Total Spent: 1,959,350 Gold
Total Earned: 11,560,000 Gold
All in a Day’s Work
Because Diablo
Sometimes It's Just The Best Answer
Filed under Auction House …
Fact or Fiction: Only Level 60+ Items Sell
One of the most common things I read about on the forums is how people only pick up Item Level 61+ loot. They ignore blues, and rares that are below Item Level 61. So I decided to do a quick experiment to prove items that aren’t Level 60 can still sell.
This dropped for me during a Warrior’s Rest run:
Hmm… not too bad right? I headed over to the gold auction house and did a search for pants with +100 Int, +150 Vit, Magic Find (left it blank) and the cheapest I found was 49,999 Buyout. I used those parameters since I wasn’t going to go and invest heavily into gems to boost the search stat. Anyways, 49,999 isn’t too bad – especially for the people that are struggling to even get 1,000,000 into their bank account. But it looks like the time left on these auctions show that they’re not selling. Well, that’s not good. Maybe everyone is right; an Item Level 55 can’t sell for much, if at all.
So I blindly put them up on the Real Money Auction House for $1.25. When I have open slots on the RMAH, I litter it with $1.25 auctions. It’s only $0.25 to my Battle.net Balance if it sells, but $0.25 is the equivalent of 100,000. That’s not bad. But who the heck would buy these pants for $1.25 when they could buy at least 400,000 worth of gold with that money? (Yes, $1.25 is really worth 500,000 gold, but the RMAH doesn’t report gold at $0.25 per 100,000 so you can’t buy 500,000 with $1.25.) Anyone in their right mind would just buy $1.25 worth of gold, and buy like five of these pants if they wanted!
Oh well, an experiment is an experiment… oh wait, that was fast.
Less than an hour later that pops up in my inbox.
And just because I didn’t believe it myself, I went to double check.
Well – there you have it. There’s a good chance you’re just leaving a good amount of gold on the floor by ignoring all items under Item Level 61.
In defense of the person that purchased these pants, with properly upgraded gems you’re looking at over +140 Int, +160 Vit, and +12% Magic Find. The cheapest pants with those values on the gold auction house is currently 599,000. Except the fact that two of those gems would cost that person 1,258,000 gold. Oh well. Myth busted, go ahead and pick up all those rares now!
How to Determine if an Item is Worth Selling: Part 2 – Helmets
OK, let me start this series off by saying a couple of things. I don’t believe that I’m some super expert at Diablo III. In fact, there’s probably a ton of stuff that I don’t know, and there’s a real good chance I probably end up salvaging an item that’s worth money to someone. I’ve only played a Demon Hunter to level 60, so obviously I know the DH market really well. I am fortunate enough to have friends that still play the game, each of which has geared a character to level 60 – so with their hope, I have been able to build this strange database in my brain that quickly tells me whether an item will or won’t sell on the auction house at a quick glance. That being said, I’m simply here to share what works for me. It might not work for you; hell, it might not even be the best way to do things. But I’ve been able to progress easily, build my character with what people apparently call ‘godly’ gear, and I can easily farm every act in Inferno.
So, let’s begin with the first piece of gear in this mini-series of helping you determine if an item is worth selling or not. You’re sitting there after identifying all your rares and most of the time you think it’s crap. You’re right. Diablo III has a lot of poo poo that drops. But that’s OK, because if the game always dropped good loot, then nothing would be worth anything at all. The sooner you realize that the auction house is an integral part of the Diablo III experience, the sooner you’ll be able to progress. Love it or hate it, it’s not going anywhere.
Read the rest of the post after the break.
How to Determine if an Item is Worth Selling: Part 1 – General Advice
You’ve just spent hours farming and now your stash is full of rares that you just got done identifying. Part of you feels like it was time wasted, since nothing jumps out to you that it’s worth anything. Well here’s the bad news: chances are, you’re wrong. And the good news? Chances are you can make some gold – or even real money!
After much thought, I realized that this will be a multi-part guide. Not because I give a crap about traffic on this website, but because if anyone wants to actually learn anything, it has to be really detailed. So because of that, I’m going to break down the guide into multiple parts, with each post focusing on a single piece of gear. Ideally I’ll be able to break down the stats of what to look for on the item, the max that each stat can roll, and what each class values.
But until then, this post will give you some general advice and tips on what to look for to start learning how whether an item is worth selling on the auction houses in Diablo III.
Hit the break to rest the rest of this lengthy post.
Are Your Diablo III Auction House Sales Slowing Down? How to Play the Auction House Mini Game:
I spend quite a bit of my free time reading through /r/diablo posts, and a particular one caught my attention. There’s a good chance that I probably spend more time sitting on the Auction Houses in the game than actually farming, mostly because it’s an interesting study in human nature, economics, and just the general habits of people on how they value something that isn’t real. Early on, I made millions doing what most people hate – ‘flipping’ items on the gold auction house. Once I figured out what Demon Hunters desired in building their class, I would quickly browse through several pieces of armor, scooping up underpriced pieces and relisting them for a profit. Admittedly, that got boring and recently the only flips I do is if I spot a severely underpriced item while browsing for upgrades for myself.
So with that being said, I pay a lot of attention on what goes on between the RMAH and the GAH, what items are converting at the proper $2.50 / mill ratio (which surprisingly many people do not follow) and generally which way the market is heading. And while there’s truth that the market as a whole has slowed down, there is still plenty of money to be made on the AH. I spent the past couple of days putting some items to the test in hoping to figure out how best to optimize sales in today’s market.
When the ability to sell gold appeared on the RMAH, I knew the market was going to shift. Everyone with the best items would undoubtedly unload it on the GAH believing that they could fetch exorbitant amounts for it now that people could just purchase gold. The problem is, a price floor was sent on the value of gold, which was $2.50 / million. Now assuming that the vast majority of Diablo III players are semi-intelligent (hint: they’re not) most people would somewhat stabilize the market between the RMAH and the GAH at $2.50 /million. That is, if you have a million dollar item, you’d sell it on the RMAH for around $2.50. Otherwise, someone else would just buy 1 million in gold with $2.50 and buy it on the GAH. Right?
Entirely wrong. Completely wrong in fact. Just how wrong? Read on after the break for a detailed post on how to price your items and start making millions off your drops.