Cold,
I wanted to share my Mysterious Fortune Card success with you...not that you aren't fully aware of the tricks :)
At first, I didn't believe that these cards would sell. First, I checked the AH for current card prices, which ranged from 28 - 55g each. After I learned the recipe, I checked the AH for Blackfallow because my server has ridiculous herb prices at the moment, and found a guy selling them for 15g per in stacks of 20. This is a huge cost benefit because I could never mill and obtain for that price. I snapped these up regardless, since the next cheapest ink was 25g and up. While in the AH, I saw a few folks barking the cards, using the bark tactics listed on the various blogs, so I figured it was my turn.
So, I whipped up 12 cards, figured out that macro bark with the clickable Fortune Card links, and fired off a bark without listing anything. I wanted to clear 10 stacks of 1, set at 28g before I listed mine, because the next tier of listed singles was set at 35g. At first, this didn't work...no cards moved from the bottom. So, I spammed again...but listed 2 of my cards for 27g 50s and undercut. The cards sold instantly, and I just made a decent profit for nothing but a few button clicks. Immediately, I got a hate whisper from the seller who had the stacks at 35g, who said "I am trying to get the stacks back to 35g so don't be stupid and let the 28g cards clear out...you aren't going to make any profit and neither will I." I'm not sure where this guy learned economics, but it is pretty clear that if I just sold 2 cards to his 0, and he won't dip down to undercut me, then yes, I will be the one to profit. So, I crafted the rest of the cards I had, which left me 58 total.
I didn't respond to the other seller, and barked again, then quickly listed 5 cards. Gone. Waited 2 minutes, barked, listed 5. Gone. In comes another hate whisper, and the other seller pulls his cards. Not the smartest guy, so I bark until I get the 28g stacks gone that I was undercutting, and Mr.35g was undercutting a 37g seller, so in less than 10 minutes, my cards have gone from 27g 50s to 36g 50s. After this, I went back and checked Blackfallow, and there were a bunch listed at 20-22g each. Since it is apparent that the card market moves extremely fast, I bought all of these inks, crafted cards and went back to barking. I sold dozens of these things with zero competition for about 2 hours, and eventually, a new aggressive undercutter came along so I paused and watched how he operated. I would bark, he would not. After I barked, he'd undercut me. I'd undercut him, bark, count to 5, and undercut 2g and post a few. My tactic here was an attempt to bring his cards down to a point where I could buy his stock, and I got very lucky as a third scribe entered the fight and I just sat back and watched them bring the prices down to 20g a card, and I bought them all.
Overall, I have only made profits with this. On Sunday, I had the market the entire day, literally. I sold my cards for 35g for 8 hours straight. In a week of selling, helped by a lucky long day, I have made about 20k profit so far. I have never seen over 100k in my account, and I will turn that tonight as I sit at 99,900g with a full mailbox of card sales.
My favorite thing to do is change my barks until I piss someone off who is either a fellow scribe who got smoked out of the market, or a player who doesn't agree with gambling, etc. These folks are my sales fuel, because almost 100% of the time, they label the cards as a "scam". What will soon happen, is that the trade channel will buzz with this discussion about the cards, and any press is good press. I argued back and forth with a guy for an hour and moved 400 cards, and I think that if he had not kept it up, I would have sold half that.
Thanks for your blog, I read it every day looking for tips like this, and appreciate the effort :)
Have a good day,
DC from Doomhammer
Thanks DC for the great submission! Remember to try posting in multiple stacks and bark that those stacks are available to help deal with the undercutters.
I welcome any reader submissions, guest posts, or question. Just send them to the email listed on my contact page.
Attention Bloggers: You have 4 days left to submit your entries for the January 11th Premier Release of Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival.
I wanted to share my Mysterious Fortune Card success with you...not that you aren't fully aware of the tricks :)
At first, I didn't believe that these cards would sell. First, I checked the AH for current card prices, which ranged from 28 - 55g each. After I learned the recipe, I checked the AH for Blackfallow because my server has ridiculous herb prices at the moment, and found a guy selling them for 15g per in stacks of 20. This is a huge cost benefit because I could never mill and obtain for that price. I snapped these up regardless, since the next cheapest ink was 25g and up. While in the AH, I saw a few folks barking the cards, using the bark tactics listed on the various blogs, so I figured it was my turn.
So, I whipped up 12 cards, figured out that macro bark with the clickable Fortune Card links, and fired off a bark without listing anything. I wanted to clear 10 stacks of 1, set at 28g before I listed mine, because the next tier of listed singles was set at 35g. At first, this didn't work...no cards moved from the bottom. So, I spammed again...but listed 2 of my cards for 27g 50s and undercut. The cards sold instantly, and I just made a decent profit for nothing but a few button clicks. Immediately, I got a hate whisper from the seller who had the stacks at 35g, who said "I am trying to get the stacks back to 35g so don't be stupid and let the 28g cards clear out...you aren't going to make any profit and neither will I." I'm not sure where this guy learned economics, but it is pretty clear that if I just sold 2 cards to his 0, and he won't dip down to undercut me, then yes, I will be the one to profit. So, I crafted the rest of the cards I had, which left me 58 total.
I didn't respond to the other seller, and barked again, then quickly listed 5 cards. Gone. Waited 2 minutes, barked, listed 5. Gone. In comes another hate whisper, and the other seller pulls his cards. Not the smartest guy, so I bark until I get the 28g stacks gone that I was undercutting, and Mr.35g was undercutting a 37g seller, so in less than 10 minutes, my cards have gone from 27g 50s to 36g 50s. After this, I went back and checked Blackfallow, and there were a bunch listed at 20-22g each. Since it is apparent that the card market moves extremely fast, I bought all of these inks, crafted cards and went back to barking. I sold dozens of these things with zero competition for about 2 hours, and eventually, a new aggressive undercutter came along so I paused and watched how he operated. I would bark, he would not. After I barked, he'd undercut me. I'd undercut him, bark, count to 5, and undercut 2g and post a few. My tactic here was an attempt to bring his cards down to a point where I could buy his stock, and I got very lucky as a third scribe entered the fight and I just sat back and watched them bring the prices down to 20g a card, and I bought them all.
Overall, I have only made profits with this. On Sunday, I had the market the entire day, literally. I sold my cards for 35g for 8 hours straight. In a week of selling, helped by a lucky long day, I have made about 20k profit so far. I have never seen over 100k in my account, and I will turn that tonight as I sit at 99,900g with a full mailbox of card sales.
My favorite thing to do is change my barks until I piss someone off who is either a fellow scribe who got smoked out of the market, or a player who doesn't agree with gambling, etc. These folks are my sales fuel, because almost 100% of the time, they label the cards as a "scam". What will soon happen, is that the trade channel will buzz with this discussion about the cards, and any press is good press. I argued back and forth with a guy for an hour and moved 400 cards, and I think that if he had not kept it up, I would have sold half that.
Thanks for your blog, I read it every day looking for tips like this, and appreciate the effort :)
Have a good day,
DC from Doomhammer
*********************
Thanks DC for the great submission! Remember to try posting in multiple stacks and bark that those stacks are available to help deal with the undercutters.
I welcome any reader submissions, guest posts, or question. Just send them to the email listed on my contact page.
Attention Bloggers: You have 4 days left to submit your entries for the January 11th Premier Release of Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival.
Grats on that 100k mark
ReplyDeleteAlso Any press is good press I cant agree more with this the more flaming and Hate that you can generate in trade the better .
Thanks for the detailed example.
ReplyDeleteI usually don't stay on my AH toon long enough to try this, but I may give it a shot over the weekend.
And Gratz on 100k. They say the first is the hardest...
Thanks :)
ReplyDeleteI had a guy mention to me last night that selling the cards "is too much work". One less competitor.
I think I am going to move to Dalaran and fish the fountain while I bark for now, to pass the time.
An admitted skeptic of this market and the tactics employed, I decided to give it a go.
ReplyDeleteThe best ROI for herbs on my server were from 175-179g/stack for Cinderbloom. I decided to invest 3k gold to see how this might work.
I purchased 2,715g worth of Cinderbloom, 15 full stacks and on partial. 315 herbs, or 63 mills. The result was 159 Ashen Pigment (79 Blackfallow ink) and 26 Burning Embers (13 Inferno ink).
I listed the 13 Inferno ink at 198g each, which seems to be about market value. If I sell all of them I would get back 2575g, less AH fees--almost covers the original investment.
At this point I thought "ok, if that ink sells and I crap out on the cards, I still had an almost free experiment". Feeling ok so far.
Next, I crafted 79 Mysterious Tarot cards. I sent 19 to one alt, 20 to my max cooking alt to make Fortune Cookies and kept the remaining 40.
Oh, and there were exactly 0 Mysterious Fortune or Fortune Cookies listed in the AH. Not a single one.
Midday on a Thursday, no better time to check out the barking, right? I wrote a macro for one bark, played it, and listed 10 cards at 39g. There was no response, no witty banter or challenges to the legality of the "lottery" nature of the cards.
Then, in my scrolling window, I see "A buyer has been found for your Mysterious Fortune card". And then again, and again, and again--9 times.
I went to the AH and opened the auctions window. There were purchases by 4 players, some buying more than one card.
Back to chat I went and wrote a single live bark, listed another 10 cards, and actually watched as the auctions flew off the board. My auction window was full of 39g sales.
I barked again, posted 10 more, and once again, there they went off the shelves. Sold 9 this time.
My cook has produced Fortune Cookies, barked and posted them. No sales yet. My main AH toon posted 10 at a higher buy point. No sales yet. My Inferno ink is still there, no sales yet.
Thus far I would have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. I've earned about 1,575g in sales (about half my investment) and still have both cards and ink that may make it a very profitable venture.
Testimonial from a skeptic: tactic seems viable.
As of right now another seller has listed 50 units at 20g each....the undercutting has begun. I will see if Cold's (and et al) tactics will work.
@Kammler
ReplyDeleteIf you keep at it, a great feel for the market will occur just like your other markets have developed a feel. If I open the AH and see multiple stacks of lower priced cards (close, equal or less than Blackfallow ink) I just buy them out, because I know that at a minimum, I will make a few gold on each card. Cards seem to sell on my server for 35g pretty well. If I see 27g on the low end, I will undercut those because I paid 18g for an ink, etc.
Here is one more thing I do...and that is to keep my Blackfallow Inks as a raw material until I see my sales start to move, as I don't want the cards to tank on me for some reason and the inks can be used for more than cards.
This may end up being a market I just cannot enter. If you are paying 18g/Blackfallow I can see buying the lower cost cards and being able to list them for a profit. I'm paying double that for the ink--Cinderbloom is going for 175g/stack--so my break even is about 35g/card.
ReplyDeleteFor me to buy another 50 cards from an undercutter, ie, a 1k gold investment) I would have to know I could get at least 25g at a minimum--and sell them all. Otherwise, I have only validated his market price of 20g, making it more likely he will list more at that price.
My bet is that this is an Herbalist who has either a stockpile of herbs or the will to farm them. Not sure I want to go toe to toe with someone who has resources and time to burn.
I like the market but until I can acquire the mats more economically I'm not going to go very deep into it. It is more labor intensive than the other sales I do--I enjoy the "set it and forget it" method over the barking style.
I will revisit this in the future, perhaps when herbs become more reasonable.
Cold do you have any tips on what to do if it won't let you link the epic Fortune Card on your server? I've heard many people having this problem and it's recently happened to me too.
ReplyDelete/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("\124cffa335ee\124Hitem:60844:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0\124h[Fortune Card]\124h\124r");
Is the script to get the item in game, but if you try link it on my server now, it just says "Fortune Card" in chat instead of actually linking the item.
@Sinshroud
ReplyDeleteI'm at work so I can't list the code I use until later. I have had no problem at all. I have a macro that i tap and it puts the 5k fortune card item link above the chat frame, then I can manualy link to it.
I have heard reports that the links won't work until the 5k card has actually been found on your server.
Thanks Cold, the script I listed above is the script from Wowhead which does show the card in my chatframe, but as soon as I shift click it into a chat channel it just shows as text.
ReplyDeleteIn the past I've been using this macro here:
/run SendChatMessage("Now on the AH 55g "..(select(2,GetItemInfo(60838))).."! Each card gives between 10s to 5000g + fun msg (e.g. "..(select(2,GetItemInfo(60840)))..") Need an EPIC FLYER? Here is your chance!","channel",nil,2)
Which has worked really well for me for weeks, only suddenly today it has stopped working. So then I tried the wowhead link above and no luck either.
It might have something to do with the maintenance that happened yesterday maybe? (I didn't try barking yesterday so can't say if it worked then or not).
Oh, Forgot to mention funnily enough the 1000g epic Fortune Card link works (which is why the GetItemInfo above is 60840 instead of 60844 or what ever, because I'm making do with linking the 1000g one instead of the 5000g one until I can find a fix.
ReplyDeleteI had no problem barking with my macro created from Wowhead.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the hotfix requires the item to have appeared on your server now, which I have seen reported on other sites. Guess no one has won it on your server.
@Kammler
ReplyDeleteHerbs at those prices won't be profitable. you need to find a better time to buy them off the auction house like on the weekends or in the mornings.
My thoughts exactly.
ReplyDeleteI am on my AH toon multiple times during the day. I seldom see Cataclysm herbs below 150g/stack. If I do, I buy them.
The market on my server needs to come down some before I can give MFCs any real attn.
@sinshroud
ReplyDeleteI took have had that problem starting today. When I use my link macro and try to link the 5k card it just shows as plain text and no hotlink.
I have found a work around!
Lnik it to yourself in a whisper, then link it from there. Works just fine that way.
:)