One of the many ways to maximize your profits at the AH is carefully regulating your stack sizes.  Although it can be tempting to put everything up in maximum lots to save a little time, or to split everything into singles, you could be robbing yourself of some serious cash in the long run.  So I’m going to give you some pointers to use that will really help you know exactly what to do that should cover you in almost any situation, and really boost your gold-making.

There are three classes of things we’re dealing with here.  First are those items that simply stack into lots of 5, 10 or 20.  Next come items that convert, such as motes (from stacks of 10) and essences (from stacks of 3).  And finally are those oddball items that stack up to 250.

For the most part you will hardly ever want to post in maximum stack sizes for several reasons.  The biggest one is that there are still a lot of people who do not use Auctioneer.  I know it’s hard to believe, but because of this, there are a ton of folks playing this game that only see the final price and not the price per unit.  Smaller stacks are going to look cheaper than larger ones to them.  It’s just human nature to want to spend less (even if you are really spending more in the long run).

You can see per item prices in the WoW tooltip, (see posts by Ren and Trevor) but that doesn’t mean everybody will.

Don’t believe me?  Go to the grocery store and see how many things are being sold in smaller and smaller units in real life.  If multi-billion dollar companies use this little trick, then it’s safe to say it’s a good bet in WoW.  You can buy the ginormous bag of chips for 5 bucks, but people still buy gobs of the snack packs for $3.50 - even though the total weight of the the chips in the snack pack bags is less than 25% as much as is in the big bag.

Use this on things like cloth, especially wool.  If you split into stacks of 5, you can actually raise your price a touch over everyone else and still sell a ton of whatever it is you are selling.  People will see the 20 stacks of wool selling for 5g 50s (a price of 27s 50c each) and will often opt for your five stack at 1g 50s (a price of 30s each).  This works best when there are is a lot of price variation among the competition.  Without Auctioneer, it makes it very hard to tell what is really cheaper if the prices are all over the map.

Another area that this really comes in handy is on ore.  You also need to learn this now before WotLK when herbs go through the roof.  By this time you know that if you pay close attention to the AADV stats on metals, you can often make more money selling ore for prospecting than you can smelting the stuff and selling it that way.

Prospecting uses a LOT of ore.  Although most high end Jewelcrafters are not burning through the ore like they were at the beginning of the year, it is still a lucrative part of my weekly AH routine.  It’s not going to be any different with WotLK.

You see, Inscription has a skill called milling that is exactly like prospecting.  So far, it doesn’t seem that Inscription is going to use a lot of herbs directly, but it will be using even MORE herbs in the long run because of the milling process.  Milling uses five of any herb and turns it into a Pomace for the various Inscription recipes.  There are different Pomaces made from different level herbs, so herbs of all types will be in high demand, regardless of how rare they are, unlike alchemy which requires specific herbs.

We’ll do an article on Inscription when we know more.  Lawbringer is working on an Inscription guide, but since there are only about 10 recipes functioning now in the Beta, he hasn’t been able to test past about level 125.  But it is obvious from our initial look at Inscription that herbs are going to be a huge market.

We already told you to buy up all the herbs you can find of all levels.  Initial testing in inscription took us about 10 stacks of level 5 and 10 herbs just to get through the first few recipes.  So those stacks of peacebloom that go for next to nothing now will be worth well over 1g or more when WotLK goes live.  Expect even more profit increases from the higher level stuff.

Here’s how to capitalize on this with stack sizes. Since Milling requires 5 herbs, don’t post your lots in stacks of five, force them to buy more.  Since it’s going to take a LOT of herbs for the milling process, they need stacks of 20 and probably multiple stacks, but don’t give it to them that way.  Then as the power levelers pass you by, there will be stragglers that do only need five just to round out a skill point or two, and you can take advantage of both types of folks by splitting into stacks of 3 or 4.

Stacks of 4 requires them to buy at least 5 stacks from you.  Since milling takes 5, and only 5 will do, a stack of four is not enough.  8 is not enough, neither is 12, and 16 is still a mess.  The only way they can get a multiple of 5 for 4 milling runs is to buy 5 stacks of 4 for 20 herbs.  The other size, a 3 stack, also requires 5 purchases to get to a multiple of 5 at 15, but may be too frustrating for the dude who needs 200 herbs and doesn’t want to hit buyout 67 times.

This example of how to take advantage of stack sizes in this one area should open you mind to a lot of other areas at the AH you can do the exact same thing to really maximize you profits.  Just by splitting to smaller stacks, and raising your unit price a bit, you can still APPEAR to have lower prices, and yet price your stuff over everyone else.

Remember, people have the attention span of gnats.  They want to get in, get what they need and get out fast.  Post your stack items consistently in reasonable stacks and you can take advantage of their rush to get what they need and get on with whatever else it is they would rather be doing.

Next, there are those monster stack items.  I have found that weird stack sizes do best with these.  If you have 100 green power crystals, post a stack of 29, one of 41, and the last one at 24.  Just vary it up a lot, and make the unit price for each stack a little different.  If they need a whole bunch of them, they will be forced to buy your higher priced stack to go with the other two.

Finally, comes the ones I always harp on here at DYS - the enchanting mats.  These have the greatest stack separation potential for making even more gold above what you already do with DE.  Please tell me you buy things with the help of AADV for DE!  Don’t make me lecture you again on this.  OK, off my soapbox now - on with the show.

For enchanting mats as well as the mote conversions there are no real hard and fast rules, but I’ll give you the general things to look for.  With essences, the conversion rate is 3 to 1.  One greater splits to 3 lesser, 3 lesser to 1 greater.  MOST, but not all, of the time, you should be selling lessers.  This is one place you’ll have to check the conversion suggestion in the AADV tooltip to make sure.

When selling Greaters, split to a stack of 2.  Lessers go in a stack of 4.  We sell 2 greaters because not many recipes require an even number of greaters to create, and we don’t want to sell just one.  If they only need one, they have to buy two to get it from me.  As for the lessers, if they need greaters, they have to buy three sets of four to convert them all cleanly, and again, I always want them to buy more than they need.  If they only needed one greater and bought my 4 lessers to make it, they ended up having to buy one more lesser than they needed.

This also applies to motes.  I normally sell motes and hardly ever convert to primals.  This is because if I am selling primals I use a 2 stack (make them buy more than one), but since many primals are pretty steeply priced, it’s tough to buff your unit price on those since it’s going to look a lot more expensive than a single.  Remember, we want them to THINK they are getting a better price, and never KNOW they just got hammered.  For motes, use a stack of 6.  Again, a 6 stack requires 5 to convert cleanly to primals (5 stacks of 6 is 30 for 3 primals).

Finally, also apply the stack of 2 to any large shards.  There’s just no helping this one.  remember, make them buy more from you.  A few things we didn’t mention so far are dusts, which I will normally put in a stack of 5.  That sounds odd, since I’ve been preaching other oddball stack sizes and 5 seems like a nice round number.  This is because I did a survey of the different enchants, and very few enchants use a multiple of five, so the 5 stack maximizes over-purchases the vast majority of the time.

You can see, there are a LOT of little things you can do to boost your sales and gold potential at the AH, and we’re putting every single one of them in our gold guide.  But you’re going to have to wait for that one.  Until then, split your stacks right and Dominate the auction house on your server!

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