Meet Ohnekase: The Basics, Part 2: Item Rarity, Making Profit, and using the Auction House

Meet Ohnekase:

Deathwing, US

You may remember him from last week (if you read the post).  He is our beginning Hunter that is just starting out in the world and trying to make money.  Right now, though, he is level 6 and poor.

That is ok, though.  We are working on that.  As you may recall, last week we covered the basics of looting everything and maximizing money when you can (in this case, through selling Quest rewards when they are not needed.  This week, however, lets discuss item rarity and how to use the auction house to sell some of the stuff that we find.  Using the Auction house, we can definitely turn this 10s plus items into some gold.

Item Rarity


In World of Warcraft, not all items are created equally.  Some items are just in the game so that they can be sold.  Other items have some use in the game and, therefore, can have more value to a player than to a merchant.  To make it a little easier, Blizzard designed the tooltips to give us a better idea of exactly what the item is for.

As such, we will look at 3 different types of items.  These are going to be taken from www.wowhead.com (a great resource, btw).

Also know as Vendor Trash

Used in Cooking

Used in Engineering, Blacksmithing, and more...

So, we have 3 different items, each with a different "Rarity".  The difference in the items are in the color of the text.  Gray means that the item has no use and should probably be sold to a vendor (unless you want it for some other reason).  The white and green text, however, mean that it does have some use inside of the game.  In our example above, Chunks of Boar Meat can be used in Cooking and Silver Bars can be used in Mining, Engineering, Blacksmithing, and a handful of other uses.  So, this means that if we have those items, they can likely be worth more than the sell price listed.

NOTE:  There are several other kinds of text colors, however, we are covering the basics, so we can just stick with those.

So, where is the easiest place to get more money for these items?  The Auction House, of course.

The Auction House

So before we go to the Auction House with Ohnekase, lets have him find something to sell.

Hey look at that.  Something useful.

Well, wouldn't you know?  Ohnekase wandered around, kill half a dozen boars, and came upon this item.  Now, I may not know exactly what it is used for, it is used for something, so lets keep it and see if someone has a use for it on the Auction House.

NOTE:  The Auction Houses are located in your capitol city.  In the case of Ohnekase, it is located in Stormwind, which is just north and west of Goldshire.

Wow, those are big claw marks.

Once hear, you can talk with a Guard and he can show you where the Auction House.

Wow....There are a lot of people here.

Once you find the auction house, talk with one of the Auctioneers to see the Auction Screen.  Lets take a look around the default Auction House UI.

OK, so where do we start?

OK, so here it is in all its glory.  Ok, so it doesn't look that great, but it can make us a lot of money if we can learn to use this.  So, lets go over each Tab and discuss what can be done with this.

Browse Tab:  This is the tab you start on.  It is basically a search for any item you are looking for.  Just type the item into the "Name" Field, and it will pull up all of the Auctions for that item.  If you aren't exactly sure, you can type in a partial name and it will match that name.  For example, typing in "Chunk of Boar Meat" will pull up the meat that we are looking for.  However, if you aren't sure, you can just type in "Boar", however it will also give you items that have the word boar in it.  See screen prints below:

Uhh, wait, this isn't what I was looking for.  Let me try again.

Ah, that is better.

Finally, on this tab, if you are looking for a specific category of item, then you can filter it on the side there.  Just click on a tab and it will Filter the item.

For Example, lets search the word "Boar" again, but this time, lets put the filter of "Trade Goods" on.

Hey, look at that.  It gives me other stuff,
but I can at least see what I was looking for.

So, in this case, it shows us Chunk of Boar Meat, in addition to the Boar Ribs and other things.  This can be helpful if you are looking for materials for your professions, but don't want a bunch of random stuff.

If you want to put a bid or just buy the item out (which is used far more often), the you can look at the bid and buyout price.  If it is something you want, just click the item, then the "Bid" or "Buyout" buttons at the bottom.

Bids:  Not really much to say here, so I want talk about it too much.  If you have put money down on an item, you can see it here.  If someone else outbids you on an item, you can use this tab to bid again on that same item.

Auction:  Ok, so here is where we can take a step in and decide how much we think people will buy our stuff for.  On the right, it shows us what auctions we have put up, how the bidding is going (if there is), and how long it has left.  On the Left side, the interface is set up so we can post items.  We can tell them how much of a bid price we want, and how much of a buyout price we want on these items.

So, for this, lets put up an auction of our Chunk of Boar Meat and see what happens.  First, we click the Chunk of Boar Meat in our inventory and drag it to the Auction Item box.

Ok, so now what?

So, as you can see, the screen is now asking for a "Starting Price" (where to start the bidding at) and a "Buyout Price".  So, here is where we want to decide what price to post it at.

Now, when I post stuff on the AH (Auction House), I always want to find out what other auctions are going for and price it based on that.  After all, it doesn't make any sense to put this up for 50 gold if there are none above 3 gold.

So, let's search Chunk of Boar Meat and look at the prices.

So, it looks like we should post it somewhere between 33 silver and 1 gold.

So, the costs of the 1 items are 33 silver and 9 copper.  If you do the math, the 12 and 20 Chunks of Boar Meat are going for about a gold.  So, the question is, what should we price our Chunk of Boar Meat at that people might buy it.

In this case, I think that if someone is going to want Boar Meat, they are going to want a lot of it (at least 10), because of its use in Cooking, so i am going to try something different an post it for a bid of 33 silver (in case someone really wants to bid on it, which I doubt), and then I am going to post a Buyout of 50 silver.  It won't sell first, certainly, but I am pretty sure that someone buying it is going to buy a few, so they will buy mine right up with the person below, so I may as well make a little bit more on it.  I am not posting it at 1 gold because I think that someone who wants a lot will probably buy the 12 or 20 for a gold each.  As such, we will try for 50 silver and see what happens.

Awesome Auction Tip (save this for later):  People will pay for convenience.  If there are 25 auctions in single items and one auction of, say, 20 or 25, people will buy the 20 or 25 usually, even if it is a little bit more.

Lets try another, just so we can look at the thought process for posting:

Ok, so last week, when I was killing Kobolds, I came across some Linen Cloth.  Linen Cloth is used by Tailors and people who want to do the First Aid skill (anyone can learn it).  As such, I think it might sell too, so, lets take a look at the process

Step 1:  What is Linen Cloth Selling for on the AH?

Wow, these look promising for a poor man like myself.

Ok, so I had to scroll for a bit, because there were "Bolts of Linen Cloth" above mine, but here is what we are looking at.  Not too shabby.  It looks like the average price for these is 93 silver.  So, because I am poor, and would like to get some starting cash (training isn't cheap you know), why dont we undercut the 93 silver price and see if someone wants to buy it.  So, I would like to put it somewhere between 75 silver and 90 Silver cause that prices it low that someone might want to buy it.

So My auction window will look like this:

I decided on 85 silver per cloth, so I am charging 2 gold 55 silver for all 3.

So, once that is done, then lets post it up and we can be done here.

Ok, so now what...?

Well, this is the part that drives me crazy.  We wait.  We have items up and we have to hope they sell.  In my opinion, we are likely to sell them, but there is no guarantee.  For now, we will be patient and check back later.

If they do sell, we will receive mail giving us the money for the sale (the greedy auctioneers take 5% of the purchase price).

So, for now, we will finish this post.  I will check back later and I will attach some info if they pay.

For next week, we are going to learn about doing our homework ahead of time, so that we can know how much to put our auctions up for.  If you would like to study before the blog, check out:

http://www.wowhead.com

http://theunderminejournal.com

These sites are a treasure trove of information to us.

See ya next time....


Update:  Well, it has been two days, lets check on my auctions.

Hurray, 2 gold 43 silver.

Ok, so the Chunk of Boar Meat did not sell.  Perhaps my pricing was off.  That is ok, though, cause we can try again later.

However, look at that Linen.  2.5 gold for 3 pieces of cloth.  That is very nice, and perhaps something that we could note in the future.  Well, for now my character has 2 gold 51 silver.  Not too shabby for starting out.  It definitely gives us some starting capitol so we should have to worry about much until at least lvl 20.  And we plan on getting some more money making opportunities in the coming weeks.