Auction house! Do you speak it!?

DISCLAIMER: Please excuse any spelling and/or grammatical errors in this post, I wrote in notepad before I copied it over here and I CBA to go through everything with a fine tooth comb. Apologies.

Just a short post for fun today on the lingo, "industry" terms, and short hand of the auction house game. I'm sure you'll know a good number of them just from reading gold blogs or from your own experience, but I'm sure you'll find a few new words here and there. By all means comment with any you think I missed and I'll edit them in once I see the comment. Plus three Internets if you catch the title reference!

But since a gold blog isn't a gold blog without tips and tricks I will post this one quick tip for making some extra gold: where there is one there are many. For example when you see the same person posting a bunch of Dreadstones for significantly cheaper than the normal price, check all of the other epic gem types. You're very likely to see the same person listing a fist full of those for well under market price as well. If you see a lot of saronite ore being sold cheap, check eternals and rare gems. See cheap enchanting mats? Check the rest.

#
/2 - trade chat
2% - the estimated amount of all WoW subscribers that have over 100k gold
80/20 rule - 80% of your profits must come from 20% of your effort. Time is money friend


A
AH player - a person who gets great enjoyment from buying and selling on the auction house. Usually one who works within several different markets at a time.

Artificial inflation - when an item is listed for an extremely high price to fool auctioneer and similar add ons to thinking that a normal priced item is far below the average market price. People love getting a good deal even if the deal is as real as the cake

AFK crafting - Crafting a massive amount of items such as heavy borean leather or belt buckles while you are away from the keyboard or otherwise occupied.

AH - Auction House or to sell an item on the auction house.

Adam - adamantite ore or bars

Alch - alchemy


B
Boa enchants - enchantments which do not have an item level restriction and thus are sold at a premium to people leveling alts

Badges - refers to emblems, comes from the burning crusade expansion where bosses in a heroic instance or raid would reward you with a Badge of Justice. They were originally used much in the same way that emblems are now

Blue - a rare quality item

BS - Black Smithing


C
CD - Cool Down

CBA - Can't Be Arsed/Asked

CoD - Cash on Delivery, when an item is sent by in game mail to be purchased by the receiver when it arrives. Will stand in the mail box for two days. Beware though as the two day wait period can be taken advantage of, see this wow wiki page for details.

Ceiling - maximum price that nobody is able to post above due to a player consistently listing specific items at a fixed price

Commons - items of common quality, also known as greens

Casual seller - a person who only sells a few items in a certain market every so often as opposed to an established AH player who posts many items each day

cool down profession - a profession which has the ability to craft expensive items with very cheap materials but has a long cool down. Such as icy prisms or epic gem transmutation

Camp - to spend large amounts of time watching your auctions in order to instantly cancel any you are undercut on and post again immediately.

Cancel/post - the process of canceling all undercut auctions, retrieving your mail and posting them back on the auction house.


D
Discovery - a recipe that you can only learn by using a research cooldown or crafting items of that type which allow you to "discover" how to make others. Examples are Inscripition research and flask discoveries

DE - Disenchant

DE fodder - something that's only used is to be disenchanted


E
Entry cost - the amount of gold you must spend on materials and/or profession leveling to start working in a certain market. Also known as start up cost

Enggy - engineering

Ench - to enchant

Enggy pets - mini pets created by engineers, usually refers to Lil' smokey and Pet Bombling


F
Flood - a much larger than normal supply of materials or crafted items

Flagged - when Blizzard notices an account doing what they consider to be questionable actions

Fan mail - in game mails or tells that you recieve from angry competitors

Farm - to use a gathering profession to acquire raw materials

Flip - to buy something (such as a battered hilt) for a low price with the intent to resell for a profit.


G
Gevlon - A well known blogged who writes The Greedy Goblin blog

Goblin - A very aggressive auction player who is willing to accept little or no profits for an extended period of time in order to force others out of a certain market.

G - gold

Gold cap - the most gold a single character may hold at a time totaling 214,748g 36s 46c

G/H - gold per hour


H
Holes - Portable hole, a 24 spot bag sold by Haris Pilton

Hunter - a class which has no spec that needs glyphs. Ever.

Homework - researching a market and it's sub markets along with the main people that sell those related items and raw materials.

Haters - gonna hate

Harassment through Obfuscation - the technical terminology for that ass hat that posts 50 pages of infinite dust in singles.


I
IotS - Ink of the Sea

Inscriptionist - A made up nonsensicle word, used when the speaker has never heard of the word scribe.

Income - the total amount of gold you collect


J
JC - Jewel Crafting

JMTC - Just My Two Copper, a popular gold making blog


K


L
LW - Leather Working

LSW - refers to the add on Lil' Sparky's Workshop

Leveling kit - a collection of all materials needed to level an entire profession

L2P - Learn To Play


M
Murlocs - the most awesome and race in all of Warcraft

Mail bank(er) - a character who's sole purpose is to have massive amounts of different things sent to them in the mail without opening them. This is done because all in game mail will be held for 30 days before they are automatically returned to the sender

M&S - Morons and Slackers, a term coined by Gevlon

Mat cost - the total price of all materials used to craft something


N
Niche market - a small market which has a small customer base with a high demand. Usually has little to no competition

Nightmares - a prismatic gem crafted with a dragon's eye and infinite dust. Commonly used to meet the blue gem requirement for a meta

Ni Hao - A Chinese greeting roughly translated into English as "hello" or "hi." Is also used as a derogatory term for a stereotypical Chinese gold farmer.


O
Old world - refers specifically to only Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms

Opportunity cost - the cost of an item that is not in the form of gold. For example the Opportunity cost of a flask you farm the materials for is the time you spent farming and not doing something else. Another example would be using materials to craft an item which sells for less than a different item using the same materials

Orb - refers to crusader, runed, or frozen orbs depending on context


P
Patch day - the day when a patch is released, the highest day of selling for most auction players

Prof - profession

Primo - primordial saronite, pronounced prime-oh

Profession bags - large bags which can only carry specific items related to a named profession, such as mammoth mining bags or bag of jewels

Profit - the amount of gold you earn after subtracting the cost to make it

Proc - Percent Rate of OCcurrence, refers to when a random effect happens such as creating extra flasks from alchemy.

Prime time - the time of day when the largest amount of players are actively signed onto WoW, usually between the hours of 3pm and 9pm. May also refer to the hours between 11pm and 2am in which most raid groups are finishing and therefore buying the most amount of items at once


Q
QA - the add on Quick Auction


R
Reload macro - a macro which when hit will reload your user interface. May be written different ways:

/console reload ui
/reload ui

RMT - Real Money Trading , refers to the act of selling WoW gold for real world currency. Can result in a permanent ban from Warcraft

Re roll - entirely unlearning one profession to level a different one. May also refer to only unlearning a profession spec or mastery in favor of a different one rather than the entire profession itself

RED - Relentless Earthsiege Diamond, most commonly used meta gem for physical DPS classes

S
Shard - to disenchant an epic item

Secondary market - a market which is relied upon by another to exist. An example would be saronite bars being a submarket of belt buckle markets as the latter cannot exist without the former. Note that this does not always refer to raw materials

Snatch list - a list of items that will be automatically purchased when scanning the auction house via the add on Auctioneer

Short stack - a group items in a stack size smaller than the max size allowed

Silks - usually refers to different forms of spider silk. Different levels of spiders will drop different types of spider silk

Stokpile - has got what you need!

Spec - an additional skill learned by several professions that gives you access to different craftables or ability to create multiple items for the price of one. Is also interchangable with Mastery

Specialty cloth - refers to moonshroud, ebonweave, or spellweave crafted by tailors.

Scribe - a person with the trade skill inscription

Standard inventory - an item which you will always keep in stock

Secondary inventory - an item which you will only craft or sell when it is not needed for anything other markets you work in

Saronite Saturday - refers to the fact that saronite (and all other raw gathered materials) will be in large supply and at low prices during the weekend

Stack sizes - a method to keep track of what you have sold and need to craft based on a set number of how many items you have in a stack at any given time

Scroll - refers to either a rune scroll of fortitude (crafted by scribes) or an enchanted armor/weapon vellum

Saronite shuffle - The act of prospecting saronite and using all the gems to create rings with jewel crafting to sell or disenchant, craft meta gems, cut rare gems, etc. See this image for a nice flow chart of the possibilities.

Saronites - when "Saronite" is made plural it is most often referring to Primordial saronites


T
Threshold - the highest price you are willing to buy at or the lowest price you will sell at

ToC epics - item level 245 gear which is crafted from bind on use recipes found in Trial of the Crusader

Twink - originally used to refer to a character made for the purpose of PvP to get the best quality, and therefore most expensive, gear and enchants they can obtain at their level. Has grown in use to refer to all leveling characters

TSW - trade skill window

There is only Zul! - a Ghost Busters movie reference that is said when only receiving a single eye of zul from the satchel of gems dropped by onyxia

TBC - The Burning Crusade expansion or referring to things associated with Outland

Threads - spellthreads crafted by tailors which are used by casting classes leg enchantments.

TS - titansteel

Titans - titansteel


U
Uld epics - item level 226 gear which is crafted from bind on use recipes found in Ulduar

UF - Uber Farmer, one who spends large amounts of time using a gathering profession usually to sell the materials at very low prices. Also known as a power farmer


V
Vendor jumping - the act of buying items from out of the way or otherwise obscure vendors to sell on the auction house with a large mark up

Vendor bait - an item which is better sold to a vendor than used


W
Wrath - the wrath of the lich king expansion, may also refer to northrend

Wall - putting up so many items of the same kind that it takes up several pages on the auction house

World drop - an item that may drop from any mob of a simillar level


X
Xmute - Transmutation or to transmute.


Y
YMMV - Your Millage May Vary. Meaning that what the speaker is saying may not always be the case to with the listener

Z
Zone drop - an item that may drop from any or most mobs in a particular zone


Thanks for stopping by!