I’m going to the Showboat in Atlantic City today, part of a fundraiser for the Band Parents association at my son’s high school. He’s not in any of the bands, but my oldest was, so…I’m going.

It’ll be a short trip via charter bus, as AC is about an hour away. This is the only time I go there, really, and I just bring a little money and try to play blackjack for an hour or so, then have dinner somewhere with friends.

If only I could make gold in AC like I do the Auction House in Ironforge.

OC (or rather, his AH alt) plays the AH to make gold. He covers his repairs, gems, enchants, and consumables for raids. He covers any alts leveling up so they’re respectable, and not in greens 20 levels below them. He covers their profession skilling up. He’s even (with the help of a horde AH alt), covered the cost of his new Mekgineer’s Chopper.

I do it by buying low and selling high, but it’s not that simple. A few folks have asked me how I do it, I’ve told them, and they don’t succeed. So I’ll put it out here:

I specialize in blues and purples, mainly level 2-80 armor and weapons. An AH search of level 2+ rares will also include things like leg armors and the level 54 and 60 class books and ammo, which I usually ignore. On most servers, this search yields 600-1200 items, depending on server economy and also how active the ammo-crafting engineers are.

I sort by price low to high and start paging down and through the list. I use a mod from wowecon.com, the free one, which shows the median sale price of the item across ALL servers (not the average price).

I’ve been doing this so long, and watch the AH almost every single day, though, that most of the time I don’t really need the mod info, just using it to note up or down price trends, mostly.

With the median sale price, I know what I can probably resell the item for; what I look for are items I can bid on, or buy outright, that are at 50% of the median price, or less. When I repost the item, I usually price it at 75%-125% of the median price. That guarantees me a 50% profit if it sells, and also allows me so leeway to raise the minimum bid if it doesn’t to absorb the cost of the deposit lost.

While the method is simple, the skill is in knowing *what* to bid on or buy.

Crafted blues/epics: Some are easy and cheap to make, so easy and cheap that folks skill up on them, and can basically use mats on hand to undercut a price. These are usually i200 level items that go for 15-60 gold. These I don’t buy unless I can get them real cheap, 5g or so.

Twink items: These are certain items, usually ending in an 8 or 9 level (18 or 39), that are the best items a BG twink can equip. While these are in less demand nowadays, folks will also spend gold to equip leveling alts with these, so the demand is pretty steady. The best are world drops, not crafted. But even crafteds sell well, because the mats to make them are in lower areas, and most folks don’t want to farm them.

Raid-gearing items: These are i200 items, level 80 required, that folks will check the AH for after they hit 80 so they can bump their gear a bit before looking for raid drops. Not as in demand now because of the Random Dungeon system, most popular are tanking drops and crafteds, as most want to be defense-capped to tank heroics (and so have little or no wait time in queue).

High level drops: Crafted items and BoE drops from high raids (currently ToC and ICC) are sold on the AH. Though they require a steep initial investment (500-3000g or so), folks will often put a drop up for a relatively low amount, or a crafted that they had mats for. Knowing what the item sells for, I recognize this, and can often turn 1500g into 3-4k gold in 24 hours.

I will leave it to the reader to research and learn what *specific* items included in the above work best.

Next post, I will note some things to STAY AWAY from on the AH, or at least, be wary of investing in them.