Auction guide

Introduction

This article is intended as an advanced guide to using the Auction House in World of Warcraft.

Additional resources:

• Auction House Tips at the official site
• Making Money Guide
• Auction House (Basic information)
• Formulas:Auction_House

Buying

Auctions are a great place to find hard-to-get items, profession materials, and items needed for quests.

Buyout

As the name suggests, some auctions will allow you to instantly purchase an item instead of bidding on it (just like "Buy It Now" on eBay).

There are pros and cons for both sellers and buyers with this system. For sellers, the pros include setting a reasonable Buyout may entice someone to grab the item before the auction ends. You may be able to get a slightly higher price from those who need an item right away and are willing to pay for the privilege. It is in your best interest to always include a buyout price. The only real con of setting a Buyout price is that you may set it too low and someone will snap it up and possibly turn around and sell it for more.

For buyers, the main benefit is obviously getting the item instantly. You may also run into items that have a lower than average Buyout price. In this case, you may actually be able to make some money off the item yourself by buying it and re-listing it at its "proper" or more competitive price.

Bidding

Bidding works like any auction: you put in the price you are willing to pay, someone else can come along and outbid you. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Just because an auction starts low does not mean that it won't skyrocket toward the end. Keep in mind that some sellers intentionally try to create a bidding war. Before you begin bidding, have a final price in mind. No matter how tempting it may be, don't go over that price - you may end up paying more than you wanted or more than the item is worth!

Other

A seller can cancel an auction at any time, although they will lose the initial deposit (and if the item has been bid on, they will also be charged a percentage of the bid).

If you want to buy an item that has been listed with no buyout price, you can try to contact the seller directly and make an offer. You can also try this with costly items (especially a weapon or armor piece with a high deposit cost and relatively low demand). The seller may agree, especially if they're afraid the item won't sell or if they need money right away.

Selling

Need money? Have too much stuff in your bags? Sell it!

Duration

You should set most auctions to run 24 hours to maximize your auction's exposure. Remember, although the deposit is larger for longer auctions, your deposit will always be refunded if the auction sells.

Sometimes, you'll want to list auctions for 2 or 8 hours, especially if the deposit is prohibitively high (this is especially true for weapons) and if you're afraid demand might not be there. If you do so, make sure you list the auction during peak hours on your server. Player activity usually peaks between 6pm and 9pm and is higher on weekends. See (Time) for more details.

Keep in mind that if you have a costly item that may not sell, it may be smarter to use the trade channel rather than using the auction house at all.

Pricing

Pricing an item can be difficult for those new to the Auction House. A good way to find out what something is worth is by searching for an identical item already posted. There may be several of the same item already up for auction, their prices should give you a rough idea of what the item is worth.

However, there may not be any other items of what you are looking to sell currently on the Auction House. If this is the case, you can search for something similar. For instance, some items are part of a series, such as "Fringed Cloak of the Bear" or "Fringed Cloak of the Eagle". If this is the case, try a search for just "Fringed Cloak" and it will bring up the items in a series. This will give you an idea of what your item is worth, even though the exact one may not be listed.

If you cannot find any similar items, you have a few more options. One is to go to a vendor and see how much they will give you for the item (don't sell it to them, just hover your mouse over the item to see what it is worth). You can normally get several times the amount the vendor will give you in the Auction House. So go back and post it for 3-10 times the vendor amount.

You could also just post the item with a relatively low starting bid (don't put a Buyout price on it though), likely the item will be bid up to about what it is worth by the end of the auction.

Alternatively, you can just wait until you see a similar item on the auction house, or ask around - your guild mates are a great resource!

Other Information

Neutral Action Houses

• Booty Bay
• Gadgetstan

Both Factions can auction items here on the AH since it is run by the Steamwheedle Cartel(Neutral Faction goblins)
These Auction Houses have a bigger Auction House Cut(their take of your sale) than Faction Auction Houses.

Twink Items

Twink items are simply the best possible items that you can equip at your current level. These items are always in high demand at the Auction House. If you come across one of these items, it is likely you will get a very good amount of money by selling it via the Auction House.

Scams and Tricks

Auctioneer Baiting

Sometimes a scammer will repeatedly post a piece of vendor trash or another less-than-valuable item at extremely high prices. The idea is to get people who are scanning with Auctioneer or other AddOns to collect this bad data. Then the scammer will post the item for a much lower (but still expensive) price, hoping to bait others into buying what they think is a good deal.

To avoid this, never buy something unless you know exactly what it is.

Inflated Buyouts

Sometimes you'll see common items like trade goods listed for extremely high buyouts, like  [Strange Dust] for 100 gold.

There are two ideas behind this scam. First, the scammer hopes some poor fool will click on the auction by accident or not notice the erroneous price. This may not happen very often, but when it eventually does, the scammer makes a lot of money.

Another version of this scam has the scammer setting a very low starting bid but high buyout. For example:  [Heart of Fire] for 1 bid and 100 buyout. The scammer hopes that in the ensuing bidding war, someone will accidentally click "buyout" instead of "bid." However, this scam is more risky because it requires an item that is at least somewhat valuable. Plus it is less likely to happen now becasue there is now confrimation box before a buyout is made.

Time

Time of Day

On most servers, player activity peaks at 6pm to 9pm. It is usually at its lowest point around 6am. If you're running mostly 24 hour auctions with buyouts it doesn't matter when you post your auctions. If you're relying on bids, or trying to post short auctions, it's best to do it when players are most active.

Day of the Week

On weekends, (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and holidays, player activity is significantly higher. Apparently Monday and Tuesday are the lowest activity days, since Blizzard put weekly maintenance on Tuesday mornings. This has led to many theories about when to post auctions.

Some theorize that Sunday is the best day to post auctions for armor and weapons because casual players have just finished a weekend of levelling up and will be looking for new gear.

Likewise, prices for trade goods may drop on weekends as less informed players all try to undercut each other. On the other hand, demand for these goods also rises on weekends. On weekdays there's a better chance that someone (or yourself) will try to create a monopoly on certain trade goods, driving prices up. Therefore, weekends are (sometimes) good for buying trade goods and weekdays are good for selling them.

Weekly Maintenance

On some Monday night/Tuesday morning(US) or Tuesday night/Wednesday morning (Europe), realms go down for several hours for maintenance. Auctions, however, still expire.

Don't post auctions on a day before maintenance, unless you don't mind losing a lot of your auction's duration.

If you bid on an auction with a short or medium duration remaining right before the server shuts down, you will win that auction because no one else will be able to bid on it.

There's only one problem with this strategy: other people are also doing it. The time before shutdown is very active, with a few players furiously bidding on the good deals. It's exciting, but you'd actually win just as many auctions by bidding on other nights, when fewer people are paying attention.

Addons

Really the only Auction House addon that you will ever need is Auctioneer. Any addon site will have it (such as curse-gaming.com).