The reason why is that you set a relationship where your suppliers can just COD you stacks of whatever at a fixed price whenever they have them without having to worry about market or the AH. While it isn't an insane amount of effort to deal with the AH some people just don't like it or aren't very good at it and it's easier for them to just dump it in the mailbox and not deal with it anymore. Ultimately they're paying a price for convenience, which people do all the time and is a perfectly viable strategy.

When dealing with friends the main thing is to not pull the rug out from under them unexpectedly. As long as it's a long term relationship with fairly stable prices everyone can benefit and not get any hard feelings.

The problem however occurs when they are keeping a close eye on the market themselves, and only send you stacks of ore on the days where your agreed prices is higher than the AH one. What do you do then, eat shit waffles or do you honor your agreement? You can't really call them out on it unless they are doing it so often and so obvious that they cannot retaliate with "I only mined that day!".

A lot of my friends do this with me for one or more of the following reasons:

1) They don't enjoy auction-housing.
2) They don't like to wait. They farm something and want to see the results now.
3) They know that because I know the market trends and when prices go up and down better than them, and as such I have the confidence to maximize the amount of gold I can get from an item.

I offer them lowest AH value minus 10% and most of the time it's a win/win deal.

It amazes how many people are like this. I know so many that are always short on gold and complain about it, and I tell them the value in using the AH smartly and they are just unwilling to try.

Playing the AH is like its own economics mini-game and its a ton of fun.


News of 3.08 seems to be widespread enough now that essence prices are falling. Seems like many markets have started to adjust for the patch. Eternal Earth JC recipe is now too small of a margin to be worth doing.

Or maybe it's this thread. And this thread can potentially be dangerous tool. I noticed the same day someone revealed the Eternal Belt Buckles profit margins (300-400% on Dragonblight) the margins dropped. Okay, we all expected that to happen. BUT the more scary/dangerous thing (imo) is the fact Eternal Water doubled and almost tripled in price. Saronite ore went up in value 50%. Eternal Shadow doubled in price. Eternal Earth did too.

I refuse to believe it was anything but this thread. The dangerous part about such; even mentioning Eternal Earth JC recipes on this thread can spike a huge demand of Eternal Earth. Someone could, in theory, stock up on Eternal Earth very cheap, mention such a "trick" and then sell Eternal Earth at much higher prices... (It so happens I am sitting on 78 Eternal Earths I paid ~4g (give or take 20s or so, both ways) for.)

I don't think people fully understand the power of this thread... and that's not even including the ability/weakness to manipulation.

I did actually post a warning to everyone at the start of the thread stating just how powerful this thread was likely to become, and how much it can (and did in the case of the previous thread) affect markets on various servers so people should think before posting. Unfortunatly it was deemed that my post was me trying to 'protect my secrets' and seems to have been deleted. (Edit: Re-reading the post, it may have been a bit terratorial, probably deserved the deleting)

However, with a bit of thought, and careful monitoring of the thread, you can actually abuse this to make some quick cash. Generally the market swings past the point you'd expect based off the info in this thread. So for example when the enchanting mats change was posted on this thread, the price of enchanting mats on my server dropped to 60% of previous as everyone tried to shift their stock. Knowing that I'd likely make at least my gold back on this, I bought up around 5k gold worth of mats, and as the market has now come back up to 85-90% of its previous values have made a few easy gold off of it.


In this instance what you do is make sure you have agreed a price with them that is lower than the market average as you're a guarenteed buyer it shouldnt be too haard to agree on. That way, regardless of what price the ore is on AH for that day, you'll still be getting it cheaper (on average) than you would normally. Ok, they make more gold out of it too, but thats not really a problem for you, as long as you're making your money as well.

Convenience is not a static value. I agree that for a perfectly rational pair of players motivated solely by profit you would be correct. However in the actual game world you absolutely can find people willing to unload items onto you for a decent amount below the actual market average. Not only that, but the people who are willing to do this are very often those for whom convenience is such a powerful motivation that they won't even check the AH or trade channel to see if they're losing money on the deal, they're just happy to get the items out of their inventory so they can go get more of them. This is especially true of real farmers, who are trying to meet quotas or what have you, but it is also certainly true of many real players as well. I've been in agreements in vanilla for Runecloth and TBC for Netherweave, and other shorter agreements for various other items with a wide variety of people.

Now, is the theoretical seller in this situation being unwise himself? If you only consider profit, yes absolutely. However, by giving them a CoD outlet you are saving them the time to check the AH, list the item, risk having to relist it later after picking it up from their mailbox, check the AH while the item is up to see if they've been too drastically undercut, etc. For some people that convenience of having a guaranteed buyer is worth the loss in profit. Judge that person however you like. However in the mini-scenario that Tel stipulated where you have a seller who is also checking the AH all the time and losing all the convenience you would be offering in the first place, then you would almost never be able to make any money from the transaction. I don't think that type of seller is the type who would really enter into an agreement with you to offload mats in the first place. If they are, you'll be getting so little from them that you'll end up canceling it anyway. In any case, the phenomenon of buying at a set price from a seller does exist and it is profitable in many cases, simply because many players are motivated much more strongly by immediate gain and convenience than by final profit.

First of all, a more normal price in these situations is probably 35g or even less. You are correct in that the reseller would bu stupid to take only a 5% profit, but the original farmer usually cares a lot less, and could agree on a price maybe as low as 33g or even 30g just for his own convenience.

I would guess that the reseller frequently waits to sell the goods until the prices have risen a bit, up to 45 or at least 43g. This, however, is of course pure speculation on the market and he could just as well buyout ore when it's low and resell it when it's high.

I do think the type of person Tel is talking about, would simply unload their gear at the auction house without a regard for how much they *might* get.

This is the person that drops, say Eternal Life, for 15g when everyone else is selling it for 25g, just because they know it'll sell then and they don't want to risk having to put it in AH again for another deposit fee. Offer them the 15g they'd be getting anyway and seem to be happy with and -you- make the 10g profit, they skip the AH hassle and don't have to put up with an AH cut + deposit. They'll likely even consider it a win-win situation. Whilst it needn't be from a pure monetary point of view, the fact they've a guaranteed sale and much less hassle makes it that much more interesting to them.

I do seem to recall the previous Moneymaking thread to have a somewhat similar topic, iirc with regards to reselling epic gems.

//edit: Besides, low risk, low profit. But even a low profit is a profit and a constant, no effort profit is nothing to sneeze at.

Yep, thats exactly the sort of person I'm talking about. Often I'll advertise in my guild chat and say 'paying x gold for Ore, just CoD me whatever you get if you want some fast cash'. Within a day or two the people who are farming for a mount/KT ring/whatever have gone and farmed a load of Ore and just sent it to me as they know its a) guarenteed gold, b) easy.

For this type of player, knowing they won't be stuck with a load of ore they can't sell is a lot more important than getting the top notch market price. These are the guys in guild that when directed to this thread by myself to help them make gold said 'Can't be bothered to read it, looks like some dull thread about the AH'. They just don't care about the economy minigame and how to make a profit, they just want to have enough gold to 'play the real game'.

Another point on this front is that even though buying and reselling Ore in particular may not be the best gold making strat, if you are buying Ore under your prospecting price, you are still making money on it in large amounts.

I know that for me a stack of saronite ore when prospected is worth about 55-60g in cut gems. Ok there's a time investment too, but when I can get a stack from the AH for 40-45g, or a guildie/random for 35g I'm still making a killing on it. Same with Eternal earth and Borean Leather. If the AH price of Eternal Earth is 5g and I can make 8-9g (or 10g per stack of leather going to 20g) from crafting and disenchanting, I don't need to make sure that I'm getting a good resell price as long as I'm making a profit I'm also taking that additional supply of materials out of the market and pushing up prices that way too.

Two things. First, they are unlikely to really fall into the category of 'friends' if they do that. Second, why do you care? If it is a reasonable price that you can make gold at, buy it anyway plus everything on the AH up to the price limit you set for yourself. It only becomes an issue if the long term price shifts, not based on daily fluctuations.

Skinning isn't that much fun or profitable in LK. Cobra scales had low drop rates, but they were very farmable and, at least on my server, the competition was farely low. I farmed them in Shadowmoon along with the air elementals for motes of air so even if I was having an unlucky day with the scales I still made a decent chunk of money in primals. There is nothing like this in LK, not to mention eternals don't sell for nearly as much as primals did. The specialty skinning items like Icy Dragonscales and Jormunger scales are pretty easy to come by but they are not worth that much. Arctic Furs are in high demand and sell really well, but the truth is you can't farm them. They drop randomly from any skinned mob. If you do nothing but skin mobs for an hour you are likely to get 1-2 of them, although it is all RNG based.

edit: Also, with arctic furs the droprate seems to be 1% from all mobs no matter the level. So you are just as likely to get them from rhinos in borean tundra as anywhere else.

I've been unable to sell my leather (or chitin, or scales) at values even much lower than what's listed on the AH. I'm one of those players who does not enjoy the AH, and would take a loss for convenience. If I see items on the AH for 40-50g, I'll usually put mine up for 30g. If it doesn't sell, I vendor it.

I got all excited that I had 15 stacks of heavy borean leather in my bank and said stacks were 90g on the AH (also lowest PPU), so I put mine up for 80 and they're close to expiring.

Put them up per 1, 4, 10 etc. Not everyone wants to buy 20 leather.

Maybe I'll give that a try, thank you.

I hate dealing with the AH though. I fall very clearly into the type of person described in the previous ~15 posts. I enjoy going to icecrown or storm peaks and killing mobs for an hour, then vendoring the grays and greens. I do not enjoy using the AH, juggling risk with invisible market forces, etc. I would kill for a person to which I could COD my items for 10% below market value.

I'm no great AH player myself, but I do use it as much as I can. One thing I've definitely learned is that taking one sample of AH prices is never enough to give a clear impression. You should definitely watch prices over a few days and even over a couple weeks to know what the true market value of something is. Auctioneer can help you do this, but it's not perfect.

Just because the prices of leather when you checked was 90G/stack does not mean that is the true value. Often, the lower-priced leather has probably already been bought out and you're just looking at the stuff that doesn't sell.

auctioneer handles that as long as you scan often enough. It will see items that were up with 12H or 48H and ended before their time was up and assume a buyout.

If you can't find a x% person, do what I do: devote a bag or portion of your main bank to things you intend to AH but don't want to take time to. I also use a specified part of my on-person bag space for items going to that section of my bank for ease. When the time comes [extra time during weekend play, a good time on Friday, or your allotted storage can't take more], go the AH, search the item, and split it into a stack number at a reasonable price. It's fairly little time, doesn't involve playing, and resigns yourself to whatever the current state of the market is.

Assuming you are feeling particularly hateful towards the AH, pick a random stack size or just max stack size and do the same, pricing just under current low. Emphasis on JUST UNDER. Undercutting by 5 silver is often as good as 5 gold, and multiple insane undercuts kills a market and hence your own profit margin, which so many undercutters seem to forget.

Easier than this is to have an alt parked near an AH in a big city and just mail him the stuff you want to auction. That way it's less of a hassle to get to the AH, and less of a hassle to get stuff to/from your bank. Also gives you a better idea of your profits, especially if that toon does nothing else.

Could this be used to inflate frequent auctioneerscanners numbers on items not costing a deposit fee. (shards,crystals,dust)? Put up a massive amount and cancel auctions.

Given that there are a lot more auctioneer users than there are readers of this thread I am curious if there are ways to heavily influence the numbers given a specific addon. If for nothing else to protect myself from being fooled.

I know that it has been stated repeatedly that the best way to "make the goldz" is to know the market and if you know it then your addon won't get the best of you.
But considering I'm reading this thread (along with lot of you folks) I might be prone to taking shortcuts or trying to get in on the action of "get rich quick ideas" myself.

Am I being paranoid? Or do you have tales or tricks to share?

In the old days the listing of a single stack at silly prices sometimes gave odd numbers from my addon but back then it was just a phising expedition where people preyed on missclickers.
(and boy are there missclickers, in all aspects, do no know how often this paladin I played with have BoPped my tank)
But the more mature/modern bankaddons all seem to be less prone to getting fooled. Unfortunatly I do not have the knowlegde on all the finer points of my addon to know exactly how it treats all the data. Half the functions are cumbersome or uninteresting for me. I like it as a helpful tool, not a complete stockmarket system.

There are a few people that take advantage of auctioneer(mod) users in this way. They create their own markets, by overpricing inconspicuous materials over a long period of time. You can either cancel the auctions, or get a friend/alternative account to buy them out, so it looks like they are going like hotcackes on people's auctioneer tooltips.

Just for the record, I don't do this

I noticed a post this morning on MMO-C about changes in Enchanting materials for higher end enchants - in particular that [Dream Shard] are finally getting used on more enchanting recipes. It seemed like quite an anomaly for them to be so underwhelming in value previously (with almost the only use being to buy high level recipes). I bought out a number of stacks at ~8g per shard, hopefully they'll turn over a nice little profit a week or two after 3.0.8.