window on the internet, you can't get upset if a site like the UJ makes everything you have for sale available through a public interface.
Personally, I like being able to stalk my competition more than I'm afraid of what they might do by stalking me. After all, there's only one of me and at least 50 of them. Additionally, I like to practice what I preach about market agility, and I like to think that every time a competitor closes a door on me, I can find a new door.
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 taking your questions at basil@wowinsider.com.Filed under: Economy, Time Is Money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sicadastra Feb 9th 2011 5:31PM
Sweet! Now if only Blizz would start playing nice with AH fast scanning addons again...
Basil Berntsen Feb 9th 2011 5:33PM
Try the one in TradeSkill Master- it works for me.
Oriflame Feb 9th 2011 6:09PM
auctioneer is currently working for me. Not as helpful as a solution - as I don't know why it works, but it does.
Brett Porter Feb 9th 2011 7:10PM
I use Auctioneer for posting and AuctionMaster for scanning since it goes much faster. Usually can scan in a couple minutes then give a couple more to collate or staple or whatever it does.
lordkeldarion Feb 9th 2011 5:36PM
OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!
Fade2gray Feb 9th 2011 5:42PM
Woot! It's great having the UJ back!
I did notice a few bugs on the site though. The uncut price for rare greens (shadowsong - aliance) is using the price of the vivid cut throwing the profit estimates WAY off. Also, some of the collor coding for profit/loss on the alchemy page is backwards.
Love the site. Already getting lots of useful data for my future exploits!
Oriflame Feb 9th 2011 6:09PM
Woot! I love the undermine journal.
Blizzard would be smart to keep it going - as its the only reason I have to get the remote ah. :)
Bouncing Gnome Feb 9th 2011 6:22PM
/requests an EU version
Basil Berntsen Feb 9th 2011 7:24PM
You're not the first one, but it represents a serious hurdle for the admins. Don't forget that this site is expensive and historically run at a loss. Donations help, but each 50 realms is a new account, and he had to buy a server to keep the service running.
I suspect it will take Blizzard making the crawlers unneeded (by creating an XML feed of each realm's AH) to get an EU version.
Raginghobo Feb 9th 2011 6:43PM
I'm an econemy nub. What I would like to know is to what purpose people use this information? I'm sure their are more things you can do with it then just knowing when to undercut someone.
Brett Porter Feb 9th 2011 7:12PM
I am by far very amateur with my Auctioneering, but something I noticed when I was playing around with some of the item searches is you can see when the supply/demand usually allows for the greatest profit.
I probably won't ever use this, as again, I'm not an AH PvPer, but I still think it's very neat, and definitely helpful to many folks out there.
Basil Berntsen Feb 9th 2011 7:25PM
The primary purpose is to do research before deciding what to craft for sale. Also, the data can be useful to farmers who want to know when the best time to sell is.
IrrelevantMoralizing Feb 9th 2011 9:13PM
It will let you more easily see patterns that you can then utilize to your benefit. For example, I make my money (slowly) by snapping up Volatile Life on the weekends and then selling it as transmuted air on the weekdays. It took a few weeks but I noticed the price of VA going for ~14 gold each on Friday and Saturday and ~22-24 gold each on weekdays. Since volatile life follows the same pattern due to weekend players flooding the market, I now know when to buy and when to sell. Websites like this make it so it takes a few minutes to confirm patterns like that, not a few weeks.
Elwoods Feb 9th 2011 7:32PM
Do you think this will ever make its way to Europeen realms?