Off The Cuff - Surprise Moneymaker

Since I've got so few readers, I figured I'd be safe in this "big reveal".  Out of everything I've got, the one item pulling in the biggest profit for me is Tinker's Gears.  At the low mat cost of two Ghost Iron Bars, which average about 24g total on my server, I can sell these little beauties for 200g-300g a piece.

I'm imagining it's because of the Ghost Iron Dragonling, an also-easy-to-make 450 iLevel trinket which sells for a song and is popular among fresh 90s looking to bump up their iLevel to get into Heroic dungeons.  It comes with three Gear slots, allowing the wearer to customize it with +600 in three different stats.  Since the Gears are also unique-equipped, anyone using the trinket is forced to buy three different gears to put into it, which makes for a viable market for all of the gears, and not just two or three that carry the most popular stats.

I'm still seeing how much the market can bear in these things, but I can easily say that I'm selling 10-20 of them a day, even without constantly camping for undercutters.

Off the Cuff - Websites I Can't Live Without

Every so often, if I'm working on a rather lengthy post but don't want to leave you guys without something to read, I'll dash something off that I think might be helpful.  Today, it's the top three websites that I always have open.

• Battle.net - Now that the Remote AH is free, there's next to no reason not to visit this site frequently.  Sometimes I use it extensively for setting up transmog and rare recipe sales, sometimes for using the Neutral AH for swapping things from Alliance to Horde and vice versa, and sometimes just to grab something really quick that I've gotten an alert for.
• The Undermine Journal - If you've never been here before, you're really missing out.  TUJ keeps track of auction sales both current and past, and can be used to help you decide if buying something is a good investment, should your addon be indicating it might be.  For a small fee, you can even get it to keep track of specific items and e-mail you the results; I use this for a lot of rare recipes, and whenever I get an alert, I hop over to the Remote AH and snatch it up.  Can we say 50g for an item I later sold for 9000g?  Yes we can!  TUJ even comes with a handy round-up of recent gold blog posts on its front page.
• WoWuction - A new site to my arsenal, but already one I can't live without.  Similar to TUJ in that it keeps track of current and past sales, the feature I use the most is their Bargain Hunter, which can be found under the Reports tab.  Set it to your realm, and you're ready to see a list of items that could potentially be flipped for a goodly amount of gold; this is extremely helpful to catch something you may not have considered for one of TUJ's alerts.

There you go.  You're welcome.

Pinging The Radar

It was bound to happen, I suppose.  I've registered with several gold-making sites and blogs in the last few weeks, and have even started to post a few things here and there.  I shouldn't have been surprised when I actually received a message from one of the bigger AH players on my PvE server, saying they'll be rooting me on come Sept. 25th, and that they'll see me in the AH.

How does one respond to something like that?  It's high school all over again, when the star quarterback and his head cheerleader girlfriend compliment you, the quiet bookish one in the corner, on your presentation in class.  Do they mean it?  Did they really like what you did, or are they secretly mocking you and laughing about you when you're not looking?  What do you say?

After the initial shock had passed, I did a little investigating, checking the other member's profile and seeing that they did, in fact, claim my PvE server as their home.  On top of this, they had recently posted that they'd reached the 1 million mark in January.  1 million!  Definitely not a dabbler, unlike myself and the couple of others in my guild that I trade AH conversations with.  If I were a nail-biter, this would probably be the moment I'd start nibbling.  A brief search for their name on The Undermine Journal shows that they have over 3000 auctions listed, all glyphs; my nervousness abates a bit, because while this may just be the end-of-expansion listings for this particular seller, or even just the ones on this toon, it still makes me feel better, as I really hadn't planned on playing that heavily in the glyph market.

Besides all that, from what I've seen in my research, most sellers (or goblins, as we're commonly referred to) are good-natured, and even enjoy the occasional bit of "AH PvP", duking it out for control of a market with other up-and-coming goblins.  With that in mind, I responded pleasantly, congratulating them on 1 million and metioning that I'd keep my eyes peeled.  I fully intend on adding them to my Friend's List, if only so I can wave to them on occassion as we pass in the night.