Flipping Mats: A Beginner's Guide

Flipping items on the Auction House is a very old trick in gold making. Materials have one of the highest turnover rates since every crafting profession uses them! Before diving in on any of the several material markets, it is always good to know some info on what you are selling.

Always make sure you know some data on a market before you get into it. The Undermine Journal always has the latest statistics on all items in the AH, on any server and faction! Let's see what mats are good to sell on a random server.

 Volatile Fire

Screen shots from Theunderminejournal.com©

Looking at the stats on Volatile Fire on the US-Moon Guard Horde economy, it's the perfect time to buy! As you can see in the screenshots above, the Mean (average) price is 4g 47s 65c. That is the average price it has been at over the past 2 weeks. Looking at the auctions currently posted, there are some super cheap items we can flip! The Undermine Journal always shows items at Price per Item. By buying out the 3 stacks of 10 at 10g 70s/stack (1g 70s per item), we can post these a tiny bit cheaper than the ones posted at 2g 72s each. If you post them in stacks of 2 or 5, they should sell pretty quickly.

The reason you want to post at different stack sizes has to do with what they're used for. For PvP items, they are normally used in quantities of 4, 6 and 10. The people who will most likely be buying them are: players who want to make their gear for cheaper than the fully crafted AH price, players who sell large amounts of PvP gear on the AH, or just someone who needs to last few Volatile Fires for other crafted items. The Lazy Tax also comes into play here, since someone will buy 2 stacks of 5 so they don't have to click 10 x stacks of 1 to get the mats they need.

This strategy works with all other crafting materials. Ore, Herbs, Cloth, Volatiles, and more! Sometimes your auctions may come back to you, but don't worry. The next time around you might get the sales you're looking for! Also, weekends are the best time to buy since that's when most undercutting takes place. The weekend is when the most people play, since there's not too much worry about work and school. On the other side of the coin, weekdays are the best time to sell. There is very little competition since most people are worrying about school and work, maybe even schoolwork! But people are always buying, so post whenever you can and see when you can make the most sales on your server.

My next post will be on Alchemy. Don't forget to check out my new blog roll! The gold making blogs that made me into the goblin I am today are all on there!