Assumed value

One expression that I tend to use now and again is "assumed value" or "assumed price." I wanted to take the time today to talk about what I actually mean by that and how to apply this theory to your own AH playing. The easiest way to explain this is to think of the assumed price as a buying/selling threshold. The primary difference here is that a threshold is based off of average market prices while the assumed value is based off of essentially nothing. That's right, nothing at all.

This is a value that you place on something personally and base that value on whatever you please. You take this number and base all of your other, more concrete, prices around it. Here's an easy example. To craft certain runes and pieces of gear you need vendor sold materials, simple and straight forward mats. These mats cost anywhere from a few silver to a few gold each and the recipes that require them are just as varied.

So I am giving them an assumed value of 3g no matter what the actual value is. This is the first reason I'm going to cover for using an assumed value, simplicity. If you were to just total them up into your thresholds individually things would get a lot more complicated with many remainders at the end. Doing this keeps it simple, fast, and efficient.

The next reason that having an assumed value is important is to calculate your selling thresholds easier when using materials that aren't typically bought. Things like eternal planar dust, shimmering shards, or minor catalysts are a good example. I'll tell you how this works first and then explain it a bit more thoroughly after words. Using a shard as an example lets say that they're 10 plat on auction, when selling one of mine I'll undercut by 50g. So anytime that I craft something that uses a minor catalyst my assumed price on them is 9.5 plat which is what I calculate in my threshold for it.

Now let me explain why. Things like catalysts I don't usually buy and hold onto so I only sell them. I don't however sell them plain and instead use them to craft epics so I need to have a threshold for them still. Basically I set my assumed price to whatever my selling price "would be" if I were to sell the materials plain. It's like how I say market price doesn't matter because what you paid for something matters more. This is the same idea except the opposite.

Here's a longer explanation. It doesn't matter what they're selling for on the AH, what matters is what you are ABLE to sell them for. If a catalyst is up for 100 plat that doesn't mean you should value them at that price, because they aren't ever going to sell. Now lets use a more realistic example. Lets say that they're on AH for 8 plat.

Obviously you have to undercut them if you want yours to sell any time soon so what you are able to sell them for is 7 plat. Since you're only able to get 7 plat out of selling it, then you shouldn't value them any higher. This assumed value I suppose could also be called their actual value because it is what you are actually going to get from selling it. Keep this in mind next time you go to sell something using rare materials.

And closing with one final example of when to use an assumed value. Whenever I RB a ton of greens I get loaded up with flickering shards, far more than I'll ever use. I can't sell them aside from a vendor because there are just that many around and you don't use a lot of them at all. Because of that I put their assumed price right at what a vendor will pay me.

I'll never ever sell them on AH but I did spend money to get them by buying mats to craft gear and RB. So I set their assumed price at 6g which is slightly under what I'm paying to craft RB gear. Even though they'll only ever sell to a vendor, I still paid money to acquire them which gives them a value just as much as it gives a value to all of the useful materials I get.


Everything has a price. Nothing is free.