Undermine Your Opponents

Many of you have maybe seen www.Theunderminejournal.com. It was featured in Warcraftecon.net, as well as Justmytwocopper.org For those who do not know, The Undermine Journal is a powerful tool that does hourly scans of an entire server's AH, and keeps the data for two weeks. So how can The Undermine Journal help you?

Find the Farmers

On the top of the page, you'll see here the 'Top Sellers' tab. This is one of my favorites. This has a few great uses that can help you get an edge over your competition.
First, This is a fantastic way to find out who is a big farmer on your server. The names listed on the top row are the people who posted the most auctions recently. You will frequently find farmers on the top. The good thing about this is, you can message them in the game, and work out a deal where they simply CoD mass items to your mailbox. Not only will this save you gold, but it will save you time, and inventory space as well (you can just let some of them sit in your mailbox if you have to). Also, the popular sellers will usually include mass glyph/gem sellers, which leads into the next topic.

Time Your Competition

What you see here is a time period of 8 days, and the posting patterns of a glyph poster on my server. What I can see from this graph is that he only posts (yes he, I know him personally) around 5-6pm. That means that if I post my auctions before then, I will be undercut (as you can see he posts about 200 glyphs sometimes). But if I wait until AFTER 6pm, I can undercut ALL of his glyphs, and make some serious gold. This is fantastic for gems, glyphs, flasks, etc. If you know you competition, you can search their name and see their auctions, or you can search an item in particular, and see who posts them. Either way The Undermine Journal gives you plenty of ways to seek and destroy the competition.

Determining Market Price

What you see here are two different graphs. The top graph shows the average market price over 2 weeks (keep in mind, this is the average of the lower 15% of auctions, so the market price listed is close to the cheapest an item is available for at any time). What is good about seeing this graph, is that you can double check your auctioneer data, which just gives a straight up average. The problem with that is that it takes into account auctions that are much higher than the cheapest items, which means they will not get bought. Auctioneer values tend to be too high, and causing you to overestimate profits when you don't know the price of a product that well.

For example, if I see Frozen Orbs for 20g a piece, I want to know if it is a good time to buy. my auctioneer tells me that the average price is 21g- that doesn't help me too much. Were there some times recently when I wasn't online when Frozen Orbs were much cheaper? By looking at the graph you can see (top graph) that the price frequently dropped under 15g. Now I know that I should wait for the price to drop to buy the orbs.
This can also work on the flip side- to figure out when to sell, and if you can sell at a higher price or not.

The bottom graph shows the number of auctions listed every hour. This can be helpful when you want to sell a lot of an item- you can see if there is a pattern of when there is a low supply of that item- some items you will see a lack of supply on Tuesdays: this could be your prime selling time. This can also work the opposite way, figuring out what time of week to buy an item: when there is a high supply.

Generally, this is a great tool to use when you are getting into a new market, or maybe you have taken a brake from the Auction House for a few weeks/months, and you aren't sure what price trends are like anymore. Do realize however that the site is still in Beta, and your server might not be on it- if that is the case, you can request to have your server added. And don't worry, they are adding servers quite often. There are also many other tools that may be of use to you, check it out for yourself, get used to the interface. Have fun, and happy bidding.

Cata Investment Tip #2- Of the Owl

Getting ready for the race to 85
Many people will be rolling new toons when Cata comes, from Goblins to Worgens and Tauren Paladins. Most people will have BoA gear, however that only helps for trinkets, weapons, shoulders, and chest pieces. This leaves- Neck, head, hands, feet, wrists, waist, and pants. In the earlier levels, the leveling process is very quick, and many will probably not spend time buying green gear from the AH. However, there are a few key levels that demand will spike for.

Early 40s
Here, many classes upgrade their armor. Warriors and Paladins especially as tanks will want to upgrade from Mail to Plate. Doing a quick search of plate armor from level 40-41 I found bracers for 1g that were perfect for a leveling tank. This can easily sell for 20g come Cata. This is a key niche that you should watch out for, and do daily scans to grab cheap armor.


Of the Owl
Of the Owl, of the Falcon, of the Bear I believe will be the best sellers across the board. These are keywords that you can quickly search and just grab the ones under 3g. Of the Owl is highly desired by healers, as well as caster dpsers. Of the Falcon will be coveted by all the hunters, enhancement shammys, and druid cats. of the Bear is desirable to all tanks. These will go fast and for a good price.

Outlands
At level 57 one can buy gear from Outlands with significantly higher stats than gear from Azeroth. Although this might change after Cataclysm, I am sure that these items will be sought after and I predict prices of 40g+ for even uncommon bracers. Pretty much anything from level 57-59 will sell extremely well, of the Bandit and of the Prophet will probably be the two best.

Northrend
Same concept here, except that Of the Champion is only found in Northrend. These are fantastic tanking items, and if you can get them for under 15g I would buy them. I could see these selling for 60g+ 2-3 days into Cata. Of the Soldier will also be a good seller here

What else?
I didn't list every single type of armor that you should be buying. There are many drops that aren't grouped into the 'Of the [blank]' category. Of the [Intellect, Spirit, Strength...] will also sell well, but not as well as the categories I mention. This post is just a way to get you started, but if you have a lot of gold and a lot of inventory space, you can really diversify and get armor for all levels and all classes. Take a look at your auction house, I know there are plenty of steals out there. While writing this post I bought 10 pieces of armor under 2g each, all in the key categories. My only beef with making gold off armor is the slightly high cost to post, and that each item takes up an inventory slot. In terms of gold/slot, the value isn't as high as storing the gems that I mentioned yesterday, but armor will have a very high markup if you buy the right ones. My suggestion- have a character dedicated to buying and selling armor only, along with a guild. I plan on filling my bags and at least a few tabs over the next few weeks.

An introduction

Hi, I'm Samsclub. I've been involved with earning gold from the Auction House since I first started playing in Vanilla. My first item I made a lot of gold on (I laugh at this now) was buying Skullflame Shield for 90g and selling it for 350g. I felt like a king. Since then, I have constantly explored new ways of making gold through the AH and my professions. Between my two account, I am sitting at 207k, which is great, but that amount will go down in the near future as I start to stockpile for cataclysm. The reason for this blog being named, "Jerusalem Gold" is because I currently reside in Jerusalem, Israel- and I thought it was a clever name. I hope my daily thoughts can help you on your way to becoming an AH king!

-Samsclub

Cata Investment Tip #1- Azerothian Diamond

For my first post, I thought that I would talk about something that I'm sure everyone is wondering about: What to stockpile for Cataclysm. The set of items I want to talk about today is vanilla gems: Gems like Azerothian Diamond, Star Ruby, Blue Sapphire, and others. We all know that low level ore like Mithril and Thorium will be going up in price with the influx of new Goblins/Worgen (and new class combinations as well). This will also trickle down to the gems that are need for JC and other various recipies. I can tell that even a few months ago I was able to sell Azerothian Diamonds for 15g a piece, while buying them individually for 7g, or prospecting them from Thorium Ore. I could see Azerothian Diamonds rising to 40g each in the first week or so of Cataclysm's release. Stock up on these type of gems, and you can turn a hefty profit without any type of profession.