Warcraft Elite Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Auctioneer’

Earlier we discussed normalizing the prices of items across two markets. It is worth mentioning now that you can index or normalize the price in a single market place. There are many ways to do this, but for example  – take three  separate median asking price for an item over a period of say a week. You will then have three “median” prices. Average these to find a “mean mean” and give that figure the index of 1.0.

Every other price can then be rated as a ratio of this 1.0. Look back at the last chapter for more information on this.

Price indexing can, at first glance seem a waste of time. It comes into it’s own when you are comparing the profit profile of several different items. It allows you to graph item that are of a very different price on the same scale and just compare how profitable they are as a percentage.

Is Swifthistle more profitable as a percentage than a Titansteel Destroyer or would Netherweave be a better investment, Using indexing you can compare these side by side and get a true comparison

But something is missing. Profit is measured OVER TIME.
Swifthistle might sell for you at 30 stacks a day at the auction house, 2 gold a stack. 60 gold turnover. If you bought for 1 gold a stack. Discounting the Auction cut for now, you have made 100% profit PER DAY.

Now the Titansteel destroyer might be bought (or made) at a cost to you of 800 gold, you put it on the market at 1200 gold – but it takes 4 days to sell.
In this example  – again discounting the auction house cut you have made a 33% profit over 4 days – or an un-compounded 8.25% per day.
Now this is where you need to make a couple of decisions regarding your trading. Are you a busy day trader – or a long term magnate.

If you play regularly, and quite like to dabble in the market every time you play, there is often more profit in buying lots of lower value items – and selling them on quickly. If you log onto Warcraft only a couple of times a week “go long” with higher value items.
If you choose the quick route, but miss a few days every week, you will find that you are making less money than someone who only logs on now and then and trades slowly.

Why waste your time ? There is a subtle choice between turnover and profit – decide what kind of investor you are, and make sure your portfolio reflects that choice.

While we are on the subject, we have already looked at the issues of copllecting your sales data through an add-on like Auctioneer. The problem being.

Auctioneer does not collect sales data!

That’s a pretty big problem. It can keep a record of what your characters sold items for, but for the rest of the servers population (that being 99.997% of the data then) it only collects the ASKING price, and that can be nothing like the selling price. On some servers almost 50% of auctions don’t sell at all.

Secondly it does not take seasonality or trends into account (at least not very well)

And thirdly it is skewed by rogue prices.

As we mentioned before the practice of putting a low level item, like a piece of copper ore, on for say 1000 gold pieces happens. Annoyingly it happens quite a bit. This skews the averages a lot.

Which brings us nicely to how YOU get around these issues. Well you filter them out. We use what is known as a “pareto” or “80-20” rule. We take our averages from the middle 80% of all prices offered.

So if ten prices were showing for an item  say 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, and 4000 we would not put the “1” or the “4000” into the equation.  The 4000 is clearly a rogue price. The 1 probably isn’t , but not including it does not slant the average much.  The difference is one will give you an average price per item of 405.3 gold. The other 5.5 gold. One is hopelessly wrong the other nearly right.

Back to an old point, Indexing also lets you compare prices between factions and across servers – allows you to filter out rogue data, takes seasonality into account and ensures you yourself keep an eye on your portfolio. Auctioneer -  while a very useful tool, does not do this.

Some professions have the ability to transform one ingredient into another. This gives you a lot of options.
For example. Metal ores can be smelted to be used primarily by blacksmithing or engineering OR they can be left as ore and prospected by jewelcrafters.

The market will be different for each state. It is not the case that a “processed” item will fetch more at auction. Sometimes you should transform the item..sometimes you shouldn’t.
Material master handles these changes for you, but here we offer a written guide to what items become what. There is some help with calculations in the Material Master spreadsheet. However, disenchanting involves destroying weapons and armor – and no two pieces will have the same Auction House value so it would not be right to try and tabulate value for disenchants – you will have to read that section and work them out for yourself based on what your server market is like.

DISENCHANTING

Using looted or manufactured weapons and armor, you can “disenchant” these items to make the the raw ingredients for Enchanting. Sometimes the Weapon sells for the most..sometimes the enchanting ingredients..and sometimes the enchant itself. You need to know which is which

SMELTING

This is the easiest to describe, with one or two exceptions each ore becomes a bar or half a bar of the same named metal. There are some exotic metals, but trade on those is very low indeed

PROSPECTING

Mining provides the raw ore for prospectors to turn into gems. Each ore has a chance of becoming a certain gem or gems. Sometimes the ore sells for the most, sometimes the gem, and sometimes the finished jewel.

MILLING

Last (and currently least) is milling. Herbalists provide the raw material for Scribes to mill to make the papers and inks for Glyphs. Sometimes the herb is more valuable, sometimes the papers and ink’s..sometimes the Glyphs…at the moment however it is rarely the glyphs.

Disenchanting

When you have weapon or armor of “Uncommon” (Green) value or better, an enchanter has the ability to “Disenchant” and turn the item into enchanting materials.
Of couse the enchanter can then either sell these materials, or use them to make enchants to sell either directly to players, or on scrolls via the auction house. The chances are the Weapon or armor will havea different value to the materials, which in turn will have a different value to any enchant you may be able to make WITH the materials.

What an item disenchants into is dependent in the “i-level” of the item

This screen was captured with “Auctioneer” add-on enabled.

 

As you can see it does a lot of the hard work for you.
If you have been doing your auction scans daily, then it will give you most of the information you need to make a decision on whether to disenchant an item or sell “as is”

In this vase it recommends Auctioning the item. This is an Epic (purple) item. It is rare to disenchant these.

We know of no better way of calculating the disenchant value than “Auctioneer”

It gives you the approximate disenchant value, and the mean sales value for other items seen at auction of the same or similar I-level. Then tells you which one will be most profitable for you.

You can then decide whether to sell the item, or sell the disenchanted materials.

NOTE

All transformations are based on %age chance. There is a table of items that “could” be disenchanted. You may not get the average amount of items..of course you could get more …

So preparation is the key. Understanding your own server dynamics. Buying low and selling high. Supplementing this with a bit of farming of your own perhaps.

Here’s the issue.

Most people have no idea of an items true worth,

The auctioneer add on, though great for getting an overview of what people want for an item, has no actual sales data for anyone but you.

Most auction house add-ons list all the VENDOR prices, and keeps a note of what YOUR OWN ITEMS sell for.

It does not tell you what all the other items sold for. Just what was asked for them. It doesn’t tell you if someone else s auction was a success or not.

To simplify, a Herbalist could put one "Mageroyal" on for 300G..it almost definitely wouldn’t sell, but they can ask whatever they want.

This happens. In fact, massive over pricing at auction is one of the tips other guides give out. The thinking being that someone might accidentally buy it.

Which does bring us to an important point:

BIDS AT AUCTION ARE IMMEDIATE IRREVOCABLE SO BE CAREFUL

At the Gold Cartel we have worked hard trying to develop methods and tools to understand our server financial dynamics.

Now might be a good time to get you into Auctioneer. The eponymous auction house add on.

Here is a quick look at the auctioneer set up. There are a few changes to the normal auction house window.

Along the top is the right “start”arrow

This begins a scan of every item in the AH, checking quantities and prices.

you’ll be using this button twice a day. Preferably when you are having tea or need to visit the loo because it scans. EVERYTHING. And can easily take 15 to 20 minutes. So twice a day could easily take you 40 minutes to do this for both Alliance and Horde AH’s

A detailed guide on how to use add-ons is in the appendix.

DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO BUY A GUIDE TELLING YOU HOW TO USE AUCTIONEER. THERE IS A FAR BETTER GUIDE AVAILABLE FREE – FROM THE MAKERS OF THE AUCTIONEER ADD ON ITSELF.

Find the free Auctioneer guide at the official Warcraft Auctioneer Site.

Ok, that’s the end of the preamble. Next putting your basic skills to work.

You will have a preference I’m sure. It’s great to feel affinity with your character. Many people seem to start with humans, then see the exciting possibilities of playing a Horde character later.
Stormwind or Ironforge might get a little dull. Silvermoon or Orgrimmar seem like a very nice alternative…and they are.

To make real gold, you are best having characters in both camps. There is no need to cross market trade, just make money in both markets – you’d be daft not to ! There will be times when the opportunity arises to transfer items or gold between factions, but taking advantage of two ripe markets separately will do for now.

Ah, I see, someone told you you could make 1000′s of gold with a level 10 did they ?
Well, a level 10 auction house runner can be pretty useful (more on that later)

You’ve read about someone trading up the copper they made from selling their level one clothes and armour (all 16 copper pieces) and turning into 1000g inside 24 playing hours?

 

The caveat here is “playing hours”. It is just about possible. If you log on 4 times a day for ten minutes trading for about a month.

You have to be very lucky – a mistake early on and you’ve failed.

You need to know the market very well. – a few Auctioneer readings is not enough.

• Markets have variations that are wheels within wheels.
• Evening is busier than morning, Weekends are busier than weekdays
• Summer holidays are very poor trading times, Autumn (fall) Holidays are excellent
• Winter is busier than summer
• Just after an expansion is busier than the eight or so months before it lands.
• Patch day is busy in the evening.

 

Add all these up and the result is a market that, to the untrained eye pops and weaves all over the place.

Not just a litle bit different, but hugely so.

As mentioned earlier, levelling helps. It’s a simple fact that higher level character has access to better skills, profession levels and can survive in the harder areas where higher value materials and reagents can be harvested.

But if you want to pay Blizzard good money to have your first character sitting outside the auction house for months on end, then go ahead. Be my guest.

If you have an ALT doing this, then that’s a different matter altogether. You’ll soon find a modest amount of levelling with another character will out-earn your “broker” alt by a factor of “many” to one.

When you have plenty of gold. then speculating becomes a worthwhile activity, and yes, using a low level character to process your sales and speculate is a great idea.

Doing it with your first is not recommended.

One thing you “could” do, is get an alt to a neutral auction house for later. It’s always handy to do this. But we’ll come on to that later. For now, it’s an interesting little trip for a level one. And yes, a level one from either faction can do it.

I can tell some of you doubt this, so here’s the videos to finish this post.

First the easy one – Horde Level 1 to Booty Bay…

Now for a much more convoluted route.

Alliance Level 1 to Booty Bay