Rags To Riches In WoW - Horde Style: Day 5

I'm now level 11, looking good (can you imagine an Orc with a plunging neckline? /shudder) and having fun. I'm on Day 5 of my rags to riches story. If you are just joining us, go ahead and click on the Rags To Riches category along the right side of this blog to get caught up.

I'm feeling pretty confident about my progress, though I still feel a bit hampered by an auction house that is more sluggish than the ones I'm used to on the Alliance side. No worries though. I will break through.

Logging on this evening I'm happy to see my mailbox fairly full.



Now, before I get to how much my auctions bring in, take a good look at the previous screenshot and let me know if you notice anything that irks you. OK, something that should irk you by this point of the series. Give up? I'll give you a hint: take a look at how much money I have.

2.59 gold! Why is that a big deal? Because that means that I couldn't spend all my coin. Ideally I should have barely enough to buy a Hordebucks Black Coffee. If that gold is in my pocket it's not working for me in the Auction House (AH). You need to spend to make.

Let's see if I can't remedy that problem. After collecting all my auctions I have 31 gold and change.



Off to the AH. After a scan and some purchases I still have waaaaay too much gold in my pocket so it's time to step it up a notch.

I'm going start performing a different kind of bargain hunting that is a little more advanced than what I've written about so far in this series. In fact I haven't written about it before in this blog.

I'm going to hunt for blues.

Like I mentioned earlier, a key principle in making money in the AH is to spend money. While profit margin percentages won't change much (the difference between what you bought it for and what you sell it for minus any fees) when shopping for blues, the amount you receive is much greater. With blues and purples you can focus on bigger ticket items and generate much more gold.

There is also more risk in this strategy. It's possible to put all your coin into just a few items. If you are attempting this strategy for the first time, I recommend using no more than half of the money you have set aside for the AH when shoping for Rares. That way if you make a mistake on a purchase (it will happen and that's OK when it does) you'll still have a cushion along with your regular gold flow.

My plan today is to search in the Weapons and Armor categories for items that are Rare or better and pick up the bargains. I'll be using the built-in searching that the AH interface provides out of the box along with the color-coding that Auctioneer Advanced (AA) uses to show how an item is priced compared to what it's market value is.

There's an added twist - I won't necessarily rely on what AA thinks the market value is when sizing up a potential item. Here's where market knowledge comes into play.

When I fire up the search I find a good target...



The Chesterfall Musket is a good twink item for hunters in battlegrounds. It's level requirement of 28 makes it next to the best rare gun you can get for the 20-29 bracket (with Ironweaver being the best). Since there are a fair number of players that stop when they hit the high end of a bracket for battlegrounds, people will spend more on a blue because the weapon/armor will be used for quite a while (and carry over into the first couple levels after they crest the bracket).

While AA is saying that this price is practically market value I don't buy it. On the Alliance side, in other realms, I've seen this go for somewhere in the 40's. Now, I don't know if there are a lot of hunters on the Horde side that use guns. From my battleground skirmishes when playing alliance it seemed like all the hunters I encountered where using bow and arrows.

But I do know that there are some hunters out there carrying some big iron. Because this AH sees lower activity overall my bet is that rares are tougher to come by as well. I don't think it will go for what I'm used to seeing, and I want to turn a profit quickly. So I grab it and post it for a little more than twice what I bought it for.



We'll see how well I do tomorrow. As for the other things I've picked up today, here's the list (number before slash is total purchase price and after is total posted value).

Aquamarine (x1) 0.40g/2.36g
Blue Sapphire (x1) 2.75g/4.94g
Brilliant Necklace (x3) 0.60g/0.94g <-- Stack of 1
Chesterfall Musket (x1) 15.00g/31.04g
Citrine (x4) 1.28g/1.39g <-- Stack of 2
Core of Earth (x1) 1.00g/5.46g
Dense Stone (x6) 0.36g/1.48g
Elemental Earth (x2) 0.41g/1.05g <-- Stack of 1
Heavy Hide (x10) 0.80g/2.90g
Heavy Stone (x40) 0.96g/3.30g
Knothide Leather (x20) 4.00g/11.41g
Lesser Eternal Essence (x2) 2.00g/5.97g
Long Elegant Feather (x5) 0.54g/2.40g
Mageweave Cloth (x40) 2.00g/4.30g
Primal Earth (x2) 5.00g/7.01g
Scroll of Protection (x2) 0.15g/1.25g
Silver Bar (x7) 2.25g/2.27g <-- Stack of 4
Silver Ore (x2) 0.95g/2.41g
Small Glimmering Shard (x11) 1.00g/0.78g <-- Stack of 4
Watcher's Cinch of Fiery Wrath (x1) 0.20g/1.20g
Wool Cloth (x27) 1.42g/3.06g

/cross fingers