The solo glyph seller - a quick guide

Yesterdays post got a wee comment:

How do you go about making and buying all those glyphs every morning? Is it all done manually or do you have an addon that helps with either the buying or crafting (if not both)? 

I'll try and answer the question I think was being asked... but I may be wrong.

Before I moved my glyphs to horde I had three glyph sellers. Now I have Fringe doing the same job. Having a single glyph seller isn't as complicated as I had feared, even though the glyphs I sell take up nearly 11 Packs of Endless Pockets. So what I have found the best way to run the entire business through a single toon and what pitfalls are along the way?

The reason I used three sellers on Alliance was due to how I divided the glyphs amongst them. I separated by ink type (rather than class). It also allowed me to now have to keep running back and forth to switch bags, which, at the time, I felt would be a barrier to efficient glyph selling. I accept I was wrong.

Fringe is located in the Tauren part of Orgrimmar. Within a few seconds run, she has access to the Auction House, a mailbox and a bank. They are closer together than any other location I have found although I admit to being less knowledgeable of the Horde's AHs than I am of Alliance.

Fringe uses four addons. Auctioneer, ZeroAuctions, Postal and Auditor. She has 11 packs of endless pockets, containing all the glyphs she sells. They are roughly divided by class, with the 11th pack holding the overflow when a class has more than 32 glyphs. She has a maximum of 20 of each glyph type.

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I always assume that collecting mail was going to be a pain. Its always nice when glyphs stack, but if you can only carry about a third of the glyphs at a time, there is always going to come a time when a glyph arriving in your bags wont have a stack to join. Soon enough your bags are full and mail stops arriving. Your only solution is a trip to the bank to sort everything out.

This is true, but can be minimised. Using ZA I post glyphs in batches:

Lets just number the bags 1 to 11. I post glyphs from bags 1,2 3 and 4. I then go to the bank and swap backs then post from bags 5,6,7 and 8. One more visit to the bank I exchange bags 5,6,7 with bags 9, 10 and 11. I then post these and log off.

I rarely log on until the glyphs expire. The glyphs will have expired in the same order as they went on, and how the mail box works is when you have more than 50 mails waiting for you, the mailbox will give you the newest mail first.

This means that expires glyphs from bags 9,10 and 11 arrive first. Then the glyphs from bags 5,6,7 and 8 and then finally the ones from bags 1, 2, 3 and 4. Providing you just logged off after posting you last glyphs the day before, this means that the first glyphs from the mailbox will neatly stack with its siblings. Once you see a glyph in you bags which isn't stacking, wait for those 50 mails to arrive and then immediately go to your bank. Flick the unstacked glyphs into the bank (where they will automatically stack) and switch bag 9, 10 and 11 for bags 5, 6 and 7 (you already have bag 8 on you) and head back to the mailbox.

Again glyphs will neatly stack, and once unstacked glyphs appear run to your bank, flick, switch so you have bags 1, 2, 3 and 4 and head back to the mailbox. The rest of the glyphs will stack, your gold will arrive next and you are all set to repost your glyphs.

I've found this works a treat. But it only works if you let the glyphs expire...

Now there are people that will curse me for even considering cancelling auctions. But it happens. It happens for a number of reasons, not least because I try to only post in the morning. With 24 hour listings and the time it takes to empty the mail box and list glyphs, it takes about 20 minutes to sort everything out. And means that if you post at 7am on Monday, its going to be 7.20am on Tuesday and 7.40am on Wednesday. And that's only if you log on the second the last glyph has expired.

In reality its going to be 30+ minutes later than the previous day when you have your glyphs posted. Now when I start work at 8.30am (and I'm lucky that I have a 5 minutes drive to work), to be able to successful post each day before work without every cancelling a single auction, I'd have to be posting at 6am on a Monday morning to make sure I was still able to post my friday run. And what about weekends?

No, I cancel glyphs. Fact. People might suggest just posting over the top, which is an ok idea, but if a bunch my glyphs are going to expire in 30 minutes but are still the cheapest on the market (and so ZA wont post over the top of them) you risk losing sales.

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I only cancel a couple of times a week, usually when I know I've been undercut across the board. However cancelling glyphs results in glyphs arriving in the mailbox in a slightly different order. Going back to our previous example - after day one we logged off with bags 8, 9, 10 and 11 on us. Now this time instead of running straight to the mail box we need to first go to the bank and grab bags 1, 2, 3 and 4. Go to mailbox, collect until unstacked glyphs arrive, finish that set of 50 mails, bank, flick, grab bags 5, 6, 7 and 8, mail box etc etc.

This time there will be a few mails arrive out of sequence for reasons I haven't worked out, but even so, if you do cancel auctions you can still collect your mails in a relatively efficient manner.

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Crafting glyphs is easy as well. I just have the overflow bag on me and grab three other bags. I can then quickly review glyphs by class and using ZA set up a production run. Then its just a matter of logging to Puraa, making the glyphs and organising a neutral AH transfer. I generally do this on the weekend when I have spare time

I hope that gives a wee insight  in how Fringe has been working. Nothing new here but its always worth putting in text just in case.