Finding and Evaluating Good Deals with Minimal Effort
This is more of a "For Your Information" kind of guide that points out some useful features many people aren't aware of. I've been seriously debating posting about it simply due to how useful it is and how it will directly reduce my profits when used by anyone else on my server.
Every half decent gold maker out there knows that buying low and selling high is the epitome of efficient gold making for minimum time spent. I would like to introduce you guys to two very similar websites that each offer something slightly different and are very powerful when combined together.
WoWuction.com and
TheUndermineJournal.com.
Start off with WoWuction
If this is your first time visiting
WoWuction, you need to
visit the homepage and click "Choose a realm to begin". Type in your realm name and then choose EU/US/Alliance/Horde.
Next, hover over the Reports button in the top menu and select Bargain Hunter. This is a brand new feature and VERY few people actually know about it. Here you will see 5 different tabs: Weapons, Armor, Recipes, Mounts, Companions. It will provide you with a list of various stats for the items available and essentially it compares the current price of an item with the estimated market price and will show you a potential profit.
In this example (I actually did this as I'm writing this guide and just happened to find these deals)
I clicked on Recipes for my realm, sorted by "Price diff / Profit" and immediately saw the following:
http://i.imgur.com/HSJ97.jpg
- Plans: Adamantite Weapon Chain only 500g buyout with a potential 10,000g profit. I'm familiar with this item and know it to be an absolute bargain.
- Plans: Golden Scale Boots only 80g buyout with a potential 7,000g profit - BUT I know that this to be falsely inflated item. I will show you how to double check the validity of those prices later on. Edit: turns out I was mistaken and should have bought them,but of course they are gone now :/
- Pattern: Deviate Scale Belt at a quick high 2,500g buyout with a potential 2,746g profit. I know this to be fairly accurate, but I've got a bunch of them already and they are hard to sell.
- Pattern: Mooncloth Vest with a decent 500g buyout and with a potential 2,600g profit. This one I had to double check for myself, and it looks like it's definitely a good opportunity as well.
Alright,
I click on the Pattern: Mooncloth Vest to take a look at some more information about it:
http://i.imgur.com/q7NyF.jpg
There is some fairly interesting information displayed here that can come quite in handy.
First thing you do here, is compare the Median Market Price of your realm (middle column) with the price of all the EU or US Faction average (right column). Ideally these should both be very similar, or at least both be much higher than the current market price it suggested you buy it at on the previous page.
Main thing
I want to highlight is the Average Posted per Day and the Average Sold per Day column. The average posted per day figure is very low for both my realm and the general server averages therefore I know it's a very rare item. The estimated demand of 6-8% tells me that these are items do have a demand for them. There is a debate about the accuracy of the estimated sold per day figure but I'm not going to go into that now.
Check WowHead
If you still aren't sure, check Wowhead. At the top of the Wowuction page where it says "Stats for last 14 days for..." has a link to the items page on Wowhead, so I go check it out.
http://i.imgur.com/GYXZc.jpg
Above is the "dropped by" column for the Pattern: Mooncloth Vest, and
I can see the drop % is EXTREMELY low and therefore clearly reflects the validity of the potential profit price being so high. It's a very hard item to find and will always be in demand by collectors and completists who typically have a lot of gold.
Confirm using TheUndermineJournal
TUJ is another website similar to WoWuction that I tend to prefer for evaluating prices more easily.
Head over there and select your realm/faction from the list and then type in the item name you want to look up in the "Item/Seller Search" box. In my case it's the Pattern: Mooncloth Vest.
http://i.imgur.com/dLZDn.jpg
Again,
compare your realm's "Market Price" (what you will currently pay to buy the item), the "Mean" (what the average price of it is on your realm), and the same for the EU alliance/horde market price/mean. Again you will see that these figures confirm that this is an excellent opportunity for profit.
You can also scroll down slightly more to see a graph of the item's price and availability which may interest some.
http://i.imgur.com/CSM3D.jpg
Finally I logged ingame to make my purchase
http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/imag...lies/smile.pngMake sure you don't spend too long checking and confirming prices before logging in to buy it. If you don't hurry the item might be gone. Also note that the items displayed on wowuction/tuj usually update once an hour. So just because it shows up there doesn't mean someone else hasn't bought it already. Honestly if the profit looks good, and the buyout is below 500g you should shoot first and ask questions later. A 500g loss isn't much at all, but loosing out on a 10,000g profit deal is a huge bummer.
http://i.imgur.com/VfDia.jpg
And here are two other great deals I found for myself yesterday!
http://i.imgur.com/paOrX.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EJ5xO.jpg
Zomg, making gold is hard right? Hope you guys enjoy and get some good use out of it.
If you are looking to increase your profits via similar methods, I would recommend checking out WoWuction's Broker and TUJ's Notifications (both accomplish the same thing). Here are some quick links to snatch lists that can be used with Broker and Notification features:
Feel free to post screenshots of great deals you find on your own servers!
P.S. If you want to check multiple servers without too much hassle, just bookmark their links and it will look like so:
You can even be more specific by specifying exactly which tab you want to visit by adding "#tabs=number" at the end of the "bargainhunter".
Credits, UnholyShaman
