Part Two – Investing in the Auction House
In Making the Auction House Work for you Part One we talked about some of the add-ons that make using the auction house a simple and more pleasant experience, as well as ways to use your professions to make gold. Hopefully you’ve applied some of those tips and have begun to grow your in game funds.
In this post we’re going to talk about investing some of that new found wealth. There are ways to double and even triple what you have recently made.
Just like in the Real World investments do not come without risks so take your time, do your homework; know your realm and understand the market. This will definitely aide in your success.
Using Undermine and my past experiences I’ll be able to give you a few examples of how investing works. First, you need to determine how much you’re willing to lose. As I’ve already mentioned there is always the chance that your investment may not pay off. Make sure you write this number down somewhere or apply it to memory, it’s very easy to get into the spirit of investing and overspend. Especially if you’re anything like me. /wink
Pro Tip: This is where having a bank alt comes in handy. Creating a level one bank alt to keep track of all your items frees up your main toon(s) from diminishing bag space. Also, if your main toon is a raiding toon it eliminates the need to run auctioneer on any toon other than your bank alt. This is important because auctioneer, when run with other add-ons, can sometimes lower frame rates.
How to invest successfully:
There are certain items that rarely go without being needed. They are forever ‘classic’. I’ll list just a few to give you an idea of what I mean. Max level enchanting mats, epic gems, ore, herbs, bags, max level pots, flasks, buff food or materials to make buff foods. You see where I’m going with this? These are items you know will always be safe investments because you can always re-sell them. Even if you re-sell them at cost you haven’t taken a loss.
If you take a little time to sort through just a few of those ‘classic’ items you’re bound to find one or two that are available in less quantity than others. When starting out I suggest you focus on items that are selling lower than the market value and in small quantities. (You can however purchase large quantities of items you find well below market value but that comes with greater risk of loss.)
An example to the above would be if you did an auction house search on bags and infinite dust to find 17 frostweave bags listed at 81% of the normal auction house value and 300 stacks of infinite dust at 82% of the normal auction house value; you’d be able to rule out the infinite dust fairly quickly. In this example the bags would be the best investment. You could purchase ALL of the bags and relist them at 90% to 100%, thus making back your gold and bit more.
Pro Tip: Always spend time researching your choices before you invest. Usually items are worth buying on the weekends and selling during the week.
Investing is a great way to grow in game funds but requires patience. Use the same auction house techniques as described in my first post, listing few amounts for a shorter time frame to prevent loss. Minimizing loss is essential if you want to invest. Remember when investing, real world common sense applies.
Pro Tip: Keep an eye in trade chat. Often times folks will advertise their sales in trade chat and sometimes offer their items at substantially low prices. This is a perfect opportunity to buy and sell!
For those of you interested in taking a higher risk for larger pay out you can use the same example of frostweave bags and infinite dust as above. Only you would purchase BOTH the infinite dust and the frostweave bags. You can resell the infinite dust in smaller quantities for a larger amount, even listing it up to 110% (or more) of market value. Why? Because you would currently hold the market on infinite dust, you are the only one listing it. This type of investment does come with larger risks because others will eventually list infinite dust to compete with your auction. You would need to spend time checking, relisting and perhaps even purchasing more infinite dust to make this work. Often this concept of controlling a specific item on the auction house can return a substantial amount of gold.
Good luck in your future investments!
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