I enjoy playing the auction house by buying and selling items to flip for profit. It used to be my main source of making gold before I picked up inscription back in September 2009.
Buying and Reselling items for profit is great because it hardly takes any time. The auction house scan only takes 4 minutes using /auc getall and you can quickly buy up any underpriced items within 10 minutes, post them and then go back to playing the game.
The barriers to entry are very low as well, all you need is a weeks worth of scanned auctioneer data, a little market knowledge and you’re good to go. I learned a lot of market knowledge after reading Luke’s Guide and applied what I learned there to make huge profits from the Auction House.
Be sure to read up on the Auctioneer Addon Guide before trying to make gold using this method, it will teach you a lot.
Everyone always asks me what items I buy and sell to turn a profit, these series of articles will share which items I profit from and I’ll continue to post my profit results on a regular basis. You can check out my first report I did back on December 15th 2009 here – my highest profit auction house flipping items.
I was so busy with inscription that I only bought items a couple times in the past month; however here are the results from the last 30 days.
Playing the Auction House – Most Profitable Items
BoE items have always been my highest earner as the lower level ones can be very random and no one knows the true value unless they’ve scanned the AH or checked wowhead for how popular the items are. Unfortunately since heirloom items have become so popular the under lvl 70 market has dwindled, there is still huge profit to make from level 80 items and some still for lower level BoE items.
Under level 80 BoE’s
| Item Name | Bought for | Sold for | Profit | Profit % |
| Destiny | 100g | 185g | 85g | 85% |
| Skycaller | 2 x 15g | 2 x 67g | 104g | 347% |
| Nightblade | 70g | 119g | 49g | 70% |
| Hurricane | 110g | 145g | 35g | 32% |
| Adamantite Plate Bracers | 3 x 8g 57s | 3 x 63g | 163g 29s | 635% |
| Seafoam Gauntlets | 10g 75s | 58g 56s | 47g 81s | 448% |
| Ring of Flowing Light | 250g | 345g | 95g | 38% |
| Toughened Leather Gloves | 6g | 50g 45s | 44g 45s | 740% |
| Judge’s Gavel | 20g | 50g | 30g | 150% |
| Total Profit | 653g 55s | 282% avg | ||
Level 80 BoE’s
| Item Name | Bought for | Sold for | Profit | Profit % |
| Bracers of Smothering Inferno | 140g | 324g | 184g | 131% |
| Singing Crystal Axe | 2x 195g | 2x 685g | 980g | 251% |
| Anger-Spark Gloves | 2x 151g | 2x 345g | 388g | 128% |
| Torn Web Wrapping | 120g | 645g | 525g | 438% |
| Circle of the Darkmender | 2,000g | 2,450g | 450g | 23% |
| Refined Ore Gloves | 10g | 38g | 28g | 280% |
| Total Profit | 2,555g | 208% avg | ||
Crafting Materials and Enchant Scrolls
Another market that has been profitable in reselling has been lower level crafting materials that players use to level their professions and underpriced enchanting scrolls that enchanters dump onto the auction house when they are leveling up and just dump the scrolls on the AH without worry what the profits are.
Crafting Materials
| Item Name | Bought for | Sold for | Profit | Profit % |
| Deep Peridot | 19x 1g 44s | 19x 5g 56s | 78g 28s | 286% |
| Golden Pearl | 6x 4g 62s | 6x 46g 81s | 253g 14s | 913% |
| Essence of Water | 15x 1g 68s | 15x 7g 62s | 89g 10s | 354% |
| Cobra Scales | 43x 1g 37s | 43x 4g 78s | 146g 63s | 249% |
| Netherweb Spider Silk | 30x 1g 95s | 30x 5g 16s | 96g 30s | 165% |
| Shadowgem | 19x 2g 24s | 19x 4g 1s | 33g 63s | 79% |
| Total Profit | 697g 8s | 341% avg | ||
Enchant Scrolls
| Item Name | Bought for | Sold for | Profit | Profit % |
| Enchant Shield – Greater Stamina | 7x 1g 20s | 7x 6g 43s | 36g 60s | 436% |
| Enchant Shield – Defense | 4x 21g 51s | 4x 49g 43s | 111g 68s | 130% |
| Enchant Boots – Dexterity | 2x 26g 66s | 2x 64g 64s | 75g 96s | 142% |
| Enchant Chest – Greater Defense | 28g | 42g 93s | 14g 93s | 53% |
| Enchant Boots – Icewalker | 3x 10g | 3x 31g 98s | 65g 94s | 220% |
| Total Profit | 305g 11s | 196% avg | ||
Total Profit
The total profit from buying and selling over the last month comes to 4,210g 74s profit. I would estimate that I bought up items in 5-7 different sessions during the last month for a total time investment of 1 hour of scanning/buying and another hour and a half of posting.
As you get more and more experienced buying and selling on the auction house you’ll be able to spot profitable items better and seperate the good investments from the bad. Luke’s Guide was a good starting point for me to learn more about the different markets to gain this skill.
I’d be careful from buying things that are too risky, like the Circle of the Darkmender above that I was only able to sell for 2,450g but bought for 2,000g, I was worried the price would drop even further if I hadn’t gotten rid of it and made my gold quickly.
That’s it for now, be sure to subscribe to the RSS to be alerted when Report #2 is released as well as notifications for my other gold making posts.
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