Can someone help me understand the auctioner addon?

[guykeren3]

I have the addon auctioner and iv been told it's very good for making money.. So I tried using it but only came with a loss.. maybe I dont know how to use it so im asking for your help, Please teach me how to learn to buy low and sell high from it.. Many thanks for the helpers

[noble8]

Well you have really just said it:

Originally Posted by guykeren3 Please teach me how to learn to buy low and sell high from it.

Its just a case of running the mod for 3 days getting some good market data, then buy cheaper items below the mean market price, and sell for higher

[guykeren3]

I see, When you say runing the mode for 3 days what do you mean? And is the auctioner value data of the item is correct? And one last thing, what should i look for when I put the item to auction, I mean from the auctioneer addon prespective, where does it say the price I should put

[Jzar]

I'm at work, so I can't open WoW and tell you the names of all the settings and buttons and things, but I can try to fill in a few more holes.

Fundamentally, Auctioneer just gathers statistics on the items available on the auction house. Auctioneer will correctly report the market value of items with a degree of accuracy proportional to how recently you've scanned the auction house and let it check all the current prices.

When he said "run it for 3 days", he probably just means that you need to let Auctioneer "scan" the auction house several times (once or twice per day) over 3 days. The more data it has for each item, the more certainty it has that each given item actually goes for around the value it claims it does.

I don't know if you're using Auctioneer Advanced or Classic, but I use Advanced, and if I recall correctly, I initiate a complete ah scan by hitting the little red play button in the very top left corner of the ah frame. (Haven't actually done it for awhile).

When placing items for auction, I use the "Appraiser" tab of the ah frame. Appraiser gives you a list of items in your inventory. (You can select ones you never want to sell and check "hidden", so you only see items you actually want to auction). I select the item I want to sell, and look in the status bar at the bottom of the frame. Usually it tells me the data is out of date and has not been updated for > 48 hours. In order to post the item so it just undercuts the current competition, I click "refresh" (I think) and it gets the current market value of the item. Then make sure the drop down menu says "Market Value" (or in other words, base the price we're asking off of the price of other competing items) and click "Post items".

If you're using Classic, just try to understand what I've outlined here, and apply it to the different interface that exists there.

As for finding good deals to buy and then sell high, I believe both Classic and Advanced come with a module called BottomScanner. BtmScn will scan the auction house for items that are priced significantly lower than their actual value, and ask you if you want to buy them. You click the BtmScn tab on the ah frame, and again, hit the PLAY button. I don't remember how to get into the options dialog, but you can configure it to only suggest purchases that match certain criteria (only bids, only buyouts, only auctions where you can potentially make > 5g, etc...)

Good luck. (Personally, I don't use the ah to get rich, that's what dailies are for. It's been a great tool to help me know the value of everything I find, and take stuff that's trash to me that I find while questing, and turn it into cash. I've never found the ah to be a very reliable get-rich-quick scheme.)

[Rigorous]

Originally Posted by Jzar I've never found the ah to be a very reliable get-rich-quick scheme.

agreed, but it can be an effective part of a wealth-building strategy. particularly with the judicious use of Auctioneer/Bottom Scanner.

[guykeren3]

I didn't know the bottom scanner option thank you very mutch for the information about it! And im using both of the addon, Advanced and the other one.. maybe it's a mistake? what do you guy's think?

[Kaomie]

Originally Posted by Jzar Personally, I don't use the ah to get rich, that's what dailies are for.

At high levels unless it gets changed somehow, right now the money maker is not even dailies anymore, it is farming SunWell trash mobs. With the SunMotes, crafting patterns and other epic gems this is the jackpot. And you do not really have to be extremely geared to do so. If you have the right group composition and a good lead, even people in blues have a chance to participate, so all you really need is one decent 70. Of course do not expect going past the 3rd group or so, but rinse and repeat enough and you get the same result for trash. Extremely boring, but people are now collecting Felspines.

Originally Posted by Rigorous agreed, but it can be an effective part of a wealth-building strategy. particularly with the judicious use of Auctioneer/Bottom Scanner.

The AH should not be underestimated even at lower levels. Whether the occasional extremely good deal (someone who did not know how rare a Hyacinth Macaw is) or the slow buy / resell grinding, you can make money out of it without ever leaving town. On one of my servers I noticed the same guy has been selling among other things the Tuxedo sets over and over again every single day for the past couple months. And this is like 3 or 4g each we are talking, so somehow it must still bring some income if you do it for many different items (unless it is used for money laundering, not really sure). You just have to find your "niche". Auctioneer certainly makes this a lot easier, if not possible at all, to remain in sync with the market.

One thing you have to remember: people know others rely on Auctioneer too much, and they inject items at ridiculously high costs to virtually inflate the prices. So if you see that one piece of Silk Cloth at 1000g in a corner of the AH, you may want to figure out the price by yourself rather than use Auctioneer.

[Rigorous]

Originally Posted by Kaomie One thing you have to remember: people know others rely on Auctioneer too much, and they inject items at ridiculously high costs to virtually inflate the prices. So if you see that one piece of Silk Cloth at 1000g in a corner of the AH, you may want to figure out the price by yourself rather than use Auctioneer.

Auctioneer uses a median* to minimize the effect that items priced like that have on its calculated "market value".
*for those who haven't taken statistics...the median is the number where half of the "population" (observed AH prices) are above it and half are below it.

and i'm not by any means discounting the ability to generate income solely from the AH at any level. i'm just saying that it alone is not likely an effective "get-rich-quick" scheme. once you make some money, put it to work for you in the AH, just don't put all your eggs in that basket....

[Kaomie]

Originally Posted by Rigorous Auctioneer uses a median* to minimize the effect that items priced like that have on its calculated "market value". *for those who haven't taken statistics...the median is the number where half of the "population" (observed AH prices) are above it and half are below it.

Although I have not checked the formulas behind, it seems the old Auctioneer used to keep a much longer pricing memory by weighting a lot less on subsequent new scans, while recent versions react much quicker based on daily / 3 days / 7 days values. And people keep enough of those overpriced items on all the times so it significantly influences anything you want, median, mean, sub-ranges based on the prices history. It does make a difference, especially on the instant "percent compared to market" values which most people tend to go by. Since they are at the bottom of the lists sometimes you do not see them and you think the ones at the top are cheap by comparison, while they really are not. It is a bit more subtle than just the current median, whenever there is a way to deceive others some people will find this way, so I am just saying remain cautious with automated tools like this.

[Farook]

@ guykeren3

I stumbled over a very interessting article regarding the topic "Earning money with Auctioneer" just yesterday:
http://www.wowhead.com/?forums&topic=29574

I guess this will help you a bit to understand the addon and how to work with it.