Saturday, January 12, 2013

How to Not Make Gold

Followers of my Twitter will already know, but two days ago I bought Invincible's Reins off of the Black Market Auction House.  It was a very strange experience for me parting with as much gold as I did, and I felt like it was worth writing about.

The Setup
My main, and toon that posts everything but transmog is a level 90 Mage.  Since I can teleport anywhere else I need to go, I have my mage's hearth set to the Tavern in the Mists so I can keep an eye on the Black Market Auction House.  Until today only two items that had sparked my interest on my servers BMAH were a Drake mount from Cata that I wouldn't have farmed, and a Brawler's Guild invitation.  Additionally I bought some patterns early in the expansion to flip, bought both for 20k each, sold one for 30k, and the other ended up selling months later for 15k (not the best investment).  In general, I was in a "I want to see how much gold I can get on this server" state of mind, and wasn't spending much.  Then Thursday morning when I checked the BMAH I saw Invincible's Reins.

I knew that an epic showdown would follow by some of the server's top gold makers, and I wanted to get involved.  I was sitting at 1,838,647 g, according to my Tuesday logging of it, so I had gold to burn.  I made the initial 20k bid on the Reins, and went about my gold making routine on my alts.  A hour or two later, the price had rocketed to 150k.

The Battle
From then on I decided not to be involved in driving the price up until the end of the auction.  No use wasting gold right?  Too bad I lost this mentality somewhere along the line.  A few minutes after midnight the auction went from long to medium, which meant the auction would expire shortly after 2am, my time.  Being tired is not a great condition to make rational decisions.  The price was sitting around 300k, and from what I could tell there were 3 active bidders still in the running (including myself), one other Horde (my faction), and an Alliance character.  With under 2 hrs left it was time to test the waters.  I placed a bid making it 320k, then walked away for a while.  Then the notification came while I was in a dungeon that I had been outbid. When I got back to the BMAH the mount was sitting at 400k.  Okay, he's not playing around.  The Hordie noticed me and told me he's almost exhausted his funds, and that he was making one last bid, making the price 420k.  The Alli went with another agressive bid, and rose it to 500k.  The Horde character told me he was out, and wished me good luck.  And then there were two.

The Grand Finish
There were now under 30 minutes left, and we had already reached half a million.  My next move was to push it to 520k.  Of course slightly thereafter he pushed it to 600k.  Feeling around for this guy's stop point was proving fruitless, and I decided it was my turn to do some pushing.  From 600k I jacked the price up to 750k, and then went around to all my alts, to send myself gold cap.  I had 1.8 mill to begin with, so I had just enough left that if this guy decided to make a last minute move, I could have cap on my character and not have to run back to the bank to beat him (unless of course he capped it out).  The whole thing was fruitless.  After I upped the price to 750k, he disappeared, and I sat next to the Auctioneer as time ran out.  It was then that it hit me.  I just spent almost half of my entire stockpile of gold.  The feeling was unsettling.  I hadn't been at this low of a point (~1.1 million) in over a year.  I started freaking out, almost hoping that I would be outbid, so I could keep my enormous pile of gold, but the auction expired with my bid at 750k, and I had a brand new mount.  I thought I would feel buyer's remorse in an extreme way, but I don't.  Whether I got it in ICC or not, my mount is one of the most badass available in game, the steed of Arthas Menethil himself, resurrected by the Lich King.  I miss my gold, but I very much enjoy my new mount.


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

9 comments:

  1. It may not be a good way to make gold but what else is all that gold for? Just relax, enjoy your new mount & rebuild your reserves for the next 'must have' item that tempts you :P

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! I'm not too worried because I still have cap if I need it for now! Definitely feels weird parting with all of it!

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  2. Yes, exactly what Nev says. You got all this gold, and you spent it on something you really wanted, so now you can enjoy having a very awesome mount, and you still have all these skills to make gold, so give it some time and you'll be as rich as you were before!

    I'm saving up too for Invincible's reins... though I barely got over the 100k mark, so I like to read your blog and see where I can make some money. I do know that whenever Invincible will turn up, I'll still will be nowhere near the amount of gold that I can spend, but it keeps me going, and it's nice to read stories like yours.

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  3. Nice get at 750k on area 52 any good mount, ony, mims head, invinible,plagued proto even alar normall pops up to gold cap bid in a few hours

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  4. I beg you, please. Level up a gnome to 20, and ride him around stormwind on it. Pretty please.

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    1. It's becoming a problem! I have a lot of bank alts across a few servers, and now I want all of them to be at least level 20! Gotta put that time into making my gold back though, so priorities!

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  5. I had a similar experience during December.
    I was sitting at 1.1 million but bought Ashes of A'lar (360K) and Blazing Hippogryph (245K) from the BMAH - over half of my total gold!
    Mounts are my 'thing' in WoW so I was very happy despite the major gold outlay.
    TBH, I thought that Ashes of A'lar would have gone for a lot more gold and I actually thought that 360K was a pretty good deal!

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  6. Sorry to hear that.

    My Guildmaster got invincible the first time we cleared heroic 25 icc during cata.

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  7. You're a true trader Lewtz! Don't sweat the money, but I'm glad to see that you are somewhat frugal, that's the sign of a responsible money maker.

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