A few days ago I made, for me, a record breaking net profit on the sale of one item: 1400g. Today I smashed it.

What’s going on with me? It is like I was playing baseball in a clear bubble, able to witness other activity outside of it, but only hitting a home run and smashing through it two times, where a rush of air comes in and I actually get to experience huge profit. Then perhaps it closes again over the same spot, but is less strong.

Back on the horde side of my main Priest’s server, where a level 2 Blood Elf auction house alt had been struggling to just break 3k in the bank from 1k, I spotted the item. Epic of course… or is it that obvious? For I know some of you make insane amounts of money tapping niche collector markets known only to very few.

Either way, this item was on sale for 1800g-2200g. I noticed it due to two reasons. First, I had never heard of it before. Secondly, that it was a most certainly a hunter’s epic item and I do not yet recall seeing so specific a hunter’s epic showing up in this expansion. So I checked Allakhazam quickly: 5000g median, 5700g avg. but with a huge range and many dots nearer to 10k. Nice so far. Then I check wowhead.com. There are actually 12 comments on the item, one stating that they sold it for 6600g on a certain server, and others arguing in favor of the item being the “best” at some particular play style for the hunter, arguing for it in favor of a Tier 7 item.

Needless to say, I buy it. As I did not think I’d see another in the near future, I post for the entire 48 hours at 6900 gold. It didn’t sell the first day, but this morning a cool 4400g net profit was waiting in my inbox. That is more than double my previous personal record, upping the total profit by 3000g.

Question I ask myself is… could I have went even higher? Probably a bit, but there are a couple risks with going as high as one person is likely to pay. Since it may be out on the market longer, you 1) reduce its uniqueness to buyers who might be considering it and see it sitting there on a daily basis not selling, and 2) risk competition which could drive the price far lower. For this item, I have a feeling that if it were much lower I would simply bow out, let it sell, then repost back high due to its rarity.

This serves to me as another clear indication that with WotLK, the player economy has a lot more money to spend, and people are willing to pay significantly more in general for the highest items than they were in Burning Crusade. As a small piece of irony, the same armor item I made my previous best profit on (selling for about 3900g) I saw selling the next day by someone different than the buyer of mine, but for more than double what I sold it for – 7500g min and 8500g buyout. The day after that I did not see it, so I will take a guess that it sold.

Tags: auction house tips, lich king