Playing the auction house is an excellent way to make gold in World of Warcraft. However, if you want to make decent amounts of gold this way, you should learn a thing or two about the auction house in WoW, what’s worth to buy and re-auction, and most importantly, to learn from the mistakes of other players.
In this post I’m going to cover exactly that: 5 of the most common mistakes when playing the auction house in WoW. So, here they are:
Not buying when prices are insanely cheap
Sometimes players auction materials, gear, potions, flasks, consumables etc, much less under their average value, because they are unaware of their real value, because they want to actually help leveling players or simply because they want to get rid of them. If you want to be a true auction house player, you should never let pass such an opportunity, when you come across it, especially if you have plenty of gold to invest.
I’m going to give an example here. Gathering Goldthorn is not quite easy nowadays, because Scarlet Monastery was changed, and most players used to farm it there. It doesn’t grow in SM anymore, and within the areas it can be found, like Hinterlands, Desolace or Arathi Highlands, the Goldthorn nodes are quite rare. Therefore, a stack is about 300-350g nowadays, or at least highly priced on most servers.
Some guy auctioned 23 stacks for 50g each stack, a few days ago. Bought them all, and managed to sell them all during the next 4 days for 300g each stack. 23 x 250g (profit) = 5750g clean profit (minus the AH fee, of course).
Undercutting on items close to their auction expiration
Especially if you want to sell a rather expensive piece of armor, a recipe or anything rare, and there’s only one similar item at the auction house, it’s always best to wait until the auction is over, before undercutting it. That of course, if there’s less than a couple of hours, or less than an hour until that particular auction expires. Once that particular auction expires, you will have full authority on the price.
The rule applies to any item though. If you want to undercut a guy in AH for certain items, and you see all their auctions are about to expire, instead of undercutting, you should wait.
Listing items incorrectly
Sometimes players list a whole stack of items for the price of one. Evidently, you can take advantage of this mistake, buy all their incorrectly listed items and make profits, or you can message them and tell them about their mistake.
What’s more important though, is for you to not make this mistake as well. Happened to me a couple of times. Once for example I was listing enchantments manually and managed to lose a stack of 7 Mongoose enchants, as someone bought them instantly (might have used an addon though), without me having the possibility to cancel the auction. It all happened in a matter of seconds. So, be careful when listing items, and if you use an addon to do this, make sure its setup is correct.
Listing items without buyout
I see many materials of high volatility, such as Runecloth, or Silk Cloth listed this way. Who the hell wants to wait 2 days before being able to have a stack of Silk, and save maybe 50s? This is not eBay folks, always add a buyout, even for rare and expensive items. Just as time is money for the buyer, it is for you as well.
Never fully rely on addons
Addons like Auctioneer or others, are great programs to play the auction house. But sometimes you can be at disadvantage if relying on an addon, especially if it’s freshly installed or freshly updated. In a particular case like this, it can provide you with erroneous data about the price of a certain class of items, and lead you to invest the wrong amount of gold. Therefore, it’s always best to have at least some idea about the average prices of certain items, and only complement your auction house activity with an addon.
Thanks, great advice!