A collection of Auctionhouse tips and basic strategies.

[sweetgnome99]

I'll get right into sharing my meager tips, hope someone finds them useful.


1.Fiery Brimstone mining.
Select class->lvl59 as minimum level with max left blank-> legendary->set max buyout
Maxbuyout: Find lowest price of Brimstone by seeing what it suggests when you try to sell one, get a 'feel' for it after a while. Take that price and multiply by 0.85 to get the price you can buy FB at and sell for what it cost you.
Now you know that if an auction pops up on screen, it will yield a FieryBrimstone (100%chance? seems that way.) You will also know that you can resell the brimstone and not make a loss.
If you see -anything- available to buyout, don't think...click click click buyout. /pray

If you leave it on one class you'll miss out on some deals.
Witchdoctor: 1hand, 2hand, offhand , armor. The witchdoctor seems to be able to use the most items out of any class, this is my default.
Demonhunter: offhand (quiver), 1hand (1hand crossbows), armor
Wizard: for finding legendary source etc
Monk: Armor, and I think there are legendary Monk-only weapons that can show up occasionall
I mainly stick to -Witchdoctor- cycling between 1hand/2hand/armor/offhand (finds shields).

When haggling for a price
if you're buying from traders and they pricecheck, get at least a 15% discount on the cheapest FB available at the time. Try for another 5% off due to the convenience you're providing, 'quick easy cash'. If you're selling, try to come off as slightly reluctant/hesitant to sell Attitude (don't copypaste): "They seem to be going up in price over time, maybe I should hold onto them...but what's the best price you can give? maybe you can convince me" etc "It's not much of an upgrade for me, but..." that kind of mindset.
Do not admit "omg that's awesome! I must have it!" you'll have to pay the 'wanting it' tax if you do.

Never put more in the trade window than they asked for (e.g. because you know you're getting a bargain and you instinctively want to show gratitude). They'll usually expect the same next time, or they could think it's worth more than you're offering.



2. Advertising Auctionhouse items in trade (that aren't yours and you haven't bought -yet-).
This can be a subtle & easy way to pricecheck, or make you some quick coin.
Find something you think is a bargain but aren't sure about, link it in trade for sale at a price that's [AH price divided by 0.85] if you get someone wanting to buy you can either resell or know you've stumbled upon a bargain.
Caution: Someone might figure out what you're doing, mess you around or change their mind about buying it at the last second...request an invite/invite them to party before buying the auction to resell to them because this is when they'll go 'you know what nvm' if they're going to do that. It helps to know the market, and know you're not buying -junk- because if you try and sell junk for high prices you'll get people sending you joke offers. "sure I'll take it" etc

3. The Blind commodity 'gamble'.
Have Tomeofsecrets etc in stash, try to sell one but don't click submit. This should show you the cheapest price available at that time, if it's very low like 70 per tome when it's usually 800 there -could- be a full stack of 1k tomes priced at 70.
This is the best time to buy if you're planning to buy commodities off auction, quickly navigate to the page you need and buy a set quantity out. You can test it by buying out 1, 10, 50, 100 and check that they all gave you big discounts after buying them before moving up to 500 then another 500 etc

I was fast and didn't check before seeing the price of tomes at 70g per in the 'suggested price' of my sell tab, just bought out 1k worth instantly which was reckless. I was wanting a lot of tomes anyway, so even at market price it would have been ok.
I got a full stack of tomes (1000) for 72gold per, worst case scenario? you pay Blizzard's market price listed at the top, which isn't the end of the world if you think the commodity will increase in value later on.


4. Bidding on a lot of items to salvage.
Get your breakeven price by [multiplying Exquisite-essence price by 0.85] and make a note of it.
Set search to lvl59 min for amulets/rings/follower items and sort by lowest prices, bid on the first auction with a number that gives you the profit you're comfortable with & copy that number into clipboard so you can paste it as your maxbid from now on.
Set minimum lvl to 60 for every item category that isn't amulet/ring/follower & do the same.
Have an autoclicker to send gold/items to stash, I prefer items that take up only 1 slot and you'll occasionally find a good item you can relist, salvage the rest and sell the materials. If you're fast and lucky, you can make between 50-800k per hour depending on how many get outbid, and if you find hidden treasures to resell. Used to be far more effective when tear/essence prices were higher.

Extra tip:
set max buyout as 20k at first and work from the top down, then 30k and work your way down until you reach the ones you've already bid on. 50k->40k 80k-50K etc last time I checked it was easy to bid on your own auctions without any confirmation box coming up, forcing you to pay your max bid. This is a way to ensure you're not bidding on your own auctions.

5. Fun with gems.
-Search for and buyout un-gemmed highstat items that are underpriced and gem them for resale.
-Search for gems in items that are worth more than the asking price. e.g. search for different crit% for 1handers with a socket, time consuming and not steady income but you could get lucky.

6. Sniping underpriced weapons/armor
Set max buyout to x, refresh page occasionally and with some luck you'll see an item for 90k that does better dps than all the other items on the page that are listed at 200k. Simple. Add some filters to find 70-80+ resist armor that's underpriced as soon as it's listed.
This also works for high-mainstat follower items, highdex/resist/crit/MF DH gear or anything else you can think of.

7. Profit or Dye trying.
Buyout dye listed at far below listed vendor prices that you'd need to pay to buy it, dedicate one or more slots to listing that dye until it sells for a profit. Good for if you don't have much time to play, as it takes seconds to relist it every time. With most dyes there are times when the majority of the stock expires, and yours is left as the cheapest, there's a buffer of dyes priced below yours, just wait until they're either bought out of expire. Make sure not to deal with more dye than can fit back into your stash space.
Lovely/Vanishing/Abyssal/Winter dye is quite nice to start with, lovely because it's required for an achievement, vanishing because some people like to run around looking like they're not wearing gear & winter because it's lowcost and popular. Abyssal has a higher profit margin than a lot of other dyes but has a high cost, so only works if you've got a lot of gold to start with.
Patience and fairly high pricing. (Have patience and time will be on your side. Time and -not- being lowest priced to start with, will allow your prices to be the lowest, and allow you to have the same price that you always list at.)

This is a great way to utilize idle slots, because you can always cancel your dyes to make room.


8.Filter Legendary items by stats. Edit: and make sure to put the itemlvl
e.g. set armor to all, legendary, dex:80 runspeed:10 attackspeed:6 got yourself a list of Bojanglers with dex
Works with many other legendary items and it better than searching by name, make sure to record the fastest way to find the legendaries you want through filters.
Another strat: Set max buyout and sort by lowest price, change max buyout to lower than the lowest price listed.

9. Bid on every item if it's got a very low bid, just to get an idea of what sells and for how much.
It's worth having this tie up a small amount of gold, you'll be learning a lot.

10. Sell all helmets, bracers, 1handers all at once.
It saves time because you don't need to switch between item types when price checking. Put all dex gloves together, all str gloves together etc Organization will save time if you've got a lot of items to sell regularly.

Edit: 11. Playing 7 auctionhouses at once from one account. 3 on main & hardcore/softcore on other regions.
Logout and go to options, change it from whatever it normally is to Americas, Asia, Europe and log back in.
You can play the softcore & hardcore auctionhouses for ever region this way, if most of the fun in D3 is trading/auctioneering then this will give you more slots and markets to play with.
On the HC markets, low level items with vitality can sell for 19-35k gold. lvl5 pants with vitality etc and selling vedor-bought items is so much more rewarding than softcore. You'll have the experience of starting with very little and seeing how fast you can build that into whatever 'wealthy' is for you.



Feel free to add to this, any little things you do post them.
These are just some things I do that I wanted to share and have them all in one post that I'll add to over time if I start using new methods.
-Don't- rep me (I can't eat rep). If you find anything useful, that's enough for me. Better yet, tell me what you do that works for you, and how you do it.

[seafunk]

Thanks. I knew most of those, but finally the noobs can get into ah shuffling as well.

[seafunk]

"specify a lvl for legendary searches" is missing

[sweetgnome99]

"specify a lvl for legendary searches" is missing

Thanks, added it.
also added a little bit about playing 7 auctionhouses at once from one account, which I find fun to do.
Europe: HC/SC/RMAH, Asia:HC/SC, Americas:HC/SC

[Legari]

Thanks for da info ; )

[Cecu]

In regions with more than 1 currency you have 2x RMAH - 1 for Euro and 1 for Pounds in UK.

[SuperKop]

This is a very detailed auction house guide. Very nice and impressively extensive.

[kucukti]

In regions with more than 1 currency you have 2x RMAH - 1 for Euro and 1 for Pounds in UK.

can u explain that more detailed I cant see any other ah on my region. (eu)

[sweetgnome99]

can u explain that more detailed I cant see any other ah on my region. (eu)

Try logging onto all the different regions options that it gives you.
See if any of them allows you to use the RMAH, if not then you only get access to one RMAH.
It'd be cool to have access to two, good arbitrage opportunities between them.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, let me know if there's anything I could add

[getflaky]

Quitting the game so I'll include my collection of tips:

Identifying already sold items
Go to the sales tab. Open up the chat window and shift click on the gold that you made from selling the them. The item and it's stats will appear in the chat window like a regular chat sharing item. Pretty well known but just in case.

How much should I bid on an item I want to flip?
The auction house is getting smaller and smaller, this means it's easier for big spenders people to manipulate the market through market power. The window of opportunity to purchase better deals is less, and time it takes to sell items is getting longer. So as a auction flipper, you the bids you place needs to have a smaller margin of error. As the market becomes tighter and tighter you need to start calculating what your maximum bid is ahead of time. But how do you determine what that maximum bid is? The answer lies in identifying what is the least amount of profit you are willing to accept to incur the risks. By calculating the minimum profit margin before bidding, this always gives you a fixed reserve price, no matter what it may be, and will prevent you from you from going back and getting into bid wars or regretting not bidding more. You don't have to prove this equation each time you want to calculate sometime. Just use the end equation. Get comfortable with it and you'll be able to make the calculations quickly. It will allow you to bid much more carefully when everyone is trying to flip the same item. It is ok to place an early bid as a bookmark to keep track of what you want to bid. Though I think this attracts other potential snipers who are upset that you outbid them. In my example, there's always someone always watches the gold find/ gold radius market.

Simple Math Time:


Basically to determine the price that you want to set for an item:
1. Find the lowest priced buy it now item with similar stats to yours.
2. Undercut that price to find the price you will sell at.
3. Multiply the price you will sell at by .85 to find net revenue after auction fees.
4.Subtract your minimum desired profit from the total
This is the maximum you are willing to bid.

Profit = Total revenue - Total cost
Profit =.85(Buy it Now Price-Undercut) - Max Bid
Ex. 1 There's a 15% gold find and 6% radius chest piece for 150k gold with 5 minutes left. The lowest price is 350k gold. How much will my maximum bid be if I want to purchase the item, and resell it for 300k gold, while maintaining at least profit margin of 40k gold?
.85(Lowest Buy it Now Price of Similar item-What you Undercut)-minimum Profit margin= Max Bid
.85(350k-50k)-40=Max Bid
215000 gold =Max bid

Ex. 2 Same problem only I want my minimum profit margin to be at least 10% of my maximum investment. How much do I bid?
.85(350k-50k)- .10[Max Bid] =Max Bid
.85(350k-50k) =Max Bid+.10[Max Bid]
.85(350k-50k) =1.1Max Bid
231818 gold= Max Bid



Snipe bid!:
Last second bidding is not just vital for getting the lowest price. It also mean you potentially have the latest information on the cheapest comparable item in the auction house! This helps you determine the maximum amount you should bid! Use a timer and the refresh screen. This is the item you need to undercut and don't won't to outbid for potential loss. If you are trying to emerge in competitive, active, markets there will always be people who use their market power to shift the prices up. If you see like 6 or 7 1d11hr stuff posted up at once. Be careful. It could be someone, like me, trying to sell an item similar to yours, intentionally artifically inflating the prices. If you haven't already, check the prices around the items, the gold find/ mf radius gear at 1% lower and higher to find similar patterns. If you've been watching the items come and go for the past hr, you can tell if stufff is usually selling or not. Furthermore, always set a reserve price in which you want to buy the floor. You'll need a considerable amount of gold and only do this if you've been looking at the market for awhile and want to stockpile the inventory. I don't recommend doing this during peek hours or on weekends as they can be harder to control. This is arguably easier to do with the declining populations though.

Gold find/Gold radius Tips:
Try to fill a diverse % stack of gold find items ranging from 15-22% and 5-7% pickup radius in your inventory during afternoon around 5:00 est to sell at night 12:00est. Try to only get one type of item with that same gold find in the ah at one time.
23% gold find+ are good as well but they can be more difficult to flip.
Bidding is harder at night when the market is more scarce and the people who like to control the market are around but the prices can be higher.

Gold find Helm (search for with our without radius)
Any innate item with a %15 Gold find and a free socket is worth picking up if you can make a desired profit.
With "empty socket." quickly scan the pictures to find the item without the socket until you get to the price range where it is no longer profitable by the equation above. This is getting harder to do as people are realizing it. But combine this tactic with sniping when you bid and you're more likely to have greater success.

At around 15%-17% gold find, insert flawless square emerald and resell the socketed gold find items.
18+ use perfect square emeralds find out which one is more profitable by comparing price scales of
1X%+19%+price of using flawless square emerald vs 1X%+21%+price of crafting perfect square. You can calculate the price diffferential of the others as well but the returns are diminishing as people become more aware of the value of higher items.


Other auctions to use if you have slots available when you log off.


1 and 2 H Weapons sort by price and find highest dps at cheap prices
Search by caps on gold and highest dps at
100,000g, 200,000 g, 300,000 etc. Search by socket, crit damage, damage stat, LoH parameters over 700 with decent base damages, reduction by level.
-1. Buy in the Top 7 DPS per bracket with buy it now prices less than 60% of average price and sell around 85% of max pricing works best in an active market.
-2. If DPS has slightly greater numbers on gap, sell around new price estimates by expanding your search parameters to 120,000, 130,000 etc. And resell at appropriate discounted prices

Before you log out, and you have empty slots in ah:
1) First If you still have any all generic weapons that will sell around the price caps( 100,000 gold 200,000 gold etc) put them up for sale for very modest prices. You don't want to hold these overnight because they are the most volatile! People who search by low caps will just buy the highest damage on the cap. And your item immediately becomes difficult to sell because it can be off by the max damage on that cap by 30 damage by the next day.
2) Then put up your specialty and most expensive items before you log out. These specialty items are items that will not be sold simply to undercut the lowest bids. And have the potential for the most profit. They will need time to sell and are usually worth the patience for gold. For example a helm with a socket, resist all, mf, dex, vitality, and critical hit but all of the statistics are low. Or a 14 gf%, 6% radius chest with 150 to vitality and 150 to intelligence. If you are entering the gold find market don't horde all your prospective items, ask yourself does it have 2 or more ideal stats with it? Would I use this item independently in hell or inferno without having to gear swap? Is it competitive with normal gear along those lines? Those are the only items that should be sold as selective rates, and because the market is slower for them, they typically take the longest time to sell.
3) Finally before logging off, bid on all mf and gf rings and amulets, at (15%+ gf, 14%+mf, and 30% gf/mf respectively), at 15%+ or magic find, or amulets at %30+ gold find or magic find and above anywhere less than 60% their current going market rates and ending by the time you plan on playing again.
This items can be cheap enough and in substantial demand that they will always try to be controlled. Yet aren't considered valuable enough where many people care enough to bid on them. And you'll always be able to get at least few by the next day to flip quickly.
If you have a decent amount of gold you can try to control this market: Gf and Mf 1 handed weapons for templar.
This have demand due to the mercenaries, despite their low damage.
Bid on all 9/10% gf wirts legs(need to search by level 6 mace non magical item)
Bid on all Three hundredth spear or Sun Keeper 24/25 mf
Near and Perfect mf 24/ 25% items and 9/10% gf wirts are easier to manipulate in the market.You can buy these up to higher ranges for generally cheaper than other gear. Note that there is only 1 one handed gold find weapon and 2 one handed mf weapons around and everyone who wants to get MAX GF and MF for their mercenaries will want them. Since these goods are highly inelastic, I highly recommend inflating the price for profit if you have the gold. Regardless of what you bid on, you should bid on these things do until you run out of possible items to bid on, or run out of gold, which ever comes first.


More tips:
-Diversify your investments! If you diversify your portfolio, it'll make you less vulnerable to market fluxuations!
-Don't undercut yourself in the same market! If you have two items competing for what would be the lowest price don't put both up at the same time unless you're trying to buy out the market and re-establish new prices. Even then you're only doing so to try to set precedent. If you buy out the market make sure to do it all the way up for comparable prices at least 2% up and down on mf and gf/radius gear.

[sweetgnome99]

Ex. 2 Same problem only I want my minimum profit margin to be at least 10% of my maximum investment. How much do I bid?
.85(350k-50k)- .10[Max Bid] =Max Bid
.85(350k-50k) =Max Bid+.10[Max Bid]
.85(350k-50k) =1.1Max Bid
231818 gold= Max Bid

Thanks for all this good stuff
255k divided by 1.1 = Max Bid (10% ROI)
Nice and simple.


Then we can find out any % return.
If you want 20% return on investment.divide by 1.2 etc
Start with 1, then every extra 0.01 is 1%, .1 is 10%, 1 is 100% return. 1+1 = 2 = 100% Return.
Want a 55x return on investment? (you magnificent fatcat, I know you want it!) 0.85x [your price]--> x (55+1) --> = Max Bid with 5,500% return on investment.
9,001%? that's 255,000 divided by 91.01 etc every 1000% is an extra 10 added to your starting 1.

Selling for 5 gold, and want an 89x return on investment?
5x0.85= 4.25 4.25/90 = 0.0472 Gold Min Bid.

0.001% return? you sir, clearly don't value your time enough.
255,000/1.00001 = 254,997.45
2.5 gold profit, don't spend all in one place!

/Overkill. for the fun of it