Quick returning report

In my on going effort to provide tips on how to make money, here's a short recap of what I've done with my stokpile of NR materials and other assorted goodies. I'm sure you have some semi-useless stuff hanging around so the main purpose of this post is to give you an idea of what can still be sold for a decent profit and to reinforce another tip that always holds true. If you're not using/selling something, it's not making you any gold. So get cracking and clean out them alts!

Fused wiring - Sold all at 8g each
Titansteel - Sold most at 20g each
NR common gems - Sold all reds/blues at 1g each, cut and vendored the rest
Arctic fur - Sold a few at 34g each

Epic leg armors - Sold all at 65g each
Frost lotus - Sold all at 4g each
Northern spices - Sold all at 22g per stack
True silver bars - Sold all at 6g each

Eternals - Sold a few stacks from 60-100g each
Titanium bars - Sold most for 5g each
Khorium bars - Sold all at 55g each
Saronite bars - Sold all at 55g per stack

True silver ore - Sold all at 50g/stack
Dragonfin Fillet - Sold all 30g/stack
Assorted epics - Sold all plate at 100-200 each

Grand total profit from cleaning out the bank: 3,368g


Not bad for a days work I think, certainly better than letting it sit there like a pack rat or drop/vendor it all. I'm just about done with my addOns and figuring out just WTF I need to stokpile as far as old world stuff is concerned. So far it's looking like mongoose and spell power scrolls are still important. Getting my enchanter situated with bag space is going to be a pain for sure. They're going to be my first toon to level up and I still don't know of a good way to keep track of sold scrolls aside from manually checking the mail.

In addition to that there's also the ever present problem of bag space. While questing you're going to get a ton of useless junk to vendor and quest items and all my AH materials and scrolls and drops... yuck! So I'm not out of the deep end of bothersome work just yet, but getting close.

Lastly, thanks to snakeoil for their comment on selling berserker scrolls. Sold one moments after I listed it for 100g profit. Yes profit as in 100g more than what the mats cost when it was current. Fun times.


Thanks for stopping by!

Taking Stok

NOTE: I'm not 100% totally back yet so this will be the last post until after new years, officially on January 3. I'm taking a short vacation to spend time with family and any time I spend on game between now and then will be playing my wolfy or leveling up. Lastly I've added a detailed about entry to the blog which I posted before this which you can find over yonder --->


I've officially gotten the game reinstalled and while sorting out addons, I'm taking a look at what stokpiles I have left over. Holy shit do I have a lot of junk that's nigh worthless now. Or at least worthless to me, teehee. I'm sure things like titansteel and such are basically vendor food but I'll try to AH them regardless. But I still have a ton of saronite bars, common gems and the sort that I'm certain that a leveling JC or BS will be in need of. There's also my old stokpiles or TBC mats for random markets that I mucking about with. So I listed my primals on the AH for a significant undercut and sold off all of them for 8-20g each. Not bad for a moment's work.

I also have a good amount of vanilla mats so I can get right into making twink enchant scrolls which is cool. Then there's the mass of NR mats that I have no idea what I'm going to do with, I'll most likely just sell them as is unless I find some NR level enchants that are still worthwhile. I've done some reading on EJ about enchants and so far the only one that's still viable that I've found is stamina to bracers. If you have any tips on that subject I'd be delighted if you'd share.

There is however an ass ton of excess tanking gear, possibly even a METRIC ass ton. Amazing right? Well my pally had a shit load of extra gear cuz I'm just hardcore like that and my warrior and DK had their fair share. There was also all of the pvp gear and WG crap. A good amount of it was DE'd but the bulk of it had to either be vendored or plain dropped.

After all of the winter cleaning was taken care of I wound up with a few stacks of abyss crystals and over 2,000g in vendor junk. Now THAT is amazing. Or pathetic. Ya know, however you wanna look at it.

Sadly there are still several stacks of epic uncut gems of assorted colors with the main man Stokpile having at least 30 cut. That and loads of abyss crystals which I doubt I can move at all. Now I'm not officially officially back into the AH game as I still have loads of cleaning and sorting to do and I still wanna take my time enjoying my DK again. BUT that doesn't mean that I won't be sharing good deals and ideas when I come across them.

Why do I mention that?

Well the moment I walked Stokpile to the auctioneer I found my first horde of morons that wanted to give away their money. While clearing out all of my epic gems I noticed the vendor value of them cut was 9g. While sorting through the pages on the AH I found almost a hundred raw epics selling for 5-7g each. Raw they vendor for 6. Ahem, please excuse me while I laugh myself silly. So right off the bat I made 1008g from the AH and I haven't been back for an hour. Oh this is going to be fun. The same thing went for rare gems as well, listed on the AH for below vendor price and WELL below the vendor price of cut gems.

Naturally I recommend you doing this on your server while the silliness is out there still. Look for any WotlK gems or just add them to your snatch list and vendor yourself mad. So there's your AH giggle of the day!


Thanks for stopping by!

About the AH pile: My story

This entry here is going to serve as an extended "About" page which I'll have linked over yonder. --->

The idea here is to give my background in warcraft and the auction house, mostly the AH. This should let you know just who I am, what I do, and what I've done.


WoW History.
I started playing just after patch 2.4 was released as a paladin who I had specced as protection from level 10 and on. I picked a pally because hey why not? The same thing goes for tanking, just felt like it. Nothing special. But I came to find out that I really enjoyed tanking and was quite good at it. After hitting the then level cap of 70 I started gearing up through regular dungeons, crafted gear and reputations.

My first raid experience was in Serpent Shrine Cavern as add tank for all the trash and bosses. Mind you my gear was barely acceptable for the entry level 10 man raid Karazan, let alone tier 5 content. But there I was. I did alright for my first time tanking anything serious, made a few mistakes but corrected them right away. Things went on like this for most of TBC with all my my income from daily quests and farming primal air in nagrand with engineering. Sure it was good money, but too much of my time was spent wanting to play rather than actually playing.

Enter wrath of the lich king.

Casually leveling to the new cap of 80 and making good money selling every little thing I picked off the ground from meat to cloth be it to a vendor or on the AH. This is where the gold making story really begins.


The AH baron begins.
I was curious about what this whole "inscription doo-boppy" was all about. So I made a post on Maintankadin asking how scribes can make money at all with such low prices and page after page of cheap glyphs. Obviously I had no idea what I was talking about or about to get into. I was then refered to the Greedy Goblin blog and read all about how Gevlon got gold capped with very little work using only inscription as a source of income. I read all of his posts and realized that I was doin' it wrong(tm).

So I decided to give it a shot and maxed the profession, stockpiled inks etc and started selling them. The cash started to flood my mailbox daily! I was truly amazed and the sheer profit I was making with such little time investment. I then started reading other gold blogs and explored other markets. My first was JC which was an immediate success. With the style of posting, timing, and undercut methods it was literally as easy as buying materials - cut gems - profit.

After about a month and a half of serious AH playing is when I decided to start up this blog and aim for the gold cap of 214k gold at the time. And of course at this time, people having max gold were almost entirely unheard of. In fact I'm sure most people weren't even aware that there WAS a cap.

I now had every profession minus alchemy maxed with oodles of rare recipes and high end patterns. I was pulling in around 50k a week at this point as I had entirely taken over the epic gem, enchanting, glyph, and BS markets. I decided to get into alchemy and selling flasks mostly for the purpose of curiosity and giving the readers a step by step guide of what to do when entering a new market that they have no experience with. It went alright, I made some profit but nothing staggering. Simply put I decided not to keep up with it due to the extra effort needed and tiny profit margins and stuck with xmute mastery.


From the ground up.
To hold my interest in the game when not up to my usual AH antics I started a side project. I started a level 1 alliance priest on my server where all of my empire was horde, and decided to see how much I could make from absolutely nothing with the only source of income being questing and the AH. The only support I gave myself from my mains was a set of heirloom gear and a wish for luck.

At the beginning things were, in a word, terrible. I couldn't afford skill training, shit I couldn't even afford water and that's not a joke at all! Thank god I had free self heals or I'd have been in real trouble. But being the observant person that I am, I know what sells so I took some clam meat that is used to level early cooking and sold 2 stacks on the AH that I got from questing. That's how my ass broke space goat made their start up capital. A while 20 gold coins. This stocked me up with water, maxed out my skills, and allowed me to buy parchment to level inscription.

I did my daily glyph research while leveling and just before outlands, I dropped herbalism and now had enchanting and inscription as my only professions. That means ONLY, as in no first aid or fishing even. I leveled enchanting slowly with cheap mats and went back and farmed a few rep recipes and started to sell agility and crusader enchants.

At level 40 I had dual spec, at 68 I had CWF and at 80 I had full epic gear that I purchased along with epic gems in every spot. 2 weeks after hitting 80 I had epic flying as well. After 2 whole months of this project I had 50k in hard cash along with a solid market share of enchanting and owned the glyph market.


A millionaire born.
Not long before TGU project was a success, I had reached the milestone of 1 million gold in cash. I spent this on the biggest gold sink I could find: a run through ICC 25. Since I had stopped bothering to guild hop with so many shit guilds out there I hadn't gotten to see all of the last raid and decided that I can buy anything. And I did. It was after this that I took a break from the game. I left with 500k in cash and a ton of spare materials to boot.

I am now back in the game and starting up my business empire on the AH. I am once again invading every single market under the sun and aiming to double my last achievement of a million gold.


Thanks for stopping by!

How do I make pewpew again?

Quick note of what you can get out of these posts detailing my return to the AH game. These steps that I'm taking (aside from learning how to play a dk/pally again) are the same steps one should take when entering new markets, joining a new server, or getting back into the game from a break like me.


I'm sure most of you have taken a break from the game at some point only to return and find that everything has changed so much. Well that's the spot that I'm in. Even though I love the AH game I know that's not all that I'll be doing so first thing's first; time to relearn how to death knight pewpew and pally tank again. The main purpose of this entry is to once more drive home the necessity of doing your homework and research the markets before diving into them. Granted I am quite well off, but that doesn't mean I can be reckless. 450k can bottom out rather quick with maxing out a ton of professions, buying epic gems and a large stokpile of new cata materials. Always be mindful of your spending!

Once again I'll be looking over at yonder links and start reading up on Maintankadin and EJ to get up to date on what's going on. Naturally all of my former addons are completely broken and, with all the changes to the AH interface, are probably going to stay broken. From what I can tell, totally automated auction posting is a thing of the past though it's not completely manual either. This means that a drastic change in my daily routine is in order. Of course I'll be giving a full write up on my daily "How to: Auction house" once it's mostly figured out.

After getting a good picture of what materials I have, toons and professions to level, I'll be on the hunt for addons to check out. First thing I'll be looking at is the new versions of auctioneer and QA. After that I'll be looking for a postal and mailOpener replacement to auto collect all of my mail.

However one thing that hasn't changed and never will is the people. Our lovely customers! Because of that, my standard MO isn't going to be altered at all. Undercut by 5g minimum no matter how cheap the items being sold are all the way up to 100g undercuts. Depending on how inflation goes this might increase of course.

The most I can gather from the glyph market is that the use of them all has changed in terms of which you SHOULD be using and which are just there for flavor or plain useless. AH wise they're basically the same as before just with higher material costs. Every new toon needs glyphs and needs a lot more now with there being 9 slots to fill and the ability to exchange all of them at any time. So more large class wide sales instead of just on a respec. In other words, you're still counting on quantity of sales and not quality. Roughly the same profit margins and same style of competition. one or two major sellers and the rest are casuals or leveling dumps.

Enchanting has more options than ever before with so much to craft and sell. From what I can tell some of the old vanilla enchants are popular as well. So my first step once everything gets turned on will be leveling my DK enchanter girl. I always say to never level without a gathering profession, but while questing enchanting counts because of the DE. That and I only have a single toon with a gathering profession (mining) which is my warrior who is just boring to play imo.

Suffice to say once I get all my addOn tech sorted out an account for all the raw materials i have to liquidate, I'll be doing market research. I'll first be looking over the4 general sale price of materials first and then seeing what I can currently make (if anything) to sell with them. Then I'll look into any market trends all while trying to identify my major competitors (if you're still there, I'm looking at you Mulegirl).

My main concern is about how much automation I can do as that was a large part of my success and laughs. There's nothing funnier than going afk for the day while smelting 500 saronite bars while your personal AH campers are waiting for you to log off. Ah those were some good times.

The first step when getting into the AH game is doing your research into everything you plan to deal with. And since I'm not one to do things half assed I'll be getting into every market I can find again so that means a lot of research and reading. But a little Yoda note though, nothing fulfilling ever comes easy.

As always any comments on recommended markets or addOns are completely welcome.


Thanks for stopping by!

Le grand retour

Short version first. Starting to play the AH and wow again so I'll be posting regularly after new years day.

Introductions.

Hello all, Stokpile here. Writing this post to let everyone know that I am soon to return to the wow scene and the AH. And with that comes my blogging about making the wow gold. I am going to continue my efforts to Yoda the poor and the misguided in ways of becoming well dressed and acquiring all things shiny. As the holiday season is here I decided to get myself the present of getting back into something I love to do: ruling the auction house.

Some of you may be old readers, some may just be looking for a few tips on how to weigh yourself down with gold. So please, allow me to introduce myself once again. If you remember who I am feel free to just skip ahead to The Plan.

My name is Stokpile, AH extraordinaire, the well dressed and lover of all things shiny. During the height of my AH playing there was not a single market, small or large, where I was not listing half of the supply. Be it cut gems, crafted gear, enchant scrolls, etc. I buy, craft, and sell everything. It took me less than 2 months from starting the AH game to reach the gold cap. Once i hit the first cap I blew about 50k on useless gear to pimp out my banker. Several months later I had broke the million gold marker and was still going strong.

After achieving every goal I had in the AH, cleared all of hard mode Ulduar and got my drake (only the third group on the server to get at 80) I decided to spend a ton of gold and retire. I hired one of the top guilds to take me and a friend through all of ICC 25 to the tune of 800,000 gold. Yes I spent that much to be carried when I CBA to find a decent raid guild anymore. I held my own at a solid 10k+ dps and when all was said and done, I still have just under a million gold left over.

Yes, I have almost a million gold AFTER dropping 800k on an ICC run.

Shortly before leaving the game, I started a project where I created a single toon of the opposite faction with the intent of proving that you can get rich all by yourself with zero help. I called this project "From the Ground Up" which you can read all about in the archives. In two months I had purchased epic gear, epic gems, and top level enchants, epic. In the span of two months I had bought all of that and still had 50k in hard currency along with a significant share of the glyph and enchanting markets. All by myself with no support from a single person and the only help I had from my main enterprise was a set of heirloom gear.

By doing this I have proved that you do not need good luck, awesome timing, support, or an already existing market share or large bank account. Be smart, be thorough, and be patient.

Suffice to say, I am good at what I do and (in my opinion at least) also good at sharing my knowledge in such a way that anybody can understand.



The Plan.

Since the game has changed so drastically and, so I've heard at least, CC is actually being used in dungeons again I am quite excited to be playing again. And of course a goblin like me cannot stay from the AH forever. I'll officially be writing about my exploits in a weeks time (once I have my account reactivated and sorted out) but until then I'll be going over the start up phases of business.

So the initial few posts will be about (re)starting up a business to encompass every market in the auction house. I may or may not be changing servers so watch out! For everyone that is looking to get back into the AH game but feels so far out of touch keep reading and I'll put you on the right path. I'll be covering all of the obvious essentials such as addons, methods, routines, and so forth.

So who are these initial few posts going to be for? Everyone of course. There's so many subtleties to the AH game that any info is useful to you no matter what level you're playing at. But more specifically, if you are doing well and want to really get into it head long, you'll be in for some good tips and "how to" info. If you're coming back from a break after WotLK like I am and want to start up making money again, you're in the same boat as I am.

Here's the short version of what to expect. Daily posts on starting up a full enterprise AH business, addon reviews of what works, how to use addons and a daily routine that I recommend, markets to get into/avoid, updated list of all that I sell, daily tidbits or full posts on gold making tips, and of course more business reports.

I'm looking forward to getting back into writing about the AH game and taking my DK chica through the new content in a more casual pace and hearing from all of you fine readers out there about your own AH exploits. So until then...


Thanks for stopping by!