Fishing the AH for Suckers!

First off I would like to start this blog with a simple statement. I am expanding upon an idea from another blogger.

Granted when I first read Cold's Blog and heard him advocating leaving low priced items up on the auction house so that others would undercut the price and you would in turn get even better pricing..... Why to be honest I thought he was off his rocker. This tactic works well if you are the main auctioneer (and pretty much only) on your realm.... But the more I thought about his idea the more it made sense. The Issue was however if Cold and I were on the same server... neither of us would let this happen. We would snatch up the low priced item and post at a normal price. Both knowing that the other was there to snatch up the deals. I look at underpost like this as gifts from above, and knowing that I have several auctioneers on my server I snatch them right up. But Cold post some great blogs, so I have learned to believe in what he says (even if I am stealing his idea here)

Flash forward, I am sitting at work on a hectic Tuesday, listening to episode 20 of call to auction as I hear the podcast discussing how Bid posts have no place in an auctioneer's bag of tricks (BTW Markco is the best but Big Jimm is Great too....even if I am not on his blog roll!).... a few hours later, I find myself checking my auctions at home. As an Auctioneer with only 2 maxed professions on both of my toons I do a great deal of flipping to remain profitable. I get a fair amount of gold from my Blacksmithing, but probably more from buying low and selling normal. I take notice of the fact that several of the auctions I was buying Out were undercuting bids. Suddenly I was struck by a bolt of Golden lightning....Placing a bid post on the auction house can make you serious gold!

Why not seed the auction house with bids? I see inexperienced auctioneers undercutting the bids all the time. I've snatched these up and chuckled a bit thinking to myself "why those were just Bids silly, you should only undercut the buyouts!".I've found that often these undercutters are farmers, more specifically farmers whose job it is to make money before their shift is up. You see gold farmers are paid by the gold they make, or have quotas they have to meet, which is why you will find items on 12 hour auctions seriously under-priced. These are expected to be bought out very quickly (within the hour). This only works well for them if they are the lowest priced auctions, and the first materials you see on an auction house scan. So they will almost always undercut anything, bid or not. So if you say post up 20 single saronite ores at 40 silver each... Don't be surprised to find 15 stacks of ore below 8g a stack (a huge profit as smelted these are worth 12.5g a stack at vendor price).

This can be applied to most markets, Often it will simply be a person new to the auction house just trying to undercut, sometimes it will be a farmer. Sometimes it will be a fellow auctioneer with way to low of a fallback. There is profit to be made with 48 hour bids, first you bait the hook.... and then you go fishing. Sometimes you come back with one hell of a fish!