Buy up items that have limited availability, or that are hard to find, and resell them for a profit. What could be easier? Recipes, formulas, plans, clothing items, weapons, gear, etc.
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What are Limited Items?
One of the ways to start on your way to making a goodly amount of WoW gold is through the buying and selling of various items. Some of these items are limited in availability, others are only available in one place, and some are both.
While most of the vendor items in the World of Warcraft are available in unlimited quantities, the limited items might only have one item available. An example is in the Crossroads, in the Barrens. The weapons vendor there sells the Feral Blade, but only one or two at a time. The vendor in the image, above, is in Tranquillen (Ghostlands) and stocks various limiteds (a quest is required before you can see his wares.)
Buying herbs for 80 copper and reselling them for 80 silver (or more) is a nice way to go for cash strapped characters. Visit him several times while you’re questing in the area and you’ll have decent quantity of stuff to sell. If you were to buy that Bruiseweed, and make a stack of 20, it would cost you 8sp (obviously you would be visiting him several times to get that stack.) You could possibly sell it for several gold on the Auction house.
All of the vendors selling limited items will replenish their stock from time to time, but that time may vary from a few minutes, to hours, to months in the case of a certain vendor in Moonglade who sells a certain dress (this is a vanity item, it has no combat value.) The dress only appears once every couple of months.
Then you have a few vendors who sell unlimited quantities of items, but they are the only vendor where you can find these items. Kendor Kabonka <Master of Cooking Recipes>, in Stormwind, is a perfect example. He’s the only source (or one of a very few sources) for a number of cooking recipes. Buy them for a few silver, resell them for a few gold. This saves people in, for example, Darnassus, from having to make a really long trip just to buy cheaper recipes. (Yes, I know there is no one in Darnassus, but you get the idea.)
Many, if not most, of these limited items will sell for much more on the Auction House than it costs to buy them from the vendor. Sometimes a whole lot more. Do you see some possibilities here?
Examples:
- Common shirts from a clothing vendor. Buy for a couple of silver and sell for 50-200 gold. Or more.
- That Feral Blade mentioned above is sold by Morhan Coppertongue in Loch Modan and Lizzarik in the Crossroads.
- Agile boots are sold by Alexandre Lefevre (Sepulcher) and Kat Sampson (Loch Modan.)
- Check your engineering, blacksmithing, etc. vendors for recipes that you can sell. Beware, most of them are bind on pickup, no selling possible.
And Why Would Anyone Buy it From the AH?
There are a couple of groups of players who are your target market for these items, and they all value their time and convenience. Let’s face, it: It’s a pain to travel to some far away vendor who might be out of that item when you get there.
- The one group probably doesn’t know where to find the item (and doesn’t necessarily care,) so will buy it off the Auction House. So they pay an extra gold or three or three hundred, so what? You might as well get those extra gold pieces.
- Next is the group that doesn’t want to waste time camping some vendor, hoping that item will finally pop, when they have better things to do. If the limited item is on a 20 minute respawn time then they might fly over to the vendor and miss the item. Then they have to wait 20 minutes. Boring. As an example, if I have way over 100k gold why the heck would I waste my time traveling way over there anyway?
- The last group feels their time is worth more than a few gold, so they buy items off the Auction House instead of spending the time to go wherever to get an item. For example, before the first aid trainers learned all the skills people had to go here and there to buy the appropriate books. They save a lot of time by not having to travel to buy and/or farm the necessary items. Spend a few gold to save the travel time? Works for me.
The same is true for any other limited item. There’s the group that knows it’s available from a vendor, but doesn’t want to spend the time camping that vendor hoping that the item appears. So they buy off the AH. The other group doesn’t know about the vendors, but might not care anyway.
Your Job, Should You Choose to Accept it…
Now your job is this – every time you pass by any vendor in the game you’re going to check their inventory for limited items. You’ll want to check those vendors each time you pass by, just in case you missed the item the first time around. Also, you’re going to check for items that only appear at that one vendor, such as that old First Aid book (and yes, First Aid is no longer a skill, but you get the idea.) Then check the Auction House and learn what these items sell for and what the competition might be. You’ll be pleasantly surprised in many cases. For myself, I just tend to grab items as I see them and then research them. I’m rarely disappointed.
You may also find that someone else is selling the items on the Auction House, but for too low a price. Buy them up and repost them at a better (for you) price.
Make notes of the profitable items as you find them and build up your own list of these items, then you can make the rounds from time to time and gather up your stock to sell. It might be worthwhile to park a buyer in certain areas, just to make it easier to grab those items.
The first time you buy something for 5-40 silver and sell it for 100-400 gold you’ll be convinced.
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