What’s happening has happened many times in the past. If you’re at it long enough, then you’ll weather almost any rough cycle. MMO economies are still about stats and rarity.

Celwyn is up 1500g up from the initial 2000g a bit over a week ago, with about 10-20 min a day just checking and reauctioning the items that didn’t sell. There is also about 1500g worth of items sitting in the AH if things pan out.

A couple of lessons have re-emerged during the last couple days. I bought a lvl 80 healing Druid’s robe for pretty cheap awhile ago and it just didn’t sell at 399. The median on Allakhazam was about 250g, but knowing the stats in the game (yet not the rarity of this particular item – only that it was alone at the time) I valued it higher. It basically depended on if this was a common drop. This is one of the rare times I don’t really care what the website says but at least it’s a baseline.

Anyway, I bought it for around 100g, and put it up again for 399.45g. After a few days of not selling, another pops up for 150g-200g buyout. I buy it out. That’s one of the lessons if I recall from about a year ago. If others emerge, it’s ok to buy them out as long as you feel you can keep the market for that particular item in check. In this case, since mine was alone for a few days without competition, I felt pretty confident in snatching the other up. However, I didn’t just leave my original one up. Instead, here’s how I made more than I thought I would.

I competed against myself, hoping that someone comparing the prices would notice a big gap but not the same seller. Apparently I was right. The next one I put back up for 490g even to make it look like a different number entirely. It was a long shot, but the next morning my robe for just about 400 sold, and by the end of the same day, amazingly the 490 one sold as well! Haven’t seen another of the same robe since so evidently they are sort of rare.

The other server, horde side – the side with much less activity – I see the same robe for a 200g buyout. I’m not biting. This server tends to undervalue things due to the inactivity. My theory is that most of the level 80′s on the server now are in guilds and focused on the initial high level dungeons and aren’t really concerned with the stray AH item. Whether or not the theory is true, most certainly the entire market is much less highly priced except for the new level 80 epics, which are actually about the same as on the other more populated server.

Happy auctioneering.

Tags: auction house tips, just starting out, lich king