2009
Advanced Gold Making For Pros At The Auction House
Posted by Lawbringer in General Tips, Gold Building, Gold Farming, World of Warcraft, WotLK
How To Solo Stabilize A Price Push By Raising A Price Cap
Just a note before we get started on this one. This tip is for seriously anal-retentive, ah hawking, accountant style people who have the patience for investing in things like hedge funds.
People (even those using the AH Mastery Guide) will ask me from time to time some questions that seem odd to me. “Hey you just got undercut, what are you going to do about it?” UM . . .nothing? Some folks watch every auction they post; that’s not for me. I prefer to list thousands of auctions based on tried and true numbers and then go to bed. We developed the AH Mastery Guide to teach people exactly how to do this.
When you’re running that many auctions and trying to level toons and raid and do WG and run a guild and and and - you just don’t have time to watch things. Besides, I’m not real big on sitting around staring at the competition; its like watching paint dry. No, I would much rather have fun and make gold while I’m doing other things.
But the questions finally got me thinking. I wonder if there really IS a way to make sure the undercuts don’t kill you? Up until now I’ve just lived with the fact that the markets cycle. Undercuts happen for a while until there is no profit in it for the stupid farmers, then they all leave and the price points return to normal. I break even half the time and make a big profit the other 50%. Since I was already averaging over 750g a day in the process I didn’t feel the need to take drastic measures.
But while I was working to refine certain aspects of the gold guide on a new server I noticed something odd in the wool market. We have said from the beginning that mats are maybe the second best play in the market. We even resurrected one of those tips from 2006 and updated it in the post “Making Gold With Mats” to show just how timeless this advice can be.
So as we went to work to completely Dominate every part of the mats market on this new server (I’m not saying which one yet) I noticed that when I set the new price for wool it stayed up - way up. But it wasn’t my banker keeping the price high. As a matter of fact a random toon gave me this technique and I’ve spread it to lots of other mats as well.
Here’s what happened; there was this one dude who just keeps about 20 full stacks of wool on the AH at about 3 times market price. He probably sells a few from time to time, but everyone is undercutting him. I love the fact that he exists because he is keeping the 100% price artificially high. It makes my price push point look cheap in comparison. His price represents something we don’t have a name for - so we’ll call it the price cap.
Price Cap = the highest price in the market
So I thought - what if I just did this myself? Since I have several accounts, I have to have a toon doing auction house scans on each one. So there are already 3 “banker” toons just sitting at the AH doing nothing. So my main banker (let’s call him A) send a few stacks of all the best mats to banker “B.” B then posts those mats (or anything else for that matter) at a sort of silly price and just keeps rolling those auctions forever.
Now instead of my price push (buying out most or all of an item and re-listing it at a higher price) representing the price cap, I can raise a new cap over my push to protect the push. The push will actually look reasonable against the cap. (confused yet)?
Now everyone who scans the AH using AADV will scan the inflated price cap items along with everything else (such as the price push items) and AADV will return a higher normal market price for them to post their items. In just two weeks I’ve been able to stabilize price points for more than 2 dozen items at more than 100% above their previous market level doing this very thing.
And it’s painfully simple to boot. I just log on every couple of days to B and roll the auctions back onto the house. I sell just enough from those piles to cover the listing fees. Breaking even in one place to ensure a much higher profit in another is a Dominating win.
Now, if you’ve EVER written in the threads something along the lines of “I’ve tried this for 23 minutes and haven’t made a single copper yet!” Or, “I spent 176 silver and so far I’ve lost money using your techniques!” Then please, PLEASE, PLEASE ignore this post and go back to your farming. This takes a mountain of patience and expertise and thousands and thousands of gold invested on a daily basis. If you’re not working with more than about 10k gold and it wouldn’t hurt your feelings to lose every copper of it then don’t do this.
There isn’t really that much risk involved - so much for the disclaimers. But keep in mind that this is not an easy play. You’ll have to concentrate for a while to keep it straight in your head since AADV doesn’t have a module to track it for you.
So (those of you who know what you’re doing) grab yourself another anonymous banker and park a few stacks of the more profitable mats on the guy. Have him roll the auctions for those on 48 hours for 300-500% of market value. (Short stacks might also be a good idea).
It’s also a good idea when you end up stuck with a whole lot of something that isn’t selling well. Instead of undercutting the market price and losing profit; push the perceived value of the item higher by price capping on one toon to make the regular price look more appealing to people. In other words - if the demand isn’t there, then manipulate your pricing to give the appearance of value. Your regular items will look cheaper next to your higher priced auctions.
For instance: I have about 100 stacks of medium leather on banker A. Apparently someone went nuts and farmed their butts off for some silly reason and then dumped it all onto the AH at once. It killed the price but I’m never going to pass on a good deal. I can get that price back up there faster than it dropped.
So I sent 15 stacks to B and posted it at 500% of market price in stacks of 5 to set the price cap. The rest I put back on the AH in stacks of 20 at 125% of past market value as a price push. The price cap protects the price push and the overall market price as well. Since I bought the leather at 40% of past market value, and now have a way of raising the past market value even when flooding the market it’s only a matter of time before the cash box is full.
Before I did this I had sold maybe 2-3 stacks out of the original lot of 100. Once I put the cap price above my own new push price they sell much better; along the lines of 5-10 stacks a day.
So you will use this whenever you have a glut or whenever you’re doing a price push. If you have way too much of something anyway, make sure that if you’re going to flood the market (which depresses prices as supply goes above demand) that you protect the price by putting the artificial cap over it. The very same method works even when you have limited supply items if you will raise a cap over your new price push.
People will assume there is just some idiot out there who thinks that his stuff is worth more just because it’s his stuff. No one will ever suspect that it is a purposeful ploy to protect you own price push. Who would ever think that undercutting yourself could be worth so much gold?
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