Wednesday 29 February 2012

Selling Transmog Gear


The Knowledge
The Inventory
Pricing strategies
Prioritise Plate
Patience is key


The Knowledge

Going over lists and podcasts will help you when you are first starting out to sort out things you really badly want to buy and those things you want to either avoid or only pick up if they are very cheap.
It might surprise you to learn this but I don’t use Auctionator or TSM buying lists anymore. I search max level 70 choose an armour type and sort by price (cheapest first). I do it this way because I like to experiment with different items/slots.You need to start buying and trying to flip, the experience on your realm will give you a feel for what moves and what doesn’t for you.

The Inventory

So you have been shopping for transmogg items a while and got a few hundred items, you have the edge as you are already in the market, buyers are looking over your wares and prices.
The next person has to snatch those items before you but it will take them time to amass your inventory (hopefully mainly highly sought items not 10 infantry bracers). Having other people enter the market is not necessarily a bad thing if they can bring additional supply through old raids, rare farming or dungeon clearing.

E.g. you have chest of a nice set , they put up the legs for this chest, those items might sell faster now a buyer can see “ hey I can grab those 2 at the same time and get a good chunk of a new look started”.

I am currently playing below the radar on one auction house, I’ve been buying up transmogg items for 2 weeks but not posting them on the AH. There is no competition here, I am going to wait to get 200 items then step into the market before anyone else here realises there is a market, have 80 items so far.



2 Pricing strategies

Playing the waiting game with transmogg, posting high and waiting for your customers to come along.
Two ways of going into it are using a one size fits all pricing structure, or using a tiered system (tiers based on the item and/or the slot)
One price to rule them all has the advantage that if buyers know the set price; they can easily calculate the price of a full set.  With varying prices it may be harder to calculate the total cost of a new look.


3 Prioritise Plate

In terms of sales I would rank the different armour types as follows:

Plate > mail > leather > cloth

You might be surprised leather is ahead of cloth but I have found with cloth it is very hard to move and get good prices for non-chest slots, there are some exceptions.

 

Leather is a great way of getting into transmogg on a realm that already has competition; you can still pick up great items for silvers because the prices have not gone up as much as plate or mail.

4 Patience is key

This is not cut inferno rubies don’t expect to sell out in one night, if you can’t handle the thought of relisting items for days/weeks before they sell maybe transmogg isn’t for you.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in the first week of patch 4.3 I sold a complete knight set for a few hundred gold, don’t worry about selling an item too low or buying an item that you end up disenchanting or vendoring, learn from it.
I don’t have a fantastic eye for style/looks but what I lack in that department I make up for with my willingness to experiment and learn.





Daily Transmog Picks


My two picks from yesterdays sales:




Black mail/leather always moves well and the Valorous set is a recolour of Gothic/Heavy Lamellar.

Share the transmogg items you sold yesterday in the comments.







Leather Tiers by farli and EpicPennyPouch

Tier 1: (2,000g – 5,000g)

Cutthroat
Eye patches including Swashbuckler's Eyepatch
Helms like Ranger Hat
Bonechewer
Grand
Prospector

Tier 2 (1,000g – 2,000g)
Ghostwalker
Boneshredder
Serpentskin
Pridelord
Rageclaw
Chieftain’s
Indomitable
Scouting
Black Whelp Tunic
Insignia
Trickster’s
Huntsman’s

Tier 3 (500g – 1000g)

Nightshade
Bandit
Tribal
Glyphed
Clefhoof
Imposing
Imperial Leather
Swashbuckler's

Tier 4 (300g- 750g)
Bard
Wolf Rider














Tuesday 28 February 2012

Why The Overcut?



During my clearing out of my Guild banks to be ready for my MoP stockpile I found a staff of divine infusion. I went to post it on the Auction house and there was already one up for 5k. I listed mine at 6k.

A few hours passed...

I checked back and saw the other person had relisted at 7k, so i reposted mine at 8k!

This continued for a few days...

We both got to 20k and we chatted and decided to both hold at 20k (he undercut me down to 10k few hours later).

On twitter i was talking about how it sometimes pays to be the most expensive seller in transmogg. If you search plate -> chest you want to be on the first page. This is how you can sometimes sell an item at a higher price than someone with the exact same item but a different suffix (e.g. Exalted harness of the bear vs Exalted harness of the whale).

I was calling it reverse undercutting but that was probably very confusing. Later on Alaeriel said "overcutting" on twitter and that made a lot more sense and then the blog The Overcut was born.

thanks Aleariel! Karma points for you

Transmog a general overview


1 Demand
2 Supply
3 Horde vs Alliance
4 Bop vs Boe

1 Demand

For a long time being in the latest pve or pvp gear was a sort of status symbol, people wanted to know where you got that awesome gear from etc.
As time passed and LFR was introduced everyone was looking more and more similar. With an increased number of people raiding, standing around your faction main city in the most recent tier armour with several other people looking very samey is less appealing.
Transmog provides the opportunity to stand out from the crowd, it allows you to customise the way you look and provides an outlet for your personality, colour preferences, expansion preferences and allows you to re-live former glories through the items you collected long ago. With gear resets and other in game changes there are very few opportunities where playing the game longer (expansion longer) than someone else is really that beneficial, transmog allows you to equip those items you earned the hard way now.
Gearscore is still the be all and end all of end game but looking good/unique is breaking out from RP community and going mainstream, in my experiences transmogg isn’t something you do once and you are done, but it is an evolution. You might come across a better looking chest item or a weapon you want your look to match better with. You might have one look for tank set and another look fro your dps set.
Hide your gear,not in best of the best gear? No problem just transmogg it! Making a pvp levelling alt and you want to pimp them up with the best gear not just boa but awesome gear in every others lot aswell, want to use mongoose/landslide enchants go for it! Now when you pvp you can disguise the fact you are a twink because of transmogg. I use ced carver transmogg to hide the berserking enchants on my level 70 rogue.
Like in real life fashion changes, there will be people working on mogging off-sets, pvp switching from bop to boe, then others going from boe to bop and others  going for some blend between bop and boe. Several people I know are working on their third or fourth transmogg sets and they tend to be a mix of boe and bop items.
Choosing an item beyond just its looks, maybe an item you used for long periods of a previous expansion, a reputation reward item, pvp items or items no longer obtainable like Athenea/Benediction. Some items just have sentimental value.
Having multiple 85’s is becoming the norm and once you have finished making your main look bling bling then you get to work on all your alts.

2 Supply

I have levelled a few toons via mainly pvp and a few via mainly Lfd so if I want to go back and do a quest for an item to Tmogg I have no problems on my newer alts, problems arise when i want to go back on my shaman who has done loads of quests in BC and vendor/DE all the quest rewards.

You can level up using looking for dungeon especially if you are a tank or healer. A source of bop gear and green drops (if needed on become soulbound so you have to get lucky on greed rolls)

Real id cross-realm raids making it easier to do more raids.

At this stage of the game people are turning to alts, constant supply of low priced greens.

Patch 4.3 was all about gems/enchants now everyone is not spending so much gold on item enhancements, consumables as there are less frequent gear upgrades. Transmogg is something to spend gold on.

Transmogg items are farmable for example Blasted lands rare spawns, Scholo chest runs and AQ20 fast respawn trash. The hard part is when farming for a specific item, if you go into AQ20 looking for rare greens you wont be disappointed, but if you go into AQ20 looking for a specific item like exalted harness you could be farming there a while.

Thinking outside the box: How many great greens get vendored or DE before they have a chance to make it onto the auction house?
I use a buying macro “wtb boe armor please link me what you got” and use /who 20-70.
It is pretty hit and miss because a lot of people want know what you are talking about, but I have got lucky on some nice items and it is untapped source of supply.

3 Horde vs Alliance

I have had success on both horde and alliance looking at Realmpop data and ye can see where your customers are coming from.
Humans and Blood elves make up 28.5% of characters (EU realmpop data)

There are differences in appeal for an item depending on which faction you are selling it, go beyond shared models, the drop rate. Look at drop locations and how it looks on models other than blood elf/human female you might discover some hidden gems.

A great example is Burnt leather vest an item with low drop rate and drops in alliance favoured zones such as: westfall and gilneas, it might appear more often alliance side compared to horde. I bought mine on alliance side few weeks ago but it was’nt selling I took another look at the item and figured it might sell better (faster/higher amount ) if I moved it to the horde side and then a couple of days later it sold.



4 Bop vs Boe

Bop have to set up a raid, farm a 5man takes time and luck.
Tokens vs Random number generator for old content “ I want full tier 2 go!!!!!” sounds easy but it is not, a priest in my vanilla guild killed Neffy for 7 months to finally get tier 2 chest.

Sentimental value? choosing an item beyond just its looks, maybe an item you used for long periods of a previous expansion. A rep reward item or pvp items.



What are your thoughts on transmogg?

About me


A blog about making gold in The World of Warcraft. I am very active on twitter ( @TheOvercut ) and I will use this blog as a place where i can expand on certain topics/ideas.

I have played since early Vanilla, I raided on two toons at 60 and got into gold making when making low level twinks. I needed gold to buy the best gear and also enchants/consumables for my raiders. I made most of my gold in vanilla using alchemy, i would farm herbs myself add herbs bought from the AH and sell potions, elixir and flasks. I made a lot of gold when aq20/aq40 were realised by soloing Dire maul for living essences. There was a big rush for NR gear and everyone needed living essences so I was able to buy out competition and price gouge.

In TBC I made level 39/49 twinks i mainly made gold flipping twink items because i knew what BiS or what was rubbish and could sort through blue/epic items very easily.

In Wotlk I leveled toons and made gold, I controlled the flask market and made a lot of money selling to guilds in large amounts, I also did some inscription and jewelcrafting. I hit 600k around the time RS came out, but I sort of ran out of things to do. I gave a good chuck of gold away to friends/guildies and quit wow until around august 2011.

I got Cataclysm in september 2011 and had around 300k. I stockpiled up on ore/scrolls/gems in preperation for patch 4.3. I also set aside all the item i got via DMF dense stone turn ins ready for the release of transmogg. My preparations paid off and i hit goldcap in late December 2011. I am currently active on 4 realms and 6 auction houses. I hit 1.5 million in February 2012.  I am currently active on both factions of one realm. I hit 4 million in April 2013.

I got Mists of Pandaria in December 2012 and I started out making 85-89 twinks this is one of the most fun parts of a new expansion to me, I spent over 100,000 gold on the best items, enchants, flasks and professions and then started rolling over people in this new pvp bracket. My first 90 dinged via only pvp.


Future goals include having a million gold on more than one realm, getting some alliance level 85's, having a huge MoP stockpile and exploring new ways of making gold in the World of Warcraft.

Future goals include reaching realm cap ( eleven million gold) and 22 level 90's (11 currently).
I would also really like the Trainer title added in Patch 5.3 but this might be the hardest goal.

Send me emails !

farli_wow (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot)  uk

Include Region, realm name and faction in the title if you need specific help via TUJ.
 Example:  US Aerie Peak Alliance
Hello world :)