Won a bid for a high VIT Inna's Vast Expanse (for some reason, bid was set at $50 and b/o was set at $90 and no one else bidded). So I got it for $50 (what's that, like 175M?). Sold it for 250M, so about 75M, which isn't too bad, although some of those VEs are set at obscene prices, but I don't think they're moving.

Posted by Mehsiah at 01/25/2013 01:09 PM

Posted by arpger at 01/24/2013 07:52 AM

This is probably a common method, but i've made a lot of gold doing it. I like to search level 60 rare armor sorting by time left, and going to around page 4. I only look for items that have already been bid up (max bid above starting bid) and bid on the item if it seems like a good deal. After searching for similar items, I typically price to earn 1 to 2 million profit off each item. I can fill up my ten auctions pretty quickly with this method and it's surprisingly low risk since you're only paying what others have already bid the item up to.

I dont understand this at all, haha. :(

Basically, just bidding on items right before they expire to score good deals and then setting the buyout price to make a few million gold profit in most cases.

I don't get it either! You can't see if something has been bid on.

If your bid isn't equal to the starting bid, it has been bid on.

@whirlingd17 What nuhertz means is that if you click an item listing in the AH and click the Bid button, you'll bring up the bidding dialogue box.

If the Current Bid is the same as the Max Bid, then the item does not have a bid already. If the Current Bid is different than the max bid, as in the picture above, that means there is already a bid on an item.

If you see a difference between the Current and Max Bid that means there's interest from at least one person in the world of that item at that price. With many items, bids will nearly always come out as less than someone is willing to pay as a Buyout. Similar Necklaces may be listed right now with Buyouts at 120 Million and no one is buying. That Necklace may go for 73 million on bid, but would sell within an hour at a Buyout of 90 million. 90 million minus AH cut = 76.5 million -> 3.5 million profit.

This works well on items that have moderate demand like Set armors and off-Class set items like +Dex/Vit Tal Rasha's armor.

?

If an items been bid on, it says 'Current bid', as above screenshot. If it hasn't it says 'Starting Price'.

Oh, that works too, then. :D

@ecocd Thanks for the clarification, just rolling through, didn't take too much time on it. Your explanation is much better.

Apparently there is a way of working out what someone's 'Max bid' is on an item but I didn't understand how it works.

Anyone shed any light? I read about this ages ago on the b.net forums with people crying out for it to be patched.

@ninjax If I recall correctly, it has to do with the min 5% bid increment and nearly always works/worked. Basically, with an alternate account or a friend, you bid the item up by min increments (using a bot) in the last minute of the action until you see that the next min bid is less than 5% more than the current bid. At that point, you know you've gotten within 5% of their max bid. The key was not hitting their bid right on the dot, because then you would overshoot them.

It was usually done with a bot which was fairly easy to detect on the Blizz side. To combat auction bots, in general, they've capped a maximum number of actions within a certain time frame. They may have even fixed this specific exploit since then and always required a min 5% increase in bids. It never made sense to do it on items that only cost 500k and I haven't bid on items in the 50+ million Gold range so I don't know if it's still happening.

The moral of the story is the same as always. Only max bid what you're willing to pay for the item, in the first place. I calculate what I think I can flip it for, figure out an acceptable ROI and make that my max bid. I don't win all that often, but I make my target profit when I do.

I have a confession. In my impatience to build a CM Wiz, I've joined the ranks of the AH3 player base. It's almost depressing how I can earn gold flipping my little corner of the AH 10 times faster than I can actually playing the game. I hope you can forgive me and welcome me with open arms.

I finally broke down out of frustration. In Diablo 2, I could play nearly any build simply by putting the skill points in the right place. Builds were based far more on skill points than equipment. Sure, you would kill faster as a lightning javazon with a set of Zeus Javs, but you could be a beast with simple white javelins with the skill points in the right place. In Diablo, 3 to build a CM Wiz, you need to have at least 50 million Gold to buy the gear to make it work. No one would ever be able to find the gear necessary to make it work. How many Spin2Win Barbs would be around if you had to actually find that high-dps socketed Skorn?

So when I noticed a minor, exploitable market inefficiency that's been earning me 2 million Gold / day for 20 minutes of 'work' I took the opportunity in order to actually have fun playing the game.
*steps off his soapbox*

My failproof somehow method is buying Inna Radiance with 150 Dex/Vit + Resist, if I see one priced at 1-2mil, and the rest are 4-5, I get the cheap ones and relist them at 5mil.

Posted by ecocd at 02/28/2013 01:54 PM

I have a confession. In my impatience to build a CM Wiz, I've joined the ranks of the AH3 player base. It's almost depressing how I can earn gold flipping my little corner of the AH 10 times faster than I can actually playing the game. I hope you can forgive me and welcome me with open arms.

I finally broke down out of frustration. In Diablo 2, I could play nearly any build simply by putting the skill points in the right place. Builds were based far more on skill points than equipment. Sure, you would kill faster as a lightning javazon with a set of Zeus Javs, but you could be a beast with simple white javelins with the skill points in the right place. In Diablo, 3 to build a CM Wiz, you need to have at least 50 million Gold to buy the gear to make it work. No one would ever be able to find the gear necessary to make it work. How many Spin2Win Barbs would be around if you had to actually find that high-dps socketed Skorn?

So when I noticed a minor, exploitable market inefficiency that's been earning me 2 million Gold / day for 20 minutes of 'work' I took the opportunity in order to actually have fun playing the game.
*steps off his soapbox*

For better or worse, the auction house is just another part of the game. Similar to how it can be fun to play self-found items only without use of the ah, it can be entertaining and rewarding to only get on Diablo 3 to play the auction house. There's also the appeal of being able to make real money off playing the market, instead of hoping for extremely rare drops. It's a good day to become a flipper!

I found a few like those over time while I was trying to gear up my characters, but never really was interested in playing the AH. Now that I am a bit interested in trying, I've come up with a name in my head, "b2b" = bid-to-buyout market inefficiency.

For about 3 days, I discovered CC Storm Crows were b2b. I could purchase for under 500k on bid and sell them within an hour for 1 MM earning a quick 350-500k per hat. There appeared to be a hard ceiling at 1 million, because I listed a pair of very similar hats at 1 million and 1.1 million. The first sold in 20 minutes. The second was still up after 6 hours. Soon, though, all of the CC Stormcrows were at 1 MM on Buyout and none were selling.

It sounds like @Raulz0r found one that hasn't closed up very quickly. :) 'grats!

I am going to brag about my niche. I am not going to reveal the niche (then it won't be a niche, it is too easy to get overflooded in there) although I have shared it with another RMT member. The thrill comes from being able to flip (i.e. the feeling of haha, I buy it for 100k and you paid 10m for it?), and with the gold you can improve your toons for better gameplay experience.

- My initial capital investment : 22k HC
- New net incoming cash flows: from leveling my 1st WD (then dead at 56), which isn't much from loots, gold pick up
- Final HC gold balance in about a month: 30m+ (including approx 8.5m from flipping a Genzaniku).

Posted by arpger at 01/24/2013 07:52 AM

This is probably a common method, but i've made a lot of gold doing it. I like to search level 60 rare armor sorting by time left, and going to around page 4. I only look for items that have already been bid up (max bid above starting bid) and bid on the item if it seems like a good deal. After searching for similar items, I typically price to earn 1 to 2 million profit off each item. I can fill up my ten auctions pretty quickly with this method and it's surprisingly low risk since you're only paying what others have already bid the item up to.

I do the same but I search lvl60+, legendary, and arrange by finishing soonest.
bid on everything under salvage value, which is; sell price of 1 firey brimstone and two iridescent tears less 15% (roughly 13,600g today).
I maxbid up to salvage value on absolutely everything as fast as I can without paying attention to the items, at times I have been winning every auction under that price for the next 2-4 hours. To profit from this without flipping I rely on refunds from auctions slipping through with only my bid(often see a 10k refund) then salvaging the item and selling the components.

While salvaging can be worthwhile, the real profit is in valuable items that didn't sell because there was no buyout or the buyout was childishly high.
I list the good (and popular) legendary items straight away with a 100k- 2mil buyout to tempt impatient buyers who sort by lowest buyout. Even average legendary items sell at 50k but I don't normally have room to list them.


Also lots of people do this, I can tell from regular, appropriately priced current bids for the near finished items in each item category and from seeing the same refund amount all night when they are bidding too cheap.
this works best while it is quiet in the AH so if you are outbid too often then you need to go higher or go home.

pro-tip: carefully not bid on anything you are already winning.

I have found a sure way to kick start someone who has little to no money at all when he reaches level 60, I advise everyone to farm MP10 Normal Act 1 and Act 2, every yellow that has a main stat or vit, it will sell, granted you won't most likely get more than 300-400k per hour, but money is money when you are at the beginning.

Posted by sandalhero at 03/02/2013 05:40 AM

I do the same but I search lvl60+, legendary, and arrange by finishing soonest.
bid on everything under salvage value, which is; sell price of 1 firey brimstone and two iridescent tears less 15% (roughly 13,600g today).
I maxbid up to salvage value on absolutely everything as fast as I can without paying attention to the items, at times I have been winning every auction under that price for the next 2-4 hours. To profit from this without flipping I rely on refunds from auctions slipping through with only my bid(often see a 10k refund) then salvaging the item and selling the components.

While salvaging can be worthwhile, the real profit is in valuable items that didn't sell because there was no buyout or the buyout was childishly high.
I list the good (and popular) legendary items straight away with a 100k- 2mil buyout to tempt impatient buyers who sort by lowest buyout. Even average legendary items sell at 50k but I don't normally have room to list them.


Also lots of people do this, I can tell from regular, appropriately priced current bids for the near finished items in each item category and from seeing the same refund amount all night when they are bidding too cheap.
this works best while it is quiet in the AH so if you are outbid too often then you need to go higher or go home.

pro-tip: carefully not bid on anything you are already winning.

I have been doing this for awhile now too..! :-) Though I haven't been taking into account the price of the tears so much, since that was usually quite low. Also, I've been burned a couple of times for not selling my brimstones quickly enough; most notably back in the day when brimstones were hovering in the 90k range & I was using that as my reference point for bidding, and then the brim market tanked to like 20-something k overnight & I was left holding a bunch of brims that had depreciated like crazy.

Similarly, I was stocking up on brims before the 1.07 patch expecting it to rise, & was buying legendaries in the 25k~30k range; but as we all saw, the patch had zero effect on raising the prices of brimstone, & in fact, the opposite has now occurred, with current prices now hovering around only 12k or so...? :-0 So again, I'm left holding a bag full of brimstones...

Still, one does occasionally manage to pick up a good deal or another on a *really* mispriced item which one can re-sell for much higher... :) & that is definitely fun!

btw, as that was your first post, welcome to the forums, @sandalhero! :-)

Posted by douvinsky at 03/01/2013 11:07 PM

I am going to brag about my niche. I am not going to reveal the niche (then it won't be a niche, it is too easy to get overflooded in there) although I have shared it with another RMT member. The thrill comes from being able to flip (i.e. the feeling of haha, I buy it for 100k and you paid 10m for it?), and with the gold you can improve your toons for better gameplay experience.

- My initial capital investment : 22k HC
- New net incoming cash flows: from leveling my 1st WD (then dead at 56), which isn't much from loots, gold pick up
- Final HC gold balance in about a month: 30m+ (including approx 8.5m from flipping a Genzaniku).

I know how you feel--I stumbled across one similar niche a couple of months ago using just the gold AH, and it basically allowed me to double my gold from around 30 million to 60 million over a single weekend. Ended up blowing it all on the cheapest Natalya's Mark I could find so that I could finally complete my legacy Natalya's set; and shortly thereafter, my niche crashed, making it hard to flip the item any more for any substantial profit.

Recently, however, it has it started to pick up again, so maybe there's still some hope....? :-)

wow. so many good tips. But I think the most important thing is that you must have enough time to do flip-flop on AH. Remember the world's most expensive d3 item, an EF sold for ~9b igg, was bought on RMAH for ~250 euro. That guy has keen eyes on the gears.

I have been doing this for awhile now too..! :-) Though I haven't been taking into account the price of the tears so much, since that was usually quite low. Also, I've been burned a couple of times for not selling my brimstones quickly enough; most notably back in the day when brimstones were hovering in the 90k range & I was using that as my reference point for bidding, and then the brim market tanked to like 20-something k overnight & I was left holding a bunch of brims that had depreciated like crazy

I started just after the firey brimstone crash so that explains why I won so many items and there were few competing bidders. be interesting to see the effect of craft all on firey brimstone price.

another niche I can't understand is dyes, I made 20k each off dyes a few days ago by buying in game from vendors and selling at the suggested price on gah. does anyone know why they sell above value?

Regarding dyes, I would say most likely it is due to imperfect knowledge ie players do not know they could get them in game.