Dirty, Dirty Trick

I was debating with myself if I should even post this Auction House trick. It takes advantage of the competition, which is fine. It has a decent success rate, also fine. However, it is very, very dishonest, and generally pretty bad form. I've only done this once, and I felt really bad about it, so I don't do it anymore. Unfortunately, it IS somewhat amusing on an immature, sneaky level, and it's an example of out-of-the-box thinking. So, here we go.

I made a post about an Auction House tactic where you find an undervalued item on the AH, and then post it in /trade for a normal sell value, or higher. The hope is that someone will offer to buy it without checking the Auction House to find the actual price. When you see people selling a plethora of blue items at one time and wonder where they got them, they either bought them and are now trying to sell them, or they're using this trick. Most of the time, people are smart enough to not fall for this. BUT: a lot of people still try to make this work, and that is what we're going to take advantage of.

Make 2 characters and jog their weak butts to an Auction House. Take a decent blue item, and list it on the Auction House for, oh, 25 or 30 gold higher than it should go for. Stay with me, I'm not crazy. Now, log on to your other toon. Get in /trade, and say something like "want to buy ****", whatever the item is, for even HIGHER than what it was listed for. Now, if you're lucky, someone will try to pull a fast one with the first trick I listed: they'll hit the AH, see it for sale for less than what you're buying it for, buy it, and try to resell it to you for your price. (It must be the ONLY listing of the item, or the person will just buy the one that is listed for the real price instead of yours!). Here's the dishonest part: once they buy that item (the one you posted on the other character), just log off, say you don't need it now, whatever. Now you've sold that item for way over its value.

Here's an example. Get Ced's Carver on one toon. It sells for, oh, 50 gold on my server. So, I could list it for 80 gold or so. Then I'd get on another character and say in /trade "WTB Ced's Carver, 100g". The victim checks the AH, sees it for 80, buys it, and tries to sell it to me, at which point I disappear. Voila, Ced's Carver sold for 30 gold over value. Of course, this wouldn't work with Ced's Carver, because EVERYONE is trying to sell one (mostly because of Rogue treasure chest farming). Try to do this with a more rare blue that people don't see frequently.

I do NOT recommend using this beyond maybe once to see that it does work. I do encourage this sort of unconventional thinking, though! Be creative and you can stumble upon some trick no one has thought of, and ruthlessly exploit it!