You’re putting too much thought into it. The AH lists things in order of price. Whichever one is at the top at the amount I need, because it is listed as the cheapest is what I will buy simply because it’s the path of least resistance. I don’t care about whoever is making my gold, I care about making my purchase quickly.
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It depends on the item, market, and situation.
High moving markets it makes sense to keep the price relatively stable as they’ll sell no matter what.
It is the slow moving markets where it gets absurd when only a handful of people are posting said item and they’re all posting it much higher than anybody is willing to pay for and they each are undercutting each other by 1c. This simply is not “keeping the market healthy” but rather is collusion of keeping prices in an inflated state.
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I always take the lowest priced item. Why pay more if you don’t have too.
Honestly I go a step futher, if I see a 1 copper unbid, a 2 copper unbid and so on the same item, I actually look to see who posted the original low price without those copper unbid and BUY FROM THEM.
Usually it is only 1 gold, but the point is I HATE those 1-99 copper unbid, if you can’t do better than that you ARE NOT GOING TO GET MY BUSINESS.
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They are free to do that, I have 7 Sky Golems I am absolutely willing to part with at 50k. If you think you can sell 7 of them for 100k, while buying me and 6 other people out, then … I say go for it!
But right now the supply is larger than the demand and the 1c less approach is so far off the mark that nothing will sell until it gets close to 50k, where they do actually sell occasionally.
I do this strategy with many other things and it works fine for me. It is my opinion that most stuff posted in the AH are overvalued and the 1c cut is a very slow way to reach the truth.
Another example, and I got schooled on this: Sinister gear gets posted often for 10k to 15k, but they don’t really sell until 4k. When I started posted at 4k, I then sold MANY a day, vs none. You simply can’t trust the AH price as its often just a “wish price” for sellers.
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Personally, I think undercutting by 1c is just dumb. I tend to buy from the guy that is selling for 30g instead of 29g99s99c. Now it its 29g I’ll buy that one. I have no problem with undercutting but if you are going to undercut do it by at least a gold.
I usually undercut by 1 gold and put the others to 69 69 because I have an infantile sense of humor.
Ex: Undercut 10g listing by posting my own listing at 9g 69s 69c.
Once I started doing this strategy, my sales increased by 420%.
Actually they didn’t. I hardly ever sell anything and I get too lazy to repost them.
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That could be handled in a number of ways.
Easiest is just applying my idea to certain categories such as crafting mats and such. Leave equipment and such as they are.
Another is to allow people to choose how to list their item, auction vs market listings. Perhaps make market listings (where your item goes into a bucket of listings) have less deposit costs or can stay listed until sold.
The price could also be set by the seller and and used as a basis for future pricing. Some sort of algorithm would figure out what a consensus would be on the pricing.
The point is to simplify the interface and make buying and selling less of a hassle to the users.
People undercut by 1 copper because they don’t want to risk tanking the price of what they are selling. It’s not laziness, it’s just being smart.
If you’re selling something for 5,000 gold, and everyone undercuts by 10g (an undercut of only 0.2%), 50 undercuts drops the price by 500 gold, and that can landslide into things becoming not profitable to sell at all…
Undercutting by the minimum possible amount is simply the most efficient and profitable thing to do as a seller, for both themselves and their competition.
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Ya I think what you’re really describing is knowing your individual market. At the end of WoD Golems were going for like 36-40k but at the start of Legion the #1 gold making strategy was to farm herbs/mine, prices were crazy inflated because of the WoD garrison gold. Golems shot up to ~90-120k for a few weeks but by the end of the expansion were back down to 50k.
Given the market in BFA it makes sense for them to be about 50k since most people either picked one up in Legion/WoD or aren’t actively farming like crazy.
As a buyer I would check names and see who is selling and buy from whoever I think isn’t playing the AH. Because I’m a jerk.
As a seller I assure you 99% of the time people buy the cheapest one, even if it’s just a copper.
First on the list
If someone undercuts my trader by 1g 1s 1c etc i’ll start crashing the market. I have a lot of time on my hands. I farm my own mats. I have inventory in mass.
My favorite thing to do is undercut the undercutter to the point where they buy mine and relist higher. then i flood the market with inventory for the lower price for weeks or months whatever it takes. Doesn’t cost me anything.
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The person who undsrcuts deserves the gold more. Theyre putting in more effort to sell it. Theyre also keeping the price high. How is this even a question.
The worst is when u list a pet for 50k. Then some ding bat undercuts u and lists for 10k. Thats the worst AH scenario, everyone gets screwed because of the ignorance of another player.
People who undercut by 1 copper don’t deserve my gold. I will always buy the 500g item over the 499g 99s 99c item.
Honestly I’m lazy to the point where if I see someone has listed 20 stacks for a higher price than the dude who listed two, but I need 5 stacks, I’ll be buying from the dude who listed 20 stacks.
All things being equal in convenience, I’ll always take the lower price.
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Why? If they are that wrong, just buy it yourself. Keep doing that as needed. The only person truly screwed in your scenario are people paying 50k for an item you don’t think is worth 10k to buy yourself.
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I’ll buy the first one I see, which generally means the 1 copper undercut if there is one. The only exception is stuff that I’d tend to buy in some amount of bulk, therefore I’d want larger stacks, and I may skip pages until I see larger stacks and just start there, which may mean I’m missing a couple slightly cheaper stacks on the bottom of the previous page.
Ultimately I’m not using the AH to make other people money. I don’t really care about the morality of 1 copper undercuts, sellers on the AH aren’t even really people to me, it’s just a list of items I want, and undercuts are just what ends up at the top of the list.
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I always buy the cheapest item.
Nope the only person that gets screwed over is the one who listed at 50k. ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
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