Most of the World of Warcraft players are currently busy with their raids and PVP at higher levels; only a few will take the time to venture back into the old Azeroth to re experience the intense moments of original warcraft. This is absolutely understandable as the old continent does not have much to offer to the high leveled players. The only reason you would return is to level another character, help another player, or you may just go around and gank towns and cities of the opposite faction. However, there is one reason that you should go back to the old world that you have left behind; to make gold.

There are numerous gold making techniques nowadays; these range from farming eternals in Northrend to using professions to gain gold. Most of the strategies require farming, but a lot of these strategies are populated with other people using it as well. Even the buy-low sell-high strategy is not as effective as it used to be because of the mass amount of people using the strategy. Although these methods are populated, there is still one strategy that is not used my most people.

The strategy that can yield you a decent amount of profit is by farming and getting items from Pre-BC and BC times. These include cloth items, ores and herbs from original World of Warcraft, etc. These items sell well because there are always people looking to power level their profession. When they see that you are the only provider, they have no choice but to purchase from you. They understand that it will be extremely hard to find another buyer, so they have no choice but to purchase whatever they are provided with. In addition, these powerlevelers have a lot of money because most people do not dare to level their professions super fast without gold because they realize that it is going to cost them quite a lot.

The reason behind the ridiculous pricing is that no one is farming or gathering old materials from the original Warcraft continents anymore. There are not that many people leveling there, so the demand will never be met to the fullest. If you have ever tried to power level some of the professions in the past, you will realize that the cost for these materials is ridiculous. Also, if you have played since Pre-BC or even BC, you will realize that these prices have gone up at a ridiculous rate.

There are numerous original Warcraft materials that have soared up in price. Here is a few examples from my realm, but it is imperative that you check the auction house pricing for your realm to see which one sells the best.

Copper ore – These things went for less than one gold per stack in BC and Pre-BC, but they are currently selling at an average of 30g/stack. The great thing is that these are ridiculously easy to farm.

Wool Cloth – these wool cloths went for 50silver originally, but they currently sell for 20g/stack.

All the other cloth items sell very well. This is because they are rarely farmed or sold anymore. The only cloth I would recommend not farming is linen cloth. Lots of low levels have access to them, so these are not farmed as much.

The ores also sell very well, so you may want to think about using them. The silver ores sell for about 10g/each. That means you can get around 200g/stack. Believe it or not, these sell very well because of the demand with no competition.

Some fun ways to farm materials such as cloth is by farming them through instances. Running Zul Farrak multiple times will help you stack up with mageweave cloth as well as Flask of Mojo. Flask of Mojo will sell anywhere from 80g-120g per stack, and the mageweave will sell around 20g/stack. If you have a nice 80 and enjoy farming, you will definitely have fun doing it while making gold. You can also be generous and run a low level through the instance for free, but ask them to collect all the items and give them to you at the end in return. There are numerous ways to get creative and make money using the old Warcraft land.

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I promised more Alchemy and Herbalism tips after last week so let’s jump right into it with five more pieces of advice.

1. You’ll find that certain areas and herbs are consistently good for Alchemy and Herbalism.  The Swamp of Sorrows is particularly good for collecting herbs – it’s a relatively small zone, with a large quantity of herb spawn-points, and generally has a very low population.  Ghost Mushrooms from the caves in the Hinterlands also offer a great opportunity to earn gold.  Pick those whenever possible.
2. Watch for non-alchemy herbs like Deadnettle which are found along with other herbs.  You won’t be able to use these yourself, but they sell really well on AH for inscriptions, rogue-poisons, etc.  Most herbs seem to have a use for some type of profession.  When you come across a new one, check it out on the Auction House.
3. Once you’re maxed out on Alchemy and Herbalism, you have some great opportunities to start making serious gold.  Transmuting Skyflare Diamonds and Earthsiege Diamonds are a great way to double your investment (material costs), provided you’re paying attention to the market: buying mats when they’re cheap, and selling Diamonds when they’re high.  Example: If Eternal Fire (the main material for Earthsiege) is selling for 30g, but Earthsiege Diamonds are selling for 25g, it’s a bad time to be in the Earthsiege Diamond business.  If you can buy Eternal Fire at 20g, and sell Earthsiege at 40 – 45g, you’re making bank.
4. Watch for sellers who post their Earthsiege Diamonds (or any other item) significantly below the going prices.  You might find that someone posts 5 Earthsiege Diamonds for 19g each.  Next after him though, the price is 45g each.  (I see this more than I’d ever imagine.)  Although a bit of a gamble, it’s a sound strategy to purchase all 5 of the cheap diamonds (costing you 95g total) and immediately repost them for 44g 99s.  If they sell, you’ll have 224g 95s – a profit of 129g 95s.  If you end up having to sell them cheaply, you should at worst get your money back – and you’re still better off than buying the Eternal Fire when it costs more than the Diamond you’re wanting to make.
5. Frost Lotus is a much-coveted herb and generally sells for around 20 – 25 gold in the AH.  But instead of posting the Frost Lotus that you find, I recommend checking the AH cost on Flask of the Frost Wyrm first.  A single Flask often sells for about the same – 20 to 25 gold.  Frost Lotus is the “main” material for it (being the most expensive), and one batch of materials is good for 2 Flasks.  Since you’ll benefit directly from using that potion (assuming you’re an awesome warlock like me), you may decide to either keep the Flasks or go with a “keep 1, sell 1″ strategy.  If I don’t have much gold to spare but need the Flasks, I’ll buy several Frost Lotus, along with whatever other mats I need, and brew up the Flasks.  Then I’ll keep half of the Flasks and put the rest on AH… generally making enough gold to come close to covering my material costs.  Free flasks, basically!

Wrapping Things Up

A last bit of advice: never undersell your items.  If an item is selling for 20 gold, and you want to sell your item fast, do NOT price it at 15 gold.  Price it at 19g 99s.  You’ll still sell your item first.  In fact, you don’t even have to be cheaper on the buyout price – you can match the current buyout price, but be cheaper on the bid price and still be ranked “cheapest”.  So if at item has a bid price of 19g and a buyout of 20g, if you price yours at 18g 99s bid, and 20g buyout, you’re listed as cheapest, and you will sell your item first, and enjoy the added flavor of feeling like an auction ninja.

Ultimately, the bottom line is buy low and sell high.  Pretty obvious, I know.  But with AH prices swinging wildly from one day to the next, it’s worth restating.  I’ve sold Earthsiege Diamonds for 45g one day, and the next day the price was down to 18g.  So pay attention to your costs.

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It’s time to turn those Alchemy and Herbalism professions to the task of earning some WoW Gold. This is some straight-up, useable advice on how to keep some decent gold coming in consistently without stopping your normal game-play to farm materials for endless hours. You should be able to quest or group as you normally do and always have some auctions running that bring you decent gold, no matter what level you are.

At the lowest levels, farming is the obvious start to obtaining gold. Getting stacks of 20 can start earning you decent cash in AH, but since the promise here is to earn gold without endless, mind-numbing farming, let’s look at some other ways:

1. Develop a strong case of A.D.D.: While questing, stop to pick any plant that can be harvested. “Hey, there’s that boss I need to kill! Oooo wait, pretty flowers!” You’ll find that you acquire a good amount of herbs quickly this way, and it’s not so painful as running around solely looking for herbs.
2. Fairly quickly, you’ll be able to pick Bruiseweed and Briarthorn, as with those materials you can make Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir. The Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir is pretty much worthless to you as a potion, but fortunately, it is a quest item. And there are plenty of low-level alts with gold to spend, so this is one of your first real opportunities to start earning gold. You can make Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir and sell them in single units for 2 – 4 gold each, depending on the market in your Auction House.
   These sell fairly quickly and consistently. Just keep an eye on the market, and do NOT sell them in stacks. People only need 1 for their quest. If they decide they actually want to drink the things, well, they can buy multiple auctions.
3. Pay attention to the cost of materials vs. created items. Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir is fairly hard on materials, requiring 2 of each herb to create (4 total herbs + bottle). You may periodically find that the materials themselves can bring you more gold than the Elixirs will give you. If so, sell the materials directly (obviously) – and skip on creating Elixirs. By keeping an eye on cost materials vs. the created items, you’ll be maximizing your gold-earning potential. Keep this in mind always, as we’ll see in a minute when discussing transmuting diamonds for fun and profit.
4. As you begin to advance in levels, you should be able to keep your Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir business going without having to farm materials. You’ll reach a point where it’s cost-efficient to just buy the mats and make your Elixirs. I used to always keep 4 or 5 Elixirs on AH at any given time, provided the market price was holding up.
5. As you gain the ability to harvest new herbs, always do 3 things: 1) Check the going AH rate for stacks of those new herbs. 2) learn what potions can be made, and check the going AH rate for those potions. 3) find out what those mysterious additional herbs are used for, and what they’re worth. This keeps you in the know on where you can make the most gold.

More Tips Next Week

Next week I will have five more great tips for earning gold with Alchemy and Herbalism.

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Welcome to the 10th issue of the Alterac Volley Newsletter. We haven’t quite maintained the weekly schedule I intended when I started this whole thing so I apologize for that. I’ll try to do better moving forward.

This week I want to talk about turning your PvP habit into a gold making venture. A lot of players, full of gear and boredom from raiding, have turned to PvP as a way to keep the WoW spark alive in their lives. I have two characters who are both constantly flirting with the 75,000 Honor cap each week as they do Battleground and Wintergrasp quests. So I thought I’d tell everyone what I do with all of that Honor since if you don’t spend it on something it will eventually just go to waste.

There are two items, both of them gems, that you can buy with Honor Points and Stone Keeper’s Shards. They both are pretty hot sellers on my server currently and a great way to stay away from the Honor cap and find a use for stockpiled amounts of Shards.

Scarlet Ruby

I’m not sure how many players other than Jewelcrafters know this, but in the same room of NPC vendors that have all of the PvP gear for sale, is a Jewelcrafting vendor as well. And, for 10,000 Honor, they will sell you a Scarlet Ruby. On my server, I can turn a Ruby around in under 24 hours for anywhere between 50 and 75 gold each.

This is a great way to constantly stay below the Honor cap if you have nothing to spend the points on. My Priest has full Hateful Gladiator sets for Shadow and Holy so every point of Honor he earns goes right into Scarlet Rubies.

Kharmaa’s Grace

The quartermaster in Wintergrasp will sell you a single Kharmaa’s Grace for only 20 Stone Keeper’s Shards. This is, at the moment, the gem with the highest Resilience stat in the game so it’s a very good seller. Kharmaa’s Grace, like the Scarlet Ruby, also sells for between 50 and 75 gold on my server at the moment.

The easiest way to get Stone Keeper’s Shards is to finish the Wintergrasp quests each week. You can also get them by running Heroics when your side is in control of Wintergrasp but the Horde on Greymane-US is so miserable at Wintergrasp that this scenario is rare for me.

Weekly PvP Profit

Thanks to our old friend Wintergrasp there is ample opportunity each week to rack up large amounts of Honor and Shards. Between my two characters, with Wintergrasp weekly quests alone, I can generate 100 Shards and about 50,000 Honor. That’s a nice supply of gems each week for me to sell.

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Retiring

With this 60,000 gold landmark I’m officially retiring from the gold earning rat race. I’m at the point now where I can max out the professions on all my characters, buy enough gear for them all and buy all the mounts and pets I can want.

There just isn’t much point in continuing to save. Even though I consider gold my own personal scoreboard I feel like I’ve reached the peak of what I needed to prove to myself that I’m capable of consistently earning gold.

Moving On

Even though I’m done focusing 100% of my attention on earning gold, I’m going to still continue with the Auction House newsletter. In the next few days I’ll send out a new email with some tips on how I’m turning my love for PvP into a money making effort.

Aside from the newsletter, I’ve got some other exciting ideas in mind as I try and shift my focus from in-game gold earning to things like this blog and maybe even some PUG Checker upgrades.

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Most players have given up and moved on from the older content since the release of Wrath of the Lich King. What those players probably don’t realize is that the Burning Crusade still has some opportunities for anyone looking to make some gold. Outland has several items that I’ll go over in this week’s newsletter that are easy to obtain and sell well.

Primal Air

It turns out that Primal Air is still in demand on my server. At the moment, one Primal Air can sell for anywhere between 25 and 30 gold each. The easiest way to get the ten Motes of Air you need to make one Primal is to visit the area just above the Throne of the Elements in Nagrand. You’ll need a flying mount to reach this spot but once you arrive you will come upon plenty of Storming Wind-Rippers that will drop Motes with semi-regularity. If you’re level 80 you’ll find yourself killing them faster than they can spawn but there are other elementals in the area to keep you busy while you wait.

Primal Airs are still in demand because they are a reagant for over 60 profession items, many of which are used in the process of profession leveling. When someone is power-leveling a profession the odds of them being willing to go out and farm an item like Primal Air is very low so the demand for them on the Auction House naturally rises.

Sanguine Hibiscus

My personal favorite item in the Burning Crusade is without a doubt the Sanguine Hibiscus found in the Underbog instance. A well-geared level 80 player can enter the Underbog, gather up all of the Hibiscus they can find, and then leave the instance to reset it and go back in for another round in less than 10 minutes if they know a basic tip.

If you clear the instance from the entrance up to the bridge to the Naga portion of the zone and then turn around and leave you can get dozens of Hibiscus each trip. Going farther than that bridge will waste too much time as much of the remaining part of the instance has few Hibiscus spawning points.

On my server, the Hibiscus typically sell for around 5 gold a piece. They are used as an easy way to level up reputation with the Sporeggar, a requirement for some achievements in the game, so demand is usually pretty good.

Keep Visiting Old World Content

Aside from the two I mentioned today, there are plenty of other farmable items in both the Burning Crusade and Classic game that you should look into gathering and selling. People will always have alts and be learning new professions so the demand for profession materials will always exist.

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Infinite Dust is usually the biggest mover on any given server. It’s always in constant demand thanks to its use as a requirement in over 60 different crafted items and enchantments in Wrath. With an average buyout price hovering around 5 gold per dust there’s some money to be made if you know how to go about getting your own Infinite Dust on the cheap.

This week’s newsletter will be a quick one as I offer up a simple way to, with the help of your friends or your own professional skills, produce an item that you can easily build and disenchant into Infinite Dust without the need to grind for quest items or buy high priced blue and green gear on the Auction House.

The Secret Is Cobalt

For eight Cobalt Bars you, or your Blacksmith friend, can craft a Horned Cobalt Helm that when disenchanted produces between one and five Infinite Dusts approximately 75% of the time. The trick to making this work is to obviously build the Helm for as cheap as you possibly can.

On my server, the typical Cobalt Bar goes for 1.5 to 2 gold. The ore, on the other hand, usually floats in the 1 to 1.5 gold range. Of course, if you can mine it yourself then you can build these Helms for no cost.

But if mining isn’t an option… Since it only takes one piece of ore to create one bar it makes logical sense to buy the ore and have your Blacksmith buddy, who is going to be making the Helm for you anyway, smelt the ore into bars first. If you can build the Helm for anywhere under 10 gold and you can get lucky with a 5 Dust disenchant you can turn a decent profit by selling to Dust for around 25 gold.

There Are No Guarantees

Of course, the problem with disenchanting is that you never quite know what you’ll end up with. You aren’t guaranteed five Dusts, or any Dust at all, for each Helm. If the price of Infinite Dust makes the margins of this idea too thin you might be better off waiting for the price of the Dust to rise before giving it a try.

But if the price of Infinite Dust is well above the 5 gold average on your own server than you most definitely want to look into turning low cost Cobalt Ore into high priced Infinite Dust the next time you play.

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I made a big push in the last few days to get the final 1,500 gold or so I needed to break 50,000. The Midsummer Fire Festival across two level 80 characters really helped get me over the top. I basically fire hopped from town to town on each character while I waited for my usual Auction House items to sell.

My big sellers for the final push were my old reliable items: Eternal Belt Buckles, Northern Spices and Northrend Fish. I’m also dabbling in selling the Kharmaa’s Grace gem that I’m picking up with spare Stone Keeper’s Shards.

Next Up

Sixty thousand, of course. I was originally all set to spend a huge amount of money on new gear for both Nance and Swiit but the upcoming emblem changes in Patch 3.2 have put the kill shot to that plan. There’s no reason to blow my pile of gold on gear I can replace for free.

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Fishing. In the World of Warcraft, the act of fishing was apparently designed to be the most miserable and sadistic act in a video game ever. It’s horrifyingly boring and monotonous. How anyone could derive enjoyment from this act is simply beyond the scope of my brain’s mental capacity.

Now let me tell you why I think you should start fishing every day.

There is gold to be made with fishing. Everyone needs Raid food these days and the best way to cash in on this demand is to help supply the hardcore Raider types with the cooking materials necessary to make the foods they need each week.

The Best Selling Fish

There are only four fish I actively seek: Glacial Salmon, Nettlefish, Dragonfin Angelfish and Musselback Sculpin. I find these four to be the fastest selling of all the fish available in the game right now. While you don’t need a maxxed out Fishing skill to catch all of these types of fish I highly recommend you get your Fishing up to 450 and have a decent pole. The time you’ll save and the areas you can fish in will be much improved.

Glacial Salmon
You can get these by the boat load in Wintergrasp. The have a decent drop rate and, on my server, the average selling price per fish hovers somewhere around 1.5 gold. When the supply is low that number can creep up and over 2 gold each.

Nettlefish
While I’m fishing in Wintergrasp for Glacial Salmon I’ll pull up a fair share of Nettlefish as well. I usually cook these into Poached Nettlefish and sell them for about 2 gold each. You can try selling them in uncooked form but I’ve found that they generally take much longer to sell this way, if you can manage to sell them at all.

Dragonfin Angelfish
The Dragonfin Angelfish is probably the most lucrative fish on my server at the moment. You can find pools of them in the south of Dragonblight. You can pretty quickly put together a stack of these fish just hopping from pool to pool. They sell on the Auction House, depending on supply, from anywhere between 2.5 gold each to 3 gold each.

Musselback Sculpin
The great thing about the Sculpin is that you can not only find them in the Borean Tundra but in Wintergrasp as well. These sell on the lower end at about 1.5 gold a piece but the sales come pretty consistently. I would not recommend you fish for these alone but pull them up while you look for other stuff instead.

Bonus Catches
In Wintergrasp, you will pull up a lot of Succulent Clam Meat, Siren’s Tears and Northsea Pearls. You can cook the Clam Meat into Dalaran Clam Chowder that sells for 3 to 4 gold each. Siren’s Tears are on a pretty low drop rate but will earn you a quick 50 gold profit. The Northsea Pearls tend to sell on a rollercoaster of price points on my server but should get you a gold or two for each.

Start Fishing!

If you haven’t maxxed out your Fishing skill yet you might want to start doing a little bit each day. Once you get the ball rolling you’ll find that it doesn’t take long to get the skill up to 450. If you’re looking for a decent fishing pole, I’m partial to the Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole. You can get it for cheap from the Kalu’ak once you reach Exalted with them.

Once you’re geared and skilled up I first suggest you head to Wintergrasp and try your luck there. After an hour or so of straight non-stop fishing action you should have several hundred gold worth of fish to sell.

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I had relatively high hopes for the Argent Tournament. I immediately, like many others, saw the nice opportunity to make excellent gold running the dailies once you reach the Champion level of the quests. But I was also really excited for the opportunity that the new Argent Tournament companion pets, available only by spending 40 Champion Seals, would offer.

Unfortunately, even though it takes eight days of Champion dailies to earn enough Seals to buy a pet, the market for these little guys is still slow on my server. In order to help people move their pets, here are your three options available for selling them:

The Neutral Auction House

Selling the Argent Tournament pets on the Neutral Auction House is probably everyone’s initial reaction to this situation. On the Neutral AH the prices are typically much higher than on the faction Auction Houses because people are normally selling items there that are difficult to acquire for one side or the other.

This is a perfect scenario for these pets then. The problem is that the traffic at the Neutral Auction house is typically miserable. On my server, Greymane-US, the Neutral Auction House typically has under 200 items in total listed at any given time. Most of those tend to be companion pets as well so the market can get flooded easily.

I’d recommend trying the Neutral AH out for a day or two and if things aren’t working out trying my next suggestion.

List On Your Faction’s Auction House

If you can’t get a bite on the Neutral Auction House I suggest you list the pet on your own faction’s Auction House for a day or two and see what happens. Typically, the prices will be lower but since the traffic is so much greater you might have better luck selling your pet there.

Again, if you see no action on your listing after the first day or two it might be time to step things up a notch to finally earn some gold from your Argent Tournament pet you worked so hard for eight days to get.

Trade Your Pet For Another One

This is going to require some coordination and work. In order to swap your faction’s pet for one from the other side you need to advertise on the Trade channel that you’re looking to trade a pet. If you’re lucky, someone with an alt on the other side will be on and offer to make a deal with you.

Making the switch is relatively easy but it just takes time, some coordination and travel. You and your cross-faction trading partner need to meet at a Neutral Auction House. There you both list your pets at the same price and then purchase each other’s item. The trick is to make sure you not only use the same price but at a high enough price to prevent someone from sniping your listing. I usually go for a 2,000 gold bid AND buyout to stop that from happening.

Try Your Auction House Again

Now that you have a pet from the opposing faction you should list it on your Auction House immediately. Argent Tournament pets from the other faction tend to sell much quicker, and at a higher price point, than the ones from your own side. If you can get by the hassle of finding a trading partner to make this happen, it might be your best bet to turn your pet into a 1,500 to 2,500 gold profit.

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This week’s issue is geared more towards raiders and not your casual WoW players. I thought I’d point out a quick way for those of you with excess Emblems of Valor to off some of your useless badges and turn them into a nice bit of profit for yourself.

Valor Bracers

There are two vendors in Dalaran, Arcanist Adurin for the Alliance and Magister Brasael for the Horde, that sell high quality gear for Emblems of Valor. Of course, almost all of these items are Bind on Pickup and are therefore impossible to sell.

The only exception to the Bind on Pickup rule for “Valor Gear” are the Bracers. There are a variety of bracers to choose from depending on your class and they all sell for 60 Emblems each.

If you have extra Emblems of Valor you don’t plan on using now that you’re geared for Ulduar and are running Naxxramas on farm it might be time to think about buying some Bracers to sell to other players.

Selling At Auction

Sometimes you can scan the Auction House for Valor Bracers and find them at varying prices throughout the week. Depending on the supply and demand at any given moment these Bracers usually sell for around 1,500 gold on my server but, as always, your server can and
will be different.

Selling Valor Bracers on the Auction House is rare though because you are hoping that a person of the specific class for the bracers you bought is going to be looking for them. There’s a much better
way to make sure you buy the right type of Bracer for an instant sale though.

Selling On The Trade Channel

I’m sure you’re starting to see people on the Trade Channel offering to sell Valor Bracers. The reason they don’t announce a specific Bracer is that they want to make sure that they buy one
that can sell.

After they announce their offer, and another player whispers them with what they want, they can then run to the vendor and buy that specific Bracer. Then it’s just a matter of completing the deal
with the buyer. It’s a guaranteed sale every time you do it this way. And it’s much faster than waiting and waiting for the right person to come along on the Auction House.

Get Moving

Now that Ulduar is well underway and people are making easier and easier Naxxramas runs it’s probably only a matter of time before the prices on the Bracers starts to plummet. I suggest, if you have the spare Emblems of Valor, that you start taking advantage of this
opportunity now while you can.

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I’ve had a few people contact me via email or on Twitter (@AlteracVolley) and ask me how I know what are the hot commodities currently selling on the Auction House. There are really two ways to do this: one requires time and some dedication and the other is served to you on a silver platter.

Do Your Own Homework

The hard way is to constantly monitor items on the Auction House throughout the week. Watch who is selling things, what they are selling and the price. Keep checking those specific sellers and their listings each day and see if things are selling before their time expires or not. If they seem to be constantly listing and selling an item that might be a market you want to get involved with.

My other tip, as far as doing your research on your own, is to constantly watch the Trade channel (channel #2) while you’re playing the game. Your gut reaction to this advice might be to keep an eye on what people are advertising they have for sale but I’m going to recommend the opposite. You want to watch for what people are offering to BUY on Trade, rather than sell.

People hitting up the Trade channel looking for a seller of an item are doing that for two reasons: first, the item they want is a fast mover and they want to get it before someone else does and second, they want to get their item at a cheaper rate than what they sell for at Auction.

You can keep your finger on the pulse of your own server’s economy by watching the various listings on the Auction House and keeping a close eye on what the buyers are looking for on the Trade channel. Of course, this takes time and effort

Have Your Homework Done For You

Luckily for us, the fine folks at Blizzard have a nice little tool on the official WoW website that gives you daily or weekly breakdowns of all the Auction House sales in the game. You can find Blizzard’s “Most Auctioned Items” Top List at: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/toplist/index.html?en,auctionsold

This site, which can be broken down and searched in a few different ways, can give you relatively current totals for sold listings on the Auction House across all of the servers in the game.

Of course, this list comes with some caveats. Just because something like Silk Cloth is in the Top 10 of all sales doesn’t mean it’s something you want to farm and sell since the average buyout price of a full stack is usually under one gold.

What this list is good for, in all actuality, is to give you a starting place for items you can do your own research into. Things like Infinite Dust, Saronite Ore and Greater Cosmic Essences are great items to watch like a hawk on your Auction House as they’re always on the move and the prices are usually worth the time and effort to farm them.

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I’m taking a quick break this week from the series on working the Auction House with one starting gold. Instead I thought I’d write a bit about my schedule, broken down by day, for how I grind, loot and list things for sale. On my server, and I suspect on many others, there is a selling pattern on the Auction House from day-to-day that you need to be aware of to maximize your returns.

Monday

A lot of people will tell you to avoid listing anything on the Auction House during the late hours of Monday. Their reasoning is that, with maintenance right around the corner on Tuesday morning, anything you list will be sitting idle on the Auction House without any opportunity to be purchased while the server is down.

While I usually stick to this same theory myself I do like to make a quick scan of the Auction House on Monday night and see if any of the usual sellers have low supply. If they do, I’ll try and put a few things up and hope that when the servers come back up the next day my listings will go fast.

Monday nights are full of opportunities for those of you interested in buying low and selling high. You can take the knowledge that the servers will be down to your advantage by making low bids on high selling items with short expiration times. If no one outbids you before the servers go down for maintenance you have a great chance at winning the auction at a steal of a price when the servers are live again.

Tuesday

Maintenance days are pretty tough to work around. It’s always a crapshoot as to just how long the servers will be down and even when they’re up it’s sometimes a slow moving day for the Auction House. I normally sit this day out and use my time to run dailies and farm for materials (Cooking and Fishing, mostly) to start selling throughout the week.

Wednesday – Friday

Wednesday through Friday are your days to really make a big push for gold earning. The server populations are pretty decent but not so high that the Auction House is being flooded by amateurs listing their goods at ten cents on the dollar and effectively destroying entire markets.

The items you’ve been collecting on off days (Tuesdays and, as I mention next, the weekends) should start moving in force at decent prices. You can make your most profit during these three days because the demand for goods is relatively high but the supply is usually low.

Saturday & Sunday

The weekends, like Tuesdays, are days I set aside for grinding and farming materials to sell during the next week. Again, demand for goods is high on the weekends but, unfortunately, the supply is usually ridiculously high. It’s hard to sell anything for a decent profit.

As an example, this past weekend the price of Glacial Salmon was down to 95 silver a piece. According to Auctioneer, the last time I sold Glacial Salmon earlier in the week I was getting 3 gold a piece for them. That’s the kind of effect the weekend tends to have on prices across the board in every market. That’s why I find it best to just sit the rat race out and wait for prices to climb and settle at a higher point.

Your Mileage May Vary

I’m sure there are exceptions to these “rules” for some servers so if you’re unsure how things go set aside a week to just observe how prices on common selling items fluctuate throughout the week. You should be able to identify, fairly quickly, what days are best to sell and what days are best to sit things out on your own server.

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The World of Warcraft economy is closely modeling the current real-world economy ever since the release of the 3.1 patch. Everything is in the tank.

It appears that everyone and their brother was hoarding and stockpiling materials in high hopes of an increase in demand. Unfortunately, all those people have managed to do is flood the market and drive down prices across the board.

My goal now is to try and use this all to my advantage to grow my gold supply. But first I needed a bit more than the 50 gold I had. I scanned the Auction House for poorly priced gems. This is a nice technique to try when you’re looking for something to buy low and sell high. I ended up buying a Jagged Forest Emerald for 10 gold and a Swift Skyfire Diamond for 11 gold. They both sold, after a re-listed them, for 37 gold and 30 gold respectively.

Now that I had some more gold I was able to try and turn the low cost materials situation in my favor.

Taking Advantage of the Down Market

It’s been a long time since crafted items by high-level Blacksmiths, Tailors and other professions were worth the effort to build and sell. As demand for these items shrunk and the cost of the materials to make them settled it became pretty obvious that the profit margins for these high level Bind on Equip pieces of gear wasn’t worth the time.

Well, now that material prices are bottoming out it’s time to revisit the idea of these high level profession items. I did some light browsing on my server’s Auction House and decided that I had enough gold built up that I should get in on the game of selling Eternal Belt Buckles. There’s also some money to be made in Tailoring with the various types of cloth but on my server the current margins are too small.

I was able to consistently by the materials for the Eternal Belt Buckle on the Auction House for well below the average buyout price of 70 gold on the finished item. That meant I could buy 4 Saronite Bars, 1 Eternal Earth, 1 Eternal Water and 1 Eternal Shadow for about 35 gold. I would then find a Blacksmith to build the Buckle for me after I gave him a 10 gold tip per Buckle. That means I was spending 45 gold to make 70 gold.

Since I’m trying to do this all on my own, without the help of friends, my costs are a bit higher. If you have a guildie or friend who can make the Eternal Belt Buckle for you then your margin of profit will be much better. If you have a high level miner of your own you can make a real killing here. The time it takes to gather the materials for a Buckle can be trivial.

For the next day or so I kept buying low cost materials, tipping Blacksmiths and selling Belt Buckles for around 65/70g. The price slowly dipped and crashed to about 50/55g after someone on my server posted fourteen Buckles at once, effectively killing the market for at least 48 hours.

The Final Result

After a few days of selling Buckles (and keeping on top of my companion pet strategy from last issue), I managed to increase my gold count to 443 from the 50 gold I started with after my last email.

The Lesson

In this terrible WoW economy, where everyone is rushing to liquidate their stockpile of items, there are opportunities to combine those discounted goods and convert them into a high priced item with high demand. All it takes is a bit of research and math to find out what you can make the cheapest before turning around and selling the finish product for a decent profit.

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I had come close to 40,000 gold a few weeks back but then I went on a buying binge of gear for my priest and found myself hovering around 36,000 gold when it was all said and done with. A little bit of Fishing and smart Auction House work found me back to within striking distance of my goal. After running the Argent Tournament dailies today on two of my characters I broke the 40,000 gold mark by one.

What’s Next

More gold! I want to hit 50,000 gold as fast as possible. I’ve said this dozens of times on this blog before but once more can’t hurt: Gold is a scoreboard for me. Some people collect gear and brag about their DPS. I like earning gold and I plan on continuing to do so as long as I’m playing World of Warcraft.

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Getting Started

For this challenge, so to speak, I decided to start a Level 1 Undead Rogue named Hickson. I sent him one gold piece and then began the slow, long walk from the Undead starting zone all the way to Thunder Bluff. Along the way I made a pit stop inside Orgrimmar to pick up the flight path there. By the time I reached Thunder Bluff, Hickson had reached Level 2 just from the experience he gained exploring the world map.

Why Thunder Bluff? The first reason is that, as you’ll see in a moment, there’s a specific low-cost item inside Thunder Bluff that was key to me beginning to accumulate gold quickly. And secondly, the Auction House in Thunder Bluff is located very close to the Mailbox. I’m going to be running back and forth a lot during this experiment and the shorter that route can be the better.

Making My First Sale

Once I was safely inside Thunder Bluff I began to put into action my plan to start building up my gold reserves. With only one gold to my name there are limited opportunities to get started. Thankfully, with the rising interest in companion pets and the hard to find vendors that sell them there is an opportunity for enterprising players to make some money quickly with little gold to get started.

Inside Thunder Bluff, hidden away in the corner of the middle level, is a vendor named Halpa that sells the key to our start: Prairie Dog Whistles. A single Prairie Dog Whistle only costs 50 silver so I had more than enough to buy one. Your gut instinct probably says to you, “How can you make gold selling what anyone can buy themselves for cheap?” That’s a fair question. The answer is that not everyone knows where to find Halpa and, even if they do, not everyone is willing to make the trip to Thunder Bluff when they can just as easily buy it on the Auction House.

So by using people’s laziness or lack of knowledge about this part of the game I was able to buy and quickly sell my first Prairie Dog Whistle in a matter of hours. I listed the Whistle with a 6 gold minimum bid and a 8 gold buyout. I’ll be referring to this pricing setup for the rest of this newsletter in this format to make things easier: 6/8g.

Rinse And Repeat

With one sale under my belt I could then take the earnings and buy even more Whistles to sell. In addition to the Prairie Dogs, I branched out and took a quick trip to Orgrimmar to find Xan’tish the Snake Vendor. He sells three different snake pets that also sell for 50 silver. I sold these for an average of 3/3.5g on the Horde’s Auction House and, after taking a short trip to Booty Bay, for about 5/5.5g at the Neutral Auction House.

Once it was all said and done, over the course of about 24 hours, I had taken my initial one gold and turned it into 50 gold even. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot but as a percentage of my initial investment it’s nothing to laugh at.

The Lesson

Even though this issue was Horde-centric, the technique of buying companion pets from vendors and selling them right back on the Auction House at a premium applies to the Alliance side of things as well.

The great thing about this technique is that it really only costs you a bit of your time. The pets are sold by the vendor at such a low price that everyone, regardless of level, can buy a few and try selling them at the Auction House themselves.

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Recruiting Fake Friends

In order to start a guild you need to get players from 10 different accounts to sign your guild charter. This process can take some time if, like me, you are a predominantly solo player who doesn’t have many friends who play the game. If you’re in a guild on your main character or know lots of players on your server you can pretty quickly get your signature and nine other accounts on your Bank Alt’s guild charter and you’ll be off to the races.

But if you don’t have enough friends with accounts you’re going to have to fall back on the ancient art of bribery. I’m sure you’ve seen folks on the Guild Recruitment or Trade channel offering gold to players who will sign their guild charter. While this is a viable way to get the signatures you need it’s also a bit too spammy for my tastes.

Instead of broadcasting your needs to the world I find it’s best to walk around the lower level starting areas and politely /whisper players you find that aren’t currently in a guild. Ask them to sign your charter, offer to give them a few gold for their trouble, and explain to them that once you have all of the signatures you need you’ll be removing them from the guild roster.

Don’t be cheap during this process. I’ve seen people offering as little as one gold to sign their charters. If you’re serious about the Auction House enough to make your own Bank Alt guild then you should be willing to pay a little extra to get the process complete quickly. When I started my own guild I ended up paying around 10 gold per signature.

Start Buying Guild Bank Tabs

Once you’ve got your signatures, created your guild and removed everyone but yourself from the roster it’s time to head to your brand new guild bank. You can buy up to six bank tabs at your guild bank and the prices for each escalate. So while the first tab is only 100 gold the sixth and final tab will run you 5,000 gold. Each tab has 98 item slots so if you buy all six available tabs you’ll end up with an additional 588 places for gear at a cost of 9,350 gold.

That might seem expensive at first but consider that your own personal player bank only has 28 item slots initially and can only be expanded by the size of the bags you add. With seven bag slots containing 22 item bags you’re still only going to have a maximum storage space of 182 slots. That’s a far cry from the space you can get with your own guild bank.

Is My Own Guild Bank The Right Move?

I’ll admit this idea isn’t for everyone. A lot of players store up materials and sit on them until the selling prices are at a level they feel they can maximize their profit with. This strategy often times requires lots of space to save items. If you’re the type of Auction House player that quickly gathers and sells their items you might not need your own guild bank. It’s up to you to decide how intense your storage needs will be.

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Setting The Stage

I have a pretty decent set of characters and professions right now and it’s important that I properly explain just what it is I have to work with.

My main character, Nance, is a 450 Miner (a switch I made shortly after the release of Wrath). He’s the workhorse character of this group and is the only one I gather materials with by hand.

I have a Death Knight alt, Embry, that is a 450 Blacksmith. He spends all of his time at the Magus Commerce Exchange in Dalaran building Buckles and using the mailbox. He hasn’t seen combat in months.

And the last piece of this virtual economy puzzle is my Bank Alt, Daugherty. He receives all of the Buckles and posts them on the Auction House in Thunder Bluff. He’s pictured above because I think he looks cool. On occasion I’ll have another character post Buckles as well but I’ll get to that later in the post.

My total net worth, going into this week, was about 32,000 gold. I say that not to brag or anything (I’m sure tons and tons of people have more) but you should realize that I’m in a position to make these Auction House moves quickly with brute cash strength if need be. You can just as easily do what I’ve done without a big bankroll but obviously the time involved would be longer and the profits smaller.

Identifying The Market

As I said at the start, I’ve been selling these Belt Buckles for a long period of time on a semi-regular basis ever since Embry learned how. I maxxed out Blacksmithing just as the market for items like the Titansteel Guardian and Titansteel Destroyer crashed on my server by two-thirds or more. This left me hustling to find another use for Blacksmithing and I quickly realized the need and demand for Belt Buckles.

The average price on my server for one Buckle is approximately 65 gold. With that in mind, whenever I have enough materials to build a Buckle I make one and have it sell in relatively short order. A sale is usually guaranteed if it’s listed in the lower third of the buyouts.

A few days ago, when I was posting a spare Buckle I had on the Auction House, I noticed that the lowest buyout was 115 gold. That’s a pretty rare occurrence on my server so I decided to strike fast and get in on the action while prices were at that high level. I figured I could make a few Buckles and sell them for 100 gold each before the market went back to normal.

Gathering Materials

Thankfully it is pretty easy to put together an Eternal Belt Buckle. To make one you need the following: one Eternal Shadow, one Eternal Earth, one Eternal Water and four Saronite Bars.

I spend most of my time playing Nance, my Hunter. For at least a little bit every day, after I run whatever dailies I’m doing at that time or when I’m sitting in LFG, I mine in Icecrown. I’ve been mining exclusively in Icecrown since I made the jump to mining in Northrend and have, almost without exception, had very little competition as I make my rounds. As more and more people hit 80 I’m expecting this to no longer be the case so I’m anticipating moving the mining operation to Sholazar Basin sometime soon.

All of the materials for the Eternal Belt Buckle can pretty easily be gathered by yourself with a little commitment to mining. Any miner worth their weight should have a steady supply of Saronite on hand at all times. The Eternal Earths and Shadows should be easy to get as well. If you don’t feel like mining for them you can just as easily get your fill fighting the mobs in Wintergrasp or buy them on the Auction House. They average around 6 gold a piece.

The hardest part of the Eternal Belt Buckle equation is the Eternal Water. As a miner you’ll occasionally put these together hitting enough Titanium Veins but it’s going to be slow progress. You can try Wintergrasp, of course, but the mobs that drop the Crystallized Water are usually under the water and the fights are irritating to say the least.

With all of that in mind, the Eternal Water are the only materials for the Eternal Belt Buckles that I buy on the Auction House. Any time I see someone selling them for at or below 10 gold each I buy them up and mail them off to my Blacksmith character.

So that means I can put together one Eternal Belt Buckle with a little sweat equity and about 10 gold. If I was going to rush the process I would buy all of the Eternals at once for a cost of about 20 to 25 gold a Buckle depending on the buyouts at the time. When I have a nice stack to work with it’s time to sell the suckers.

Making The Sale

With a maximum cost of 25 gold, but more likely something under half of that, the Eternal Belt Buckle is a profitable item even when Auction House prices are slashed below average. The key, of course, is to take the right steps to make sure it sells quickly and for as much profit as possible.

As I said earlier, the average price of an Eternal Belt Buckle had been about 65 gold each leading up to this week. When the lowest buyout rose to 115 gold the rush was on to capitalize. My policy is to always be the lowest buyout for an item down to a certain level I’m comfortable with. In my head I know what an item I frequently sell usually goes for and if I have to post a buyout under that mark I store the item away for another day. For the Eternal Belt Buckle, I never sell below that 65 gold average but with a 115 gold competitor I had to take advantage and raise my price threshold.

But why did the market for Eternal Belt Buckles suddenly jump? I’ve written about setting market prices before but let me explain it again very briefly.

Occasionally, when I want to drive a market price on an item, I’ll post one or more at an inflated price and then come back on with another character and list more of that same item at a more reasonable buyout. Now my guess is that another player on my server was doing this very thing with Eternal Belt Buckles and that’s fine by me as long as I can ride the price wave with him until the 115 gold Buckles expire.

It’s been several days since the 115 gold low buyout and every time I’ve logged in I’ve collected my money for the Buckles that sold and then posted more at an adjusted buyout. I’m always posting as the lowest price but never more than 5 gold under the current low. I just kept repeating this process, making more Buckles as need be.

Knowing When To Quit

Prices are finally coming back down to normal. As I was writing this post I sold three more Buckles for 70 gold each. That’s pretty close to my breaking point and I’m pretty sure that by the end of the weekend the price will be back to 65 gold and the wave will be over on Buckles.

I didn’t keep exact figures but over the course of this run I made approximately 1,200 gold in Eternal Belt Buckles. There are other ways to make more gold in a much quicker span of time but my total investment in this little project was a bit over 150 gold in Eternal Waters. That’s not a bad deal.

Now that the price is stabilizing closer to the average I’m going to stop pushing the production of the Buckles for awhile. I’ll go back to making and selling them whenever I go about picking up the materials but I’ll no longer be actively buying those mats off of the Auction House.

Lessons Learned

This post was insanely long but I appreciate those of you who stuck it out and read to the end. Regardless of your character’s professions, it’s important to monitor the craftable items you can make on the Auction House. By learning the average buyout prices for certain items you can, when the market goes wacky, make a quick killing with a little common sense and a little effort.

I hope anyone who has been struggling to understand the Auction House, or is just looking for tips to make some extra gold, found this post helpful. If you have any questions, please leave a comment or use my contact form.

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Well, it’s time to put my Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole to use and get fishing up to 450. When I started this the other night my skill was under 365. After some fishing in the Barrens for Deviate Fish I hit 385 and made my way to Northrend. By the time I hung up my fishing pole this evening I was up to 392.

Before I called it quits I did some research and decided I should start doing the Burning Crusade fishing dailies again for extra Sharpened Fish Hooks and just maybe I’d get lucky after a few weeks and the fishing hat would drop.

A quick portal to Shattrath and I was on my way to completing The One That Got Away. I had this done in short order and when I opened up the quest rewards I was lucky enough to snag the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat on my first try. I wish I had that kind of luck with that awful Mysterious Egg and its “Seven Day Timer of Disappointment.”

So why the sudden interest in fishing? Gold, of course. There’s always a crazy market for Raid food and, with 3.1 rapidly approaching, I’m counting on that demand to increase dramatically after the patch is released. I figure I might as well be at the front of this growing need for Cooking materials.

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In the days leading up to the Faire and during the course of the event the pricing on cards for the Nobles Deck are pretty out of control. On my server the average card goes for around 1,000 gold while some of the cards can tip the scale at 1,500 to 2,000 gold each depending on demand.

A complete Nobles Deck can usually be seen for sale as well with a price tag usually hovering above the 15,000 gold mark. Just last night I saw one for sale for 9,000 gold but I foolishly waited around before buying it and squandered my chance. By the time I decided to buy it the deck was gone and re-listed for 15,000 gold. Oh well.

For Inscriptionists, who have to spend most of their Auction House time trying to sell constantly undercut glyphs, this week is a great opportunity to make a boat load of gold in a profession that otherwise can be a bit of a struggle to make big profit in.

So if you’re looking for a Nobles Deck and have the money to spend you have until next Monday the 16th to get your cards in order (quite literally) to get the Darkmoon Card: Greatness trinket. And, on the other side, if you’re a Inscriptionist you better be hurrying to pump out as many Nobles cards as you can because this week the market will never be higher until the Faire comes back around on April 6th.

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