Price Manipulation For Easy Profits

Update: This method simply will not work. There are too many rich players out there, using the Auction House just like you. If they see your low prices, they'll snap it all up and relist it for 5 times your price. Even if you flood the market, it will all be gone. Unfortunately, the economies are too full of legitly and non-legitly rich players to pull something like this off. =(

So, this occurred to me as I drove to work today. I've been trying various things on the Auction House lately, and I plan to try this over the next week or so.

The way people make money in the Auction House is to buy low, and sell at actual value or even higher. But what if the low bids aren't low enough to turn a nice profit? If the market isn't gigantic (like Linen Cloth, or other low-level crafting items), you can tilt the market just enough to really make a killing.

Find your market of choice. The items must be frequently bought on the Auction House, but not so huge that you can't control it a little. Mid and high-level crafting materials usually make good candidates. Again, I'm using Mithril Bars. I buy all of the bars available at auction. I then relist a small portion of them for significantly less than they are actually worth. Seems crazy, I know, but bear with me. Now, when someone decides to post more Mithril Bars, they are forced to undercut you to sell them. Buy those, too. Buy all of them you need to in order to keep your auctions in the majority, and force the overly low prices. When you've built up a good amount, let your auctions expire/sell out, and post no more.

What we're doing here is deliberately driving down prices. If all went well, you've now got a decent stock of whatever item you chose, and you acquired them rather far below market value. Now, simply allow the prices to rebound to regular levels. It could take a day or two. To speed it up, buy out all of the auctions again, and relist them for the prices they went for before you drove them down. Now you can re-sell the items you bought at rock-bottom for their actual worth. You can even undercut for more than you normally would, because your profits will still be huge! If you try this, let me know how it works out in the comments. I'll keep my results posted.

Some things to watch out for that are occurring to me now that I'm checking out the Auction House:

• It must be an active market! If no one is posting items in competition, people are just going to buy your low listings, and prices will go back to normal.
• There is a risk that the market is smart enough that competitors will simply wait for your items to be sold, rather than lose their own profits to underbid you. For this reason, a gradual slide down in price might be necessary.