I was chatting with a guildie last night following purchasing a new belt for Sardonica, who has finally hit honoured with the Avengers of Hyjal.
Mudgutzz sells Ebonsteel Belt Buckles as one of the ways he makes gold. He's not the biggest seller on Alliance/Caelestrasz but he sits in the top five suppliers. And he posed an interesting question which I fumbled around to find an answer for...
The Ebonsteel Market is usually a competitive market on any server. The buckle is the only enhancement available for a item worn in the waist slot so if you are in anyway interested in your level 85 character you will either be buying one of these, having one made or making one yourself.
Prices generally sit around 150-200g per buckle, below the US server average. At the time of writing there are very few available but generally there are between 50 and 100 buckles at any time.
As I said earlier its a competitive market - undercutting is rife. Mud often finds himself undercut within a few minutes. However Mud is a smart cookie and doesnt get drawn into the undercut game. He just leaves buckles up and lets them expire.
This means he is often not the cheapest buckle available - yet he still makes sales. In fact Mud was telling me that he occasionally posts buckles at prices significantly over market price (i.e. 300g+). Yet occasionally these sell as well.
I dont know the reason for his posting at higher prices. My supposition is that its one of two possibilities:
1. He's posting when very few/none are on the AH and therefore resetting the price or undercutting the few overpriced buckles available at the time
2. He's being sensible and throwing a few buckles on at higher prices just in case the market comes to him i.e everything cheaper sells and he's next in line
However Mud further explains that he gets sales at 300g+ when there are dozens of other buckles listed at prices way below his. He wanted to hear my thoughts on it...and I admit I floundered around to think up a coherent answer.
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I came up with the two most obvious answers:
1. Laziness - someone just buys the first one they see when they search the AH. In the WoW economy these days the difference between 150g and 300g is nothing. I'm somehwat guilty of this myself - I buy cut gems just to save having to log over to cut one thinking nothing of paying 100g if I've other things I want to be doing. Of course I always buy the cheapest available but I still spend gold I dont need to, with laziness being the root cause.
2. Stupidity - if there are multiple pages (i.e. more than 50 items listed) when an AH search is run the order that items appear isnt always sequenced by price. If a screen full of 300+ buckles appear its possible that someone just buys one not realising there are other , cheaper, items a click away on the next page.
These both make sense but my ongoing ponderings have tried to come up with other possibilities. I admit I've struggled but came up with a three more.
3. A point of principle - Now if there is one thing that Mudgutzz has in his favour is that it is impossible to find anything to dislike about him. He is a corner stone of MTRs and a fine chap to boot. However there are other characters on each and every server who arent of such high calibre. Just as a matter of principle, some people will avoid buying from certain sellers. I have a few myself I wouldn't give my money to. I have no doubt that there are some that have a similarly low opinion of me. Perhaps Muddy was selling the cheapest buckles of the list of 'upstanding members of the Caelestrasz economy'
4. Not too hot, not too cold - Not likely in this case (because buckles generally sell in singles - and selling multiple buckles in a single sale is infreqent) but people do buy to order. I can sell stacks of 15 volatile life at prices over and above the cheapest volatile life on the AH at the time. This is because you need 15 volatile life for the daily transmute (if you arent making truegold). Of course stacks of 15 will sell more often than stacks of 200, but also they regularly sell when there are cheaper singles on the AH. This ties into point 1 - laziness.
5. Absence makes the mind confused - it may be something as simple as Mud logged off knowing he had a few buckles up for 300g with a lot of other cheaper ones. Overnight saw a bug rush on buckles and so many sold that his were the cheapest and sold as well. Before Mud logged back on another seller posted a bunch more buckles at market price. Mud logs in and finds a 300g sale in his mailbox but a load at market price on the AH
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I'd be interested to hear of any other suggestions to Muds quandary. We all see this happening - is there a way to tap into this to make even more gold?
9 comments:
I recently adopted a strategy for selling all my stuff (mostly glyphs) that has been working. Thing is that the default AH UI sorts items by bid price (stack, not per item). This way, items with a low bid appear first.
I post glyphs with a bid price of 30g, while buy out prices are over 60g. Often, people buy out my glyphs even when there's a cheaper buy out price out there. Also, people who are willing to wait for the glyphs will bid. In the end, 30g guarantees a small profit.
Since I only play 1 hour per day, I don't have time to undercut my competitors frequently. A glyph sold little more than 30g would probably remain unsold if the bid price was too high.
For things that stack, like volatiles, gems, enchanting mats, and ore, I sell in all sorts of stack sizes, from 1 to 100. When undercutting, no matter the stack size, mine will be always relatively cheaper. For example, if someone is selling a stack of 10 Volatile Air for 17g each, I'll undercut, but only in stacks of 10. Then, stacks of 2 might be going for 20g per item. So I'll post only stacks of 2 for 19g99s per item. Regarding the bid price, it will also be lower than my competitors bid price.
It's a simple strategy, but surprisingly, I've never seen many people using it.
I hope I made myself clear.
Cheers
Stackable items for gold transfer to another server? Maybe not the case on a belt buckle but potentially a way to move money over if you are transferring to a server where X is worth more than on Cael...
Im definitely a On Principle buyer on cael AH...I wont pay dramatically over the odds (10 g seems my limit)but Ill most definitely pay that extra 1 copper to stuff those AH campers as much as I can...and I always buy from friends....
Also list anything mega multiple in stacks of 1?? wont be getting my gold :-)
I regularly sell items that I know I am not the cheapest on. Many times I have even noticed people who had to completely go out of their way to click on multiples of my gems when I knew I had posted them one at a time and been undercut in the middle by many.
I have always suspected they are either alts of my guildies, or friends I know or simply people I have been nice to at some time or another and they remembered my name. (my server is tiny so niceness has always played a large role in my strat usually)
I know I often find myself buying off the ah from names I either like, or simply recognize over those I don't. I think some people just take it a bit farther.
A guy who's been a real jerk to our guild [and my hubby in particular] runs the market on our server for belt buckles. So if I need one and a guildie can't make it, I'll pay a little more [usually 20g] to give the money to someone else.
I cant really explain it either. I sell 5 stacks of dust for much more than I sell singles or 20 stacks for. This could be bacause they dont need 1 or 20.
I sold an inferno ruby for 250 gold when there were others posted at 175 gold.
The lowest price usually sells best, but sometimes people buy strangely.
First up , thank you Sard for your very kind words.
The question of the sales at my reset price has been occurring enough lately for me to notice. So I thought that I would ask Sard if he had some ideas as to what maybe happening, and it looks like a few others have added into the discussion.
After some thought, I would say that most, if not all, are the result of a miss click due to sorting. I know I have been guilty of this in the past. I’ve been looking at armor or weapons and sorted by iLvl or another category and then looked at gems or such and clicked and bought only to see that the sort is wrong, and you’d think that I should know better (my profession requires me on computers all day in a safety critical role :P).
People get distracted, there’s been a high turn over of Buckles since Cata and now the patch, I subscribe to the wave principle, the wave hits, then things will slow down over time until the next patch or expansion. It’s the flow and ebb of the Auction House sea.
Oh and if your looking for that belt buckle for your nice new waist, you know where to look. :).
the default sorting in the AH and remote AH is Bid/buyout. Thus ,especially for things that sell in 1 stacks, if you have a lower bid your item will appear at the top. I have sold plenty of slightly above market items this way.
As for other comments the markets ofr differnt stacks are somewhat disjoint. 1 stacks of something you need 5 or 10 of minimum often sell for less than the 5 or 10 stack price. Many people don't use AH addons so buying 10 stacks of 1 is tedious. Not to mention at the mail box also.
My buckles are adjustable. One size fits all.
Just some green-haired gnome.
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