Do I live in Baltimore?

 I just read Beverly Hills, Baltimore and Baghdad - Server Makeup and Mogging Sales by Jim over at Power Word: Gold.

I may edit this post with more thoughts later on but here is a story of a guy who lives in Baltimore enjoy!

I live in Baltimore and visit a new store in Baltimore and they charge $10 for a shirt, $10 for some pants, hmm $10 for some gloves. When I next come back to the store I would expect to pay $30 total for those three items. If I went into the shop and they were asking for $20 for each of these items I might be shocked, angry and maybe cry a little. This shock may change my buying patterns maybe I’ll go to another shop or try to make the clothes myself, maybe I’ll rummage around the city and try and get some clothes, this might take a long time because even though I might come across some clothes they may be the wrong colour or size. Over time I might realise that $20 is the new going rate for a shirt, when I come back to the shop I’ll bring more money with me. I go back into the shop and the price of a shirt is $17, hmm I might feel a greater urge to buy a shirt maybe some pants they have come down to $17 as well. I am a little concerned because I don’t want to come back to the shop and shirts are again $20.

I visit a new store in Beverly Hills and they charge $100 for a shirt, $100 for some pants, hmm $100 for some gloves. When I next come back to the store I would expect to pay $300 total for those three items. If I went into the shop and they were asking for $200 for each of these items I might be shocked, angry and cry a little. This shock may change my buying patterns maybe I’ll go to another shop or try to make the clothes myself, maybe I’ll rummage around the city and try and get some clothes, this might take a long time because even though I might come across some clothes they may be the wrong colour or size. Over time I might realise that $200 is the new going rate for a shirt, when I come back to the shop I’ll bring more money with me.

I go back to Baltimore I’ve got a date with Miss Proudmoore, I have most of my outfit sorted but I am missing one last item, I need an awesome looking shirt. I visit my local shop and /gasp the price of this matching shirt is $100 that is crazy. This is not Beverly Hills! But damn I really need this it’s my last piece, I buy the shirt.

I finally figure it out the store in Beverly Hills was a boutique and had awesome stuff that was priced higher. The Baltimore store was a wholesale shop where they had tonnes of stuff and sold it cheap.

But hold on a minute the Baltimore shop had a $100 shirt! Maybe the Baltimore shop caters to a wider range of clientele, they offer the bargain basement stuff but also the high end couture stuff. The shop is aspirational, today I can only afford the $10 shirt that’s cool but I can look at the $100 shirts, I might go out into the world and try and make more money so that one day I can come back and buy the $100 shirt.

A guy in Beverly Hills would love to buy a shirt for $10 but if the store is charging $100 and he wants the shirt he will buy it because it is the going rate.

Shirts have been sold for a long time now, perhaps you think the high prices are behind us, maybe the ideal way to run your store is to price low, to price high or to price certain things high and price certain things really low. Only you as a store owner can decide this. You might open your shop right next to a huge mega store that has lots of inventory and uses varied pricing. In this case you might have to focus on building up your own inventory, maybe buying up items from the mega store and pricing them for much much higher.

You might have heard I recently sold a shirt for $10,000 and the best thing about that was I actually purchased the item for $100 a few days earlier from another shop. The buyer would have preferred to pay $100 but was willing to pay $10,000.

Leather: Farming Thick Leather in Cataclysm

 I think the best place for thick leather is the Badlands, You can combine leather farming with a chance on a rare pet. You can get here fast by using the portal to Blasted Lands and flying to badlands.

The mobs you will be killing are called Nyxondra’s Broodling  

 This is what you will be skinning,  you will mostly be getting Thick leather and some Rugged leather which sells for a high amount on my realm as well.

1 – 6 Thick leather     77%

1 – 6 Rugged leather  20%

1 – 6 Thick hide         3%

It might take two or three clears to get a hang of it but as the whelps are ranged you ideally don’t want to one hit kill them, if you can 2 hit kill them they will die in a less spread out area. I did this on a DK and hunter and found it a lot faster on a hunter. This spot is amazing because of the fast respawn, and it is very quiet. You don’t get many people randomly flying over this spot or levelling here and the added bonus of a chance on the dark whelping is fantastic. If you have mining on your skinner there are 3-4 nodes and you can pick up some mithril ore while farming leather.

An alternative is Un’Goro crater the raptors in the south east, you can  take the portal in Dalaran to get to Tanaris very fast.

The raptors are spread out a little more than the whelps,if you keep an eye out you might get lucky and pick up a raptor pet from the nests scattered around this area. The raptor pet is called Ravasaur hatchling.

What is the price of thick leather on your realm?

Daily Transmog Picks

Belts sometimes get overlooked however the belt can be a key item, it can link together different chest and legs or just match really well if you are wearing a complete set. If I was to pick up the lunar belt again I might bump it to my 2k bracket because of its rarity.

Are you having problems with selling your transmog gear?

I am happy to come and take a look at your AH, maybe buy/sell items for you on any realm US or EU. Follow me on twitter @TheOvercut then i'll follow you back and you can give me the who/where in a direct message.

If you have any transmog questions ask in the comments or on twitter and i'll do my best to answer them.

Making Even More Gold from Transmog Part 2

Exalted Harness

4 My setup

5 General advice

6 I am in too deep, help!

4 My setup

I went into 4.3 with a guild tab of items I got via dense stone/DMF and some random items I came across levelling. I got great insight into the market by being very active on twitter, listening to PWG podcasts and experimenting with price points on both factions.

Posting on two auctions houses meant I could learn very fast what was selling, what wasn’t and through trial and error how much gold I could squeeze from an item, slightly more of my sales were on horde side as this is where I felt I most understood the potential buyer having played horde since the end of vanilla.

What I am doing then pricing wise is 400g/ 700g/ 1400g/ 2k/ 5k . I can break this down and explain how I normally judge what goes where.

400g is lot of bracers/cloaks/random junk I maybe should not have bought, I make mistakes too but it’s a learning process and sometimes you can discover a gem which makes you think,“ I have no idea why that sold but I am going to try sell more and at a higher price” ( 5%)

700g is belts mainly or an item I have a lot of, e.g. 12 bard legs is a good example, this is where I want those items I can pick up fast and I want to move them fast. (15%)

1400g is where the offset items like gloves/feet are (20%)

2k is anything plate, and probably 40% of my items are in this bracket.

5k is high end stuff they get in here because keelhaul says so, have low drop rates, are not seen on the AH a lot or I think they look different  (20%)

I play mid pop horde and alliance, the amount of items I can buy is limited therefore when I hit a great item I am happy to play the waiting/bidding game to get a good sale for it. I reply “no deal sorry” to a lot of offer mails, the offers I consider are if they are buying multiple items or are looking to trade (trading my 700g item for a 2k item is cool). I sometimes respond to “you will never sell [insert item name] for that much” by bumping the item up a band or cancel then repost manually at original price x 1.5.

The important thing to remember is I change my prices every posting cycle on Monday it might look like 400/ 650/ 1.4k/ 1.7k/ 5k but two 48 hr posting cycles later it might look like this 450/ 800/ 1.5k/ 2k/ 5.4k. I like to think changing the price gives an impression of activity in the market, and adds a sense of urgency. For me posting 1500 item. I repost about half daily this way there is always some of my items on the AH, by reposting daily I can add in my new purchases fast and keep an eye on my sales.

A perk of being into transmog is you can make great sets for all your alts and can help out friends with their transmog sets.

5 General advice

Fluctuate prices, seeing an item you like drop in price or increase in price may prompt a buyer to act.

Be nice, friendly even when sometimes buyers are not so nice

Don’t shy away, its fun to kick it off in trade “wts Jade Breastplate 75k” it’s all free advertising.

Don’t be too rigid on prices, negotiate. Saving the AH fee and doing a deal works out for the buyer and the seller.

You learn more from your mistakes than your successes.

Get on twitter, read blogs and get involved in the community.

Offer discounts to bulk buyers, if a buyer is taking 4-5 items off your hands cut them a deal.

I no longer use any auctionator / tsm buying lists, they are great when you first start out but there comes a time where you know what sells, you know the names of the recolours, you know the slots and you just want to rip off those training wheels and jump in.  For me using manual search e.g. plate max level 70 is enough to quickly flick through what is up. The problem with lists is unless they include every set/every boe blue item then there will always be gaps in lists. This market is still changing and it is too early to write off any set and remove it from a buying list.

If there was any market where it pays to play on a realm that has decent sized horde and alliance populations it’s transmog, those two overlord legs on alliance side you got just move one over to the horde. You don’t really gain anything by listing 2 of the exact same item on the same faction.

More Potential Buyers = More Sales

6 I am in too deep, help!

I sometimes think this, bouncing items between toons gives me infinite storage, but my inventory is sitting at over 5000 items, put another way roughly 50 guild bank tabs. One process I need to refine is restocking, I have sold an item how can I access the item in my inventory, with mailboxes only showing the last 50 mails (600 items) I have to mail block (not being able to send these toons any items I will not use straight away) on multiple toons to get access to most of my inventory.

Maybe the only way to get around this problem is to post two of every item, it will double my posting fees but might be the only quick way to plug gaps. The other alternative is to be pickier in what I buy and just DE/vendor the 7^th/8^th copy of certain items, it’s kind of like I am speculating on the popularity of certain items e.g.  Prospector boots, I will need seven of them? when they become really popular because keelhaul says they look awesome or they are in an image on mmochamp or wowinsider, it could happen!

Another option is to drop prices to try and move more stock or transfer stock somewhere else.

Check out Making Even More Gold from Transmogg Part 1

Daily Transmog Picks

Boneshredder Shoulderguards, Ghostwalker Legguards and Ghostwalker Rags




I'm still able to pick up leather items for silvers and there is not a lot of competition for leather so I can price nice things very high, all these items were bought by the same person.