My Auction House Schedule

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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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Gnomeaggedon on May 25th, 2009

Funny you should write this… I always found my most profitable days were the week days, which is contrary to conventional wisdom.

I even got a lot of joy out of Tuesdays… if it was there in the morning when people logged on, it sold. (mind you my bid & buyout prices are always close)

Weekends were my buy days as the prices were depressed due to market saturation.

May200917

Nance

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