“Auctioneer” is one of the main addons I use within World of Warcraft as a tool in my “how to be wealthy” toolkit.

Each day, I scan the current Auction House listings with Auctioneer, and then I use it to determine what of my auctionable materials I put up for sale, how many get posted, and what prices I list them at.

By using Auctioneer, I’ve found a lot of “good deals” for my own purchases, and have been introduced to a number of easy-to-buy or easy-to-make items that have a low investment cost but high profit return.

But, by using Auctioneer’s price-suggestion features, I’ve also noticed some not-so-reliable results being suggested to me, and have had to pay close attention to the true worth and value of materials I am looking to add to my sellers list.

Auctioneer Downside #1 - Starting With Nothing

The biggest detriment is that the Auctioneer addon package comes to you with an empty database - that is, until you have allowed the addon to scan Auction House listings at least once, the addon has no stored prices for anything and cannot offer listing-price advice.

Therefore, until you’ve completed a dozen or more scans with enough time between them (different days at different times of day) to make them useful, the Auctioneer’s suggested prices are likely to be way off from your realm’s “average”, and it won’t have ANY information for things listed infrequently.

In short, the more scans you do over time (1-3x a day maximum), the more complete the addon’s information will be for you, the player, to use. Keep scanning regularly!

Auctioneer Detriment #2 - Price Storage Rules

A second detriment to consider with Auctioneer is that its suggestions are based only upon LISTING prices, NOT actual Auction prices. Auctioneer can only see what value things are listed for currently and record that, it cannot tell how much that item actually sold for, or if it sold at all.

What does this mean for you, the user? Two main things:

First off, it means the information Auctioneer provides as it makes recommendations for your own listing prices may be WAY off of the profitability mark, especially with a small number of scans to base its information upon.

Secondly, it means that Auctioneer data can be “skewed” by purposeful and excessive over-pricing of items posted by its users.

The result of both of these may likely be your vast over- or under-pricing of auctions until enough information has been collected to be accurate and for you to get a better “feel” for the acceptable price for this particular market.

How To Compensate / Find Your Profit “Sweet Spot”

Without scanning the Auction House for 2 weeks twice a day in order to start to build a respectable database of information, what’s a player to do in order to recognize and avoid these under- or over-price skews?

Stay tuned for Part Two!

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One of the basic “rules” I started with when I started playing World of Warcraft and had no other information to go by was this:

1) Determine what prices to auction something in the Auction House/Player Market according to the quality that Blizzard has assigned to that item.

Meaning, if a piece of armor was Blue in color (denoting “Rare”), I would list it for higher than something that was Green in color (denoting “Uncommon”, a step below Rare), which in turn would be auctioned for higher than something that was White in color (denoting “Common”, a step below Green).

I now have one thing to say about this initial assumption: In terms of battle equipment - weapons and armor, the assumption is a fine one to stick with. In terms of non-battle equipment, the assumption is completely Wrong!

White (professions) Items Value Skew

One of the first items I fished up that challenged this perception was that of the recipe for the blacksmith’s Steel Weapon Chain. I got it while fishing in Stranglethorn Vale the first time, and since I didn’t have a Blacksmith at the time, I sold it for 1g in the Auction House and was quite pleased with myself…

Until I went to Thottbot and looked at the notes about this particular recipe and how rare it was, how it only dropped from chests and fishing boxes in a very small area of the game, and how players were willing to pay up to 20g for the pattern!!!

And, this pattern was a regular “white” pattern. I thought that if the pattern were rare, it would be a different color, but I guess that’s not the case!

Valuation of Professions Materials

There’s no easy way to tell which profession materials or which professions recipes are worth more or less than one another except to look up each item on Thottbot or a similar site with player notes appended, and see what everyone has to say about it.

Alternatively, there are addons that can help determine value, like WoWEcon (which has a downloadable database) and Auctioneer (you have to build the database by scanning the AH at least once a day over a few weeks).

Keep an eye out for things you might not otherwise think are valuable, because every bit of value is a small niche market waiting for you to provide and gain wealth from!

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