The Colored Shirts Market & A Reader Response

Colored Shirts For Sale

Reader Response

In response to yesterday's post on Setting Your Own Market Prices In An Empty Market, one of the subscribers to the Gold Tips Newsletter sent in the following email.  I would like to share it with you today.

Well Written!!!!



Scottie this is fantastic!


BTW - I am a bit of a greedy goblin. There are 3 other Rich Purple Silk Shirt players on the Jubei auction house market and they insist on putting their shirts on at 30 gold each. I tend to buy them out and bark:


“Are you sure you are [Epic] ? What colour is your shirt?? [Rich Purple Shirts] to complete the set. AH NOW!!”

And I manage to sell 3 or so at 180 gold each, but I do end up with a bit of a monopoly over the market and a stack of pre-made Rich Purple Silk Shirts.


I also have had fantastic luck, as Mageweave is really cheap on our server.  I get some Lavander shirts, pink shirts, as well as the formal shirts at 5 gold per, and they are my main bread and butter from shirt sales.


Funnily though I make more money from my tailor than I do with my Jewelcrafter. That somehow feels wrong, but whatever gets the job done I guess.


All the best mate and God Bless!


Kind Regards,


John Vergara

Thanks for the submission John!  I love it when I get supportive email, but it's even cooler to see that readers are actually using some of the auction house tactics and WoW gold making tips that I provide here at Cold's Gold Factory.  It's nice to see that you have been barking items in trade chat as well.  Barking is a great way to increase your sales both on the WoW auction house and with direct player to player sales. 

The Colored Shirt Market and Transmogrification

John brings up a great niche market here that I predict is only going to become even more lucrative.  What market is that?  The Shirt market is a nice niche market right now, but I bet it will see a nice demand spike after Transmogrification (Mogging) comes to World of Warcraft in Patch 4.3.  Once Patch 4.3 drops and players are completing their gear sets to transmogrify, the last piece of the puzzle will be getting a Shirt that matches your chosen gear set. 

I'll use my goblin warrior twink, Goldgrub, as an example here.  Once Patch 4.3 brings Transmogrification into WoW and I have my twink gear set completed, I will be Mogging all of his armor to gold colored gear.  At that point I will probably want to change his shirt to something yellow to match the yellow / gold colored gear set.  Of course I will just make it myself, but most WoW players will turn to the auction house to find their gear matching colored shirts.  This should be an even better market than it is currently, thanks to the introduction of Transmogrification in Patch 4.3.
Keep an eye on the potential of the colored shirts market.


Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide To Get You Started.  Or Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide.

Creating Your Own Market In WoW | No Items Found

No Items Found

There are times when you will do a search on the World of Warcraft auction house to gauge your competition and you will see the wonderful notice "No Items Found".  Having no other items on the auction house to compete with your items is a wonderful thing.  No competition.  No undercutters.  No wall of glyphs.  No stupidly low prices. No crashing market.  Nothing.  For an unpredictable amount of time, you will have complete control of the entire market pricing for that one item.  You never know when the next person will come along to undercut you. You may not have much time to capitalize on this wonderful opportunity, so strike hard and fast.

Buy Low, Sell Normal?

Some bloggers or players will tell you to "Buy Low, Sell Normal".  This is never my philosophy.  Why would you want to limit yourself to selling at the market value all the time, especially when you have no competition?  Having no items found is your opportunity to profit from your own pricing structure.  This is your chance to reset the current market value, regardless of whether you are flipping an item, or selling a crafted good.  If you choose to sell at a price around the normal market value, then you are doing more harm than you might think.

Pricing In Excess Of Market Value

When there are no items found on the WoW auction house for my chosen item, I like to reset the current market value, or asking price, to a minimum of at least 120%.  Depending on the demand on the item, I can raise the price to 200-300% of normal market value and still have the item sell.

Pricing Over Market Value:

1. Raises the price at which eventual undercutting will begin.
2. Increases your profit per sale.
3. Gets you more gold for the same amount of work.
4. Can lead to an increase in actual market value over time.
5. Starts to inch the auctioneer scans of other players up over time, which can be used to fool auction scanning programs into a higher perceived value.
6. May lead competitors to also raise their pricing structure.

Example Markets

Rich Purple Silk Shirts

These are all great benefits that should be considered when choosing to elevate the price or not.  The best items to elevate are the items that are in high demand and are constantly being purchased.  Better yet, if you have an item that has less competition to begin with, like my Rich Purple Silk Shirts market.  I haven't seen a competitor EVER, so I set my prices based on the threshold at which they will still sell at a decent volume.  For my server that seems to be 35 gold per shirt.  

Solid Sky Sapphires

In a market with competition I can still get away with the price gouging.  Eventually over time some markets learn the new pricing system that I am helping to create by posting higher priced items.  A good example from my WoW gold making is the Solid Sky Sapphire.  The market value according to the auctioneer tooltip shows the Solid Sky Sapphire priced at 35 gold.  Some days I have competition and they sell from between 25 to 40 gold for each Solid Sky Sapphire.  On days with no competition, I keep the price constant at 75 gold per gem, as you can see in the Undermine Journal image below.  They still sell because of their high demand.  If I chose to sell at the normal market value, I would be pissing away extra gold that could have been made.

Solid Sky Sapphire Jewelcrafting Sales
(Click to Enlarge)

Parting Thoughts

So don't sell yourself short.  Learn and understand your market and the items that you craft within that market.  Don't settle for just "Selling Normal".  When you get the wonderful "No Items Found" notice, experiment with how high you can jack the price up and still get away with making sales.  Maybe others will follow suit and you will all have to work easier for the same gold.  Remember in a market with heavy undercutting like Mysterious Fortune Cards or Glyphs, if there are no other items posted on the auction house, the price that you decide to set the new market price to is also the same value that undercutting will begin.  With smart competitors, you will see them undercut just below your new higher prices.  In theory, if the beginning of the chain starts at a higher price, then the end of the chain will end at a higher price.

...And we goblins love higher prices.

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide To Get You Started Or Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide. 

Favorite Niche Market?

So the new blogging carnival question from Markco at JMTC is:

What Is Your Favorite Niche Market?


Well my favorite niche market is selling Rich Purple Silk Shirts.  Why?  This pattern is super rare, as it is a random Vanilla drop.  It is so rare that wowhead doesn't even register any of the mobs that drop it at any rate higher than 0.0%.  Wowhead also shows the average buyout price to be 1255g.  Good thing I found this one for 40g on the auction house.  Excellent investment as I have sold tons of these for anywhere from 10-25g each.  I am the only one who ever lists these Horde side, so I have absolutely zero competition and the cost to produce them is ridiculously low as the Horde auction house is swamped with Silk Cloth.  I snatch all silk cloth under 1g per stack, but often I get mass quantities for under 50s a stack.  So the return on investment is insane.

Why do they sell for so much?  


Other than the fact that hardly no one crafts them or even has the pattern learned, they sell mainly because they are purple.  It's not that pansy lavender color, but the real deal dark purple, and the only craftable dark purple shirt there is.  Color preference is something I learned when playing the early version of Star Wars Galaxies Online.  While other people were out fighting, I was at my home sewing and crafting and becoming a Grandmaster Tailor.  The two best selling colors to dye and sell items were Purple and Black.  I would say that 90% of my sales were Black or Purple Items.  You had to be a very highly skilled tailor in order to make dark purple items.  I do not miss the days of crafting in SWGO.  That auction system was horrible.  It was nothing like the running back and forth from the mailbox to the auction house like in WoW.  You had to fly to every planet and post your goods on each planet's bazaar and when an item sold you had to fly back to that specific planet in order to collect your money.  Yeah, it was a real hassle.  Glad the crafting system is much simpler in WoW.

Watch For It


So I would recommend that everyone should at least put the pattern for the Rich Purple Silk Shirt onto their snatch list as it can be found for super cheap as most people don't realize what a valuable pattern it really is.  And if you do get lucky enough to find one, don't sell it.  Utilize it to make some high profit rare shirts to sell.  I can't wait until Cataclysm as I am sure to be selling a ton of these to new alts, goblin characters, and Christmas noobs.

Rich Purple Silk Shirt

This pattern is a rare World of Warcraft Vanilla World Drop. If you see it on the AH, snatch it up and have your tailor start making some gold. I think I bought my pattern for 50g a couple years back.  . Since the pattern is rare, the shirts are rare also. Many people want this sexy purple shirt for their character to seem "cooler" or just because we all know purple and black are the 2 most popular and sought colors in MMOs. This is especially true for people trying to match their shirt with Wrath of the Lich King Northrend Armor sets. I sell these in trade chat and the AH for 12g easy. Often they sell at 25g in The Overnight Market (*See earlier post). Becasue of the sellability of these shirts, you can sell this pattern for 500g, if your not a tailor. So don't be a Xmas Noob and list it for 50g. :)