We’re going to combine a bit of economic theory with a bit of aggressiveness and show you how to work the auction house no matter what level you are. If you learn to play in the World of Warcraft sand box, you’ll be able to do it forever because even the pros work the same way on all the realms. The complexity increases a bit, along with the gold piles.

The WoW auction house is a closed economy. There is never an influx of completely new product to throw things into a loop except when there is a major patch or expansion release. Even when those events occur, you should be able to flow into the new items with ease. So the things that work today are probably going to work a year from now. Items will rise and fall a bit in value, but rarely completely fall out of favor.

There are three ways to make extra gold in the WoW economy just by using the AH and trade channels properly. Those three avenues are expertise, wholesale, and speculation. Expertise is the least risky, and speculation the most.

Expertise means you know something about a small variety (or a large segment) of items and what they should be worth right now. Here’s how we use it. I used to go farm small brilliant shards from Herod in SM armory. At level 65 I could run all the way to his room and hardly ever draw aggro. Before the 5 instances an hour nerf, I could do this about every 6-8 minutes. I would go a couple of times a week for a few hours.

It’s how I bought my first epic mount - small brilliant shards. I knew that every single one I got would sell for 6 gold 75 silver. I was in the chat channel one day and some dude was advertising small brilliant shards. I asked him how many he had - he said how many do you want? I told him - all of them - at the right price. I ended up buying 48 of them for 200 gold, that’s just a touch over 4 gold 11 silver each. I sold every single one of them that week for 324 gold, a profit of 125 gold for basically nothing.

The last example had a bit of a wholesale touch to it. If you know what something should be worth, but can buy a whole big bunch of it cheaper and then trickle it into the market with some patience, you can make a decent profit at it. I’ve got a few guys who send me every scrap of cloth they farm because I will buy every single piece for a set price that’s about 80% of market value. I get a 20% profit, they never have to work the ah.

Speculation can be risky because it can take some serious dough, and it might not work at all. If you are going to speculate on green items or above, I highly recommend being an enchanter as well, so at least you can cover most of your losses by disenchanting and selling the mats. Speculation involves situations where you suspect demand is going to rise, and beating the market to the price increase by buying something while the price is still low, and then releasing it when the price goes up. A great example of this was when Shaman got dual-wielding. When this news came out, I spent a few weeks buying up all the one handed axes lvl 40 and above at the ah and held them all until patch day. Prices went up like nuts as all the Shaman went to the AH to get shiny new one-handed axes and I made a killing.

The chances that will present themselves for serious speculation are few and far between in a closed economy. Also note that because the economy is closed, the market will correct itself pretty rapidly. I tend to go more with the expertise end of the scale and stick with what I know.

There is one thing you absolutely must do when it comes to the ah. I had heard it before, but stubbornly refused to put hundreds of gold in my pocket by ignoring this one point. Buy during the week, sell on weekends. Prices on many realms rise by as much as 25% from Friday noon to Sunday late night. But gold farmers work all week long. They hedge themselves by dealing mainly in bulk. You can normally buy the simplest things like silk cloth on Tuesday for as low as 40 silver a stack and then turn around and sell the same stack on Saturday for 70 silver or more. That’s almost 100% profit in 4 days. If Wall Street had anything like this they would be falling all over themselves to get to it.

So start small, and get to know a few things very well. Buy low, sell high, when in doubt disenchant and sell the mats. That’s the AH in a nutshell. I highly recommend having one toon that does nothing but banking and AH for you - that way you can concentrate on the AH when you are there, and on questing when you are questing. Watch how the prices rise and fall on your server for a few weeks for a few consumables, and then test those trends yourself for a week or two. Then you can get busy making some real gold. Of course, all of this is much easier if you use auctioneer, but that’s a topic for another time.

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