Flipping: Part I

Going to start out on the easy stuff in my first real post. Many other bloggers and guides have already touched this, so if you are a veteran blog crawler / AH trader this is nothing new to you. I started out with doing minor flipping business already back in 2005 (before any fancy AH addons were released). I remember back then 1 gold was a pretty big chunk of money, and flipping helped me getting my swift ride at 60.

Flipping is another word for “buy low, sell high”. This is what I often hear about the AH money making topic:
– Hey my friend’s brother’s cousin’s schoolmate made 40 000 gold on AH
-How?
-He was buying stuff low from AH and selling it high!

The average WoW-player who’s not interested in auction house adventures think that flipping is what the big AH sharks are doing all day long. This is not true. Flipping is an income, but usually it’s something you do as a side business. The risks are high if you don’t have 100% knowledge about the server market. You won’t hit the cap in a reasonable period of time from flipping alone but it can help you get there.

Still, as an extra income, what stuff should we flip?

Epics
Epic weapons and armour have a pretty nice markup when succesfully done.

Beware of the welfare epics though: most of the early WOTLK crafted stuff is really outdated. 400 gold for an iLvL 200 piece is usually not a good price. I’ve bought stuff for as low as 90 gold per piece, and still have problems flipping those for 200. Not that I made a bad deal, but the gold income is really slow.

Low level epics can net you a couple of hundreds when rich mains equip their alts. The heirlooms removed a great deal of this market though, the people who can afford to spoil their alts are usually decked in heirlooms and have little need to buy epics for their little ones. Look for items that don’t have a heirloom equivalent. Heirloom slots are: weapon, chest, shoulders, trinkets and ranged (except wands). Stay out of the level 56+ market as the toons in that level range will soon head off to Outlands for quest items on par with BWL epics.

When I (rarely) flip epics I use auctioneer to search for deals, there’s often something down at the 30-45% price, just remember what I said about the welfare epics.

Trade Goods
Here’s my biggest market for flipping. Time matters alot here. During peak times (6-8 usually) and weekends trade goods are in high demand. People craft before raids, others level their alt’s profession skills. Now is the time to sell. Basically any trade goods can be flipped, but I suppose it’s different on different servers. As a Horde player Wool Cloth has a huge market that I buy for 10 and resell in the 30’s region. Runecloth is another solid income. The price usually dip down to 4-5 or even 3 in mid-weeks and can be resold at 10-15 during weekends. The reason for Runecloth’s popularity is all characters (and especially Death Knights) need them to get exalted with the capitals, unless they want to backtrack and do hours of grey questing. You need exalted to get the “Crusader”-title.

Also keep an eye on the low level crafting items. Copper, tin, cloth, herbs etc fluctuate alot. Some days copper is selling for 2-3 gold, the next day it’s up at 10-12. Herbs is always good to pick up at low prices since new scribes tend to need alot of these, and the supply is low.

What the Raider need
These items include flasks, potions, enchants, leg armor, food, etc. Again time matters. If you want to flip raid items you have to buy up a stock during the morning or early day. Raid items demand peak between 6-8 which is the time for you to sell. Again, have a good idea about your server market, the usual AHer is aware of this and will try to sell their items at the same time. Enchants tend to sell better after raid time, and especially on Wednesdays (people want to pimp their new loot).

Enchant materials
High level enchant mat items are by far the most traded goods on the Auction House, which means the price goes up and down alot. See those stacks of dust going for 60%? Buy them and relist for 48 hours, log back next day, pass GO and collect 200 gold.

Enchant materials have the major advantage of no deposit fee. Even low level mats can be sold at insane prices (Eternal essences, Nether essences, Illusion dust and arcane dust) when the market dries out.

This post became longer than I intended. There are more areas which you can flip with, I will talk more about it at a later time.

My biggest flip? Buying Orb of Deception from the trade channel for 200 gold, selling it on AH for 1900 in 2 hours. Pretty nice huh?