The Basics Of Buying On The Auction House

Buying items on the AH for resale will be covered in the advanced section. In this section, I will be discussing buying items for personal use. Items that fall into this category are materials for enchantments, potions and equipment purchases. If you have no gold then you are at the mercy of the sellers in the AH. Without some gold on hand you are unable to take advantage of bargains that you find in the AH. Go farm some herbs, minerals, cloth or leather until you have made some gold.

Mats and potions are commodity items. They will have dozens or hundreds of that item for sale at any given time. The key to getting the items that you need cheaply, is to buy over time. If you are looking to buy 3 x nexus crystals for that uber enchantment then start looking at nexus crystal prices at least a week in advance. Why pay 60g each on Thursday when they are selling for 42g each on Saturday? If you know what nexus crystals are selling for on your server then you can spot the bargains and snap them up.

Potions are the same except you probably want to maintain a stockpile. If you are using 2 stacks of major mana pots a week then you should try to have (say) 8 stacks in the bank. This allows you to avoid buying them at high prices and stock up when a price war is ongoing.

You can sometimes spot bargains by looking at the quantity for sale. If the quantities of illusion dust for sale are 1, 1, 3, 4, 8, 5, 5, 7, 10 (when listed in order by price) then take a closer look at the 8 quantity. Its current bid is lower than the 5’s that follow. If the 5’s are fair priced then the 8’s minimum bid is a deal, it might be worth a bid or even a buyout if the buyout price is also a deal. Be aware that if the 5’s are overpriced then the 8 may not be a bargain. Even if you only need 6 illusion dust, it may still be cheaper to buy the 8 set and sell the 2 leftover.

Equipment purchases are different because they are unique and often expensive items. You will only be buying one in your lifetime. If you are leveling up your character and want a certain item then start browsing for it in advance. That way you will be able to spot the bargain when you see it. If you buy it at a good price and haven’t equipped it yet then you can still resell it if a BoP item comes to you while leveling. An expensive rare item for sale in the AH for 100/200 (150) may be an opportunity to make a deal. If the seller is online and close to you then you might send him a tell offering him 125g. If he takes the item out of auction he doesn’t have to pay the 5% AH fee. So a 125g selling price to him is roughly equal to 131g at auction. A certain 125g may be just what he wants at the time. Yes, you can hope for getting a deal if you bid 100g but low bids like that don’t often end up the winning bid.

You can see if an item already has a bid on it or not. If you click on the item you will see the amount that you will bid on the bottom of the screen. If that is the same as the current bid price then nobody has bid on that item yet. Some sharp player will have an alt place a bid on their items just to make you think that you should buy it out now instead of bidding. If you want to bump a bid up faster than the small increments the AH goes by then you can fill in your bid amount in the same box.

It is harder to find the right time to buy something than to sell something. Basically, you want to find the time when the AH has lots of items for sale but players haven’t snapped up the bargains yet. On my server that seems to be about 5pm, but I am sure that it will vary from server to server. At 5pm a lot of the prior day’s 24 hour auctions are close to expiring and you can buy at minimum bid instead of buyout. Also, the sellers will be creating their new auctions and an occasional deal can be found.