Mining Profit tips?Follow

Does anyone have any tips to get the most profit out of mining? How to get the most out of your bars and such? Im currently a new miner making decent money, but i would like to maximize my income, if anyone has any tips as in buying/reselling, monopolizing of sorts pls share here.

It would help all miners get there max possible profit. BTW speaking in copper bars, what would the right price be / buyout, and what do yours go for? Also, best way to get more out of selling them?

Anythings welcome :). thx.

Personally, I would keep my copper bars and wait until you smelt bronze bars. Bronze moves faster than copper/tin bars in my experiences.

I agree with Draig. I save up full stacks, then check AH. But don't only check the AH when you have stuff to put up--pop in just to see from time to time. At 10AM the average price on my server (Darkspear) could be a full 20 silver different from 10PM. And this is copper I'm talking about.

I find that 50s is a rough base--nowadays that number has come down some. Still, you will see a lot of 50s and 45 and such. I find that by setting my price even 1 copper lower (the old 44s 99c is better than 45s trick) I will sell it all. Even on just 8 hour auctions. Still, if it is 11PM when you put your stuff up before logging for night, you might be better off splurging for the 24hr auction.

Also, you asked about monopolizing. There is always the inherent danger that you get stuck with stacks of an item when you try to monopolize. Still, if you have the bank space and can afford to hold the inventory for a while if need be (while prices recover from a slump, say), you can (and should) buy up low-baller's stock to improve your price.

Say most folks are selling stacks of copper bar at high-40's silver. There are, however, a few stacks at 20s, and maybe one stack selling for 39s (I'm talking buyouts--a touch on bid-only items in a bit). I would buy those 20s stacks. By removing the lowballs, you become the best deal, aside from that 39s stack. And so long as you sell your newly acquired stacks at YOUR price, say 44s 99c (hehe), it's the easiest lootin' you ever did. A lone 39s stack is probably not going to ruin your market, so don't waste your money. You may find yourself cash strapped and need to liquidate stock, and if you drop your prices by 10 silver to blow out inventory, you'll take a loss.

Some folk will put bars up with no buyout. This can be annoying, because people will take forever to accept that they have to pay the real price for things, and 24 hours later they find out they couldn't really get a stack of copper bar for 3s 47c. A simply solution to this is to have a friend enter a bidding war with you on those items. Push them up to a price you'd be willing to pay (make sure you bid last--don't stick your helper with a bid on copper when she's a tailor), but that makes them less appealing to the "OMG I'm going to save so much money" crowd. Drive it up to 25s or so, what the hell. Waiting up to 24 hours isn't on most people's list of fun things in a game. Just buying out your bars right now is attractive to people, as long as they couldn't "possibly" get it for 8% of your price.

Now, let it be said that manipulating prices is something that will make some people angry. I haven't ever done it myself, but I can't say I won't ever. I suppose it is a matter of personal choice, but I point it out here in the interest of ... I don't know, call it science.

Happy AH'ing.

"Playing" the auction houses can be a lot of fun if you have the time. I have done this a lot with copper.

The best example is what happened with 20 Swiftthistle I went to sell the other day. Never sold any before and the prices were from 2-5 gold which I thought was really high. Two other people had posted. One for 70s and one for 1g50s. I bought the 70s stack and reposted both for 1g30s. Both stacks sold in a few hours. Very rewarding on many levels.

Sell in stacks of 5 or 10. This allows you to charge alittle extra per bar, as people buying bars to craft might not want all 20, maybe just a few.

For example, say copper is 50s for 20 bars. That'd be 2.5s per bar. Sell 4 stacks of 5 for 15s ea, 3s per bar. You get more money, they sell faster, and the buyer doesn't 'waste' money on bars he doesn't need. Everyone wins.

The exceptions are Silver, Gold, Truesilver, and Arcanite. Sell these as SINGLE bars. Stacks of these never sell well. Most recipes only call for only a few (if not one) of these bars, so not many people are interested in stacks of them. Truesilver for the smithing quests is in some demand for stacks, but you'll cut your market in half selling in batches.


Gems:

Keep track of what gems sell and what ones don't... and how well they sell. Each server is different.

I know I can charge triple the starting bid on Malachite, Tiger's Eye and Jade. But Shadow Gems are less than double the starting bid, with Aquamarines in no demand whatsoever. Therefore they are vendor trash.

The holy grail is the Arcane Crystal, used to make arcanite. Charge major molla for this. Then again, they are extremely rare mine from Rich Thorium veins.


Stones:

Same as bars, stacks of 5 or 10 sell faster. Still, full stacks sell pretty well, as they are used in consumables as opposed to permanent items. Therefore anything they don't use now they can store in their bank and use later, as opposed to having to resell a partial stack or bars back.

Do NOT just vendor them, they will sell. However, they will not sell at nearly the markup bars do. There's a demand, but the items they make are by no means a necessity. Still, easy money.

Seems Solid Stones are in HUGE demand right now. (Mithril / Truesilver stones), so you can mark those up abit more than the others (about double default bid is a good starting point).


NINJA EDIT*********** Pricing buyouts

Oh, ALWAYS put a buyout. People want their stuff NOW, not tomorrow.

And put the starting bid at half the buyout. Seeing a 15s starting bid (default for 5 bars of mith) for a buyout of 1g makes people leery... thinking they are getting ripped off, maybe just put up a 35s bid and let it ride.

A 50s starting bid and 1g buyout makes people more comfortable with the buyout.

Perhaps even put the starting bid at 80s (80% of buyout), but then you increase your risk of people looking over your stuff for something cheaper. Only put the starting bid close or equal to the buyout on stuff you KNOW will sell (like Iron and Mithril)

Edited, Tue Feb 15 04:26:30 2005 by Neguni

On my server I've noticed that copper bars go much faster then bronze. But that could be a fluke on my server.

For my server (Dragonblight) the average stack of copper bars goes for roughly 40-50sp. I always make mine a little bit cheaper so im bought out faster. However, if I see a stack going for 35 or under, I buy them out and resell it.

Always check the AH when you get a chance to see if there's anything you can buyout to make a profit. Also, I find (on my server again) that most people will buy full stacks before they buy half stacks.

I have over 60gp just from mining/skinning and playing the market and Im only level 29. Plus I splurged a lot earlier so I have made up to 90gp.

I have seen that done in other games. I guess it could work here, but have not seen the AH yet. Will look soon as im just starting the mining bit myself. One question and a note. My guess is that those people buying raw ore for those prices are able to sell their wares at a better markup. Also, does skill come into this at all when refining? Does a smitty with low experience get more bars out of the ore or does it remain the same every time? Just wondering..

Ive found at my current skill level(127) that going and getting as much copper and tin ore as i can carry and returning to IF has been the best way to make money from mining, and also has helped my skill increase quickly so i could find more ore types to sell in the future.
Ive found that many people in IF need ore or bars quickly, and instead of bidding on ore or spending too much on Buyouts they always need a faster result, so i market them on the Trade channel instead, for a price that is slightly lower than the AH buyouts but more than the bids. Ive had this works well because there are always blacksmiths and engineers who are selling there own items who will need the ore.[/pre]