Auction guide The auction guide is intended as an advanced guide to using the Auction House in World of Warcraft . Additional resources : Buying . Auctions are a great place to find hard - to - get items , profession materials , and items needed for quests . Buyout . As the name suggests , some auctions will allow you to instantly purchase an item instead of bidding on it ( just like " Buy It Now " on eBay ) . There are pros and cons for both sellers and buyers with this system . For sellers , the pros include setting a reasonable Buyout may entice someone to grab the item before the auction ends . You may be able to get a slightly higher price from those who need an item right away and are willing to pay for the privilege . It is in your best interest to always include a buyout price . The only real con of setting a Buyout price is that you may set it too low and someone will snap it up and possibly turn around and sell it for more . For buyers , the main benefit is obviously getting the item instantly . You may also run into items that have a lower than average Buyout price . In this case , you may actually be able to make some money off the item yourself by buying it and re - listing it at its " proper " or more competitive price . Bidding . Bidding works like any auction : you put in the price you are willing to pay , someone else can come along and outbid you . The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item . Just because an auction starts low does not mean that it won ' t skyrocket toward the end . Keep in mind that some sellers intentionally try to create a bidding war . Before you begin bidding , have a final price in mind . No matter how tempting it may be , don ' t go over that price - you may end up paying more than you wanted or more than the item is worth ! Other . A seller can cancel an auction at any time , although they will lose the initial deposit ( and if the item has been bid on , they will also be charged a percentage of the bid ) . If you want to buy an item that has been listed with no buyout price , you can try to contact the seller directly and make an offer . You can also try this with costly items ( especially a weapon or armor piece with a high deposit cost and relatively low demand ) . The seller may agree , especially if they ' re afraid the item won ' t sell or if they need money right away . Selling . Need money ? Have too much stuff in your bags ? Sell it ! Duration . You should set most auctions to run 48 hours to maximize your auction ' s exposure . Remember , although the deposit is larger for longer auctions , your deposit will always be refunded if the auction sells . Sometimes , you ' ll want to list auctions for 12 or 24 hours , especially if the deposit is prohibitively high ( this is especially true for weapons ) and if you ' re afraid demand might not be there . If you are sure that something will sell relatively fast , 24h is a less costly option . If you do so , make sure you list the auction during peak hours on your server . Player activity usually peaks between 6pm and 9pm and is higher on weekends . See ( Time ) for more details . Keep in mind that if you have a costly item that may not sell , it may be smarter to use the trade channel rather than using the auction house at all . Pricing . Pricing an item can be difficult for those new to the Auction House . A good way to find out what something is worth is by searching for an identical item already posted . There may be several of the same item already up for auction , their prices should give you a rough idea of what the item is worth . However , there may not be any other items of what you are looking to sell currently on the Auction House . If this is the case , you can search for something similar . For instance , some items are part of a series , such as " Fringed Cloak of the Bear " or " Fringed Cloak of the Eagle " . If this is the case , try a search for just " Fringed Cloak " and it will bring up the items in a series . This will give you an idea of what your item is worth , even though the exact one may not be listed . If you cannot find any similar items , you have a few more options . One is to go to a vendor and see how much they will give you for the item ( don ' t sell it to them , just hover your mouse over the item to see what it is worth ) . You can normally get several times the amount the vendor will give you in the Auction House . So go back and post it for 3 - 10 times the vendor amount . You could also just post the item with a relatively low starting bid ( don ' t put a Buyout price on it though ) , likely the item will be bid up to about what it is worth by the end of the auction . Alternatively , you can just wait until you see a similar item on the auction house , or ask around - your guild mates are a great resource ! Auction House Alts . You may choose to post your auctions from an alt . There are several advantages to this . First , you can leave your alt in a major city and mail your items to it , so that your other characters don ' t have to travel back and forth . As your other characters obtain items that you wish to auction , it is easy to just drop those items into the nearest mailbox for your auction house mule to pick up later , thus freeing up precious bag space . Recent patches have removed the time delay for mailing items between your alts , so your items will be available for auctioning right away . Secondly , having an auction house mule allows you to keep your auction house inventory separate from the items that your other characters have in their inventories . You don ' t have to remember which items are flagged for posting or re - posting , or organize your inventory to keep those items separate . Auctions that don ' t sell will come back to the auction house alt , instead of back to your main . Finally , using an auction house alt also provides you anonymity . It ' s possible that if you are involved in heavy trading or practices that some see as ethically questionable ( such as trying to corner a market ) some players may hold it against you . Therefore your alt can protect your main ' s reputation . ( On the other hand , 95 % of your potential buyers either never pay attention to the names attached to the auctions or simply don ' t care . ) Posting auctions from an anonymous mule also prevents whispers at inconvenient times from other people to ask about items that you have posted . Other Information . Neutral Auction Houses . Both Factions can auction items here on the AH since it is run by the Steamwheedle Cartel These Auction Houses have a bigger than Faction Auction Houses . Twink Items . Twink s often seek out the best possible items that they can equip at their current level . These items are always in high demand at the Auction House . Battleground twinks especially will pay high prices for the best items usable at level 19 , 29 , etc . If you come across one of these items , especially BoE rare items with good PvP qualities , you will get a very good amount of money by selling it via the Auction House . Scams and Tricks . Auctioneer Baiting . Sometimes a scammer will repeatedly post a piece of vendor trash or another less - than - valuable item at extremely high prices . The idea is to get people who are scanning with Auctioneer or other AddOns to collect this bad data . Then the scammer will post the item for a much lower ( but still expensive ) price , hoping to bait others into buying what they think is a good deal . To avoid this , never buy something unless you know exactly what it is . Inflated Buyouts . Sometimes you ' ll see common items like trade goods listed for extremely high buyouts , like Strange Dust for 100 gold . There are two ideas behind this scam . First , the scammer hopes some poor fool will click on the auction by accident or not notice the erroneous price . This may not happen very often , but when it eventually does , the scammer makes a lot of money . Another version of this scam has the scammer setting a very low starting bid but high buyout . For example : Heart of Fire for bid and buyout . The scammer hopes that in the ensuing bidding war , someone will accidentally click " buyout " instead of " bid . " However , this scam is more risky because it requires an item that is at least somewhat valuable . Plus it is less likely to happen now because there is now confirmation box before a buyout is made . WTB through Alt . Sometimes people check the AH for blue or epic items that are the only ones who are being sold at that moment . They buy the item , repost it on an ALT for a much higher price . Then they logon to another character and start typing in trade : " WTB < item in question > for xxxG " , where xxx is 50G or so over the buyout price of the item in question . People who know that there is such an item for sale at the AH might buyout that item ( giving the scammer a nice profit ) thinking to make a nice bundle of money . The scammer then invents some reason not to buy the item . Manual Trading : Items With the Same Icon . Many items in the game use the same icons as one another - - occasionally a person offering to trade a rare item will replace this item with an extremely common item that uses the same icon when trading . To counter this , make sure to mouse over any item placed in the trade window to make sure it is the correct item . Manual Trading : Will Not Be Traded Slot . Trade windows include a slot at the bottom that will not trade the item in question . This slot is used for placing enchantments or enhancements on a person ' s equipment , including soulbound items . Occasionally people will try to trade an item within this slot , accepting payment without trading the item itself . To prevent this , make sure that none of the items for trade are in the ' will not be traded ' slot . The reverse of this trick to offer or sell an enchant , but then insist that the item to be enchanted be traded rather than placed in the " will not be traded . " A new player might not understand that enchants can be applied through the trade window and hand over the item , never to see it again . Many valuable items will be soulbound and unable to be traded in this way , but some non - binding items can be sold for good prices for varying reasons . Be sure to always use the " will not be traded " for item enchants . Manual Trading : Changing Sale Amount at Confirmation . When selling items , the buying participant will sometimes change the amount of gold offered — usually by a factor of ten — after the seller has confirmed it . For example , the buyer might change 600 gold offered to 60 gold right before finishing the trade . This will de - confirm the window — however , the change is not obvious , and the deconfirmation happens for many unimportant changes , so people will usually re - confirm anyway and lose out on potentially hundreds of gold . To counter this , make sure to thoroughly check the transaction if the confirmation ever gets de - confirmed . Time . Time of Day . On most servers , player activity peaks at 6pm to 9pm . It is usually at its lowest point around 6am . If you ' re running mostly 24 hour auctions with buyouts it doesn ' t matter when you post your auctions . If you ' re relying on bids , or trying to post short auctions , it ' s best to do it when players are most active . Check your servers ' time zone to find out when most players will be on . Often , server time and your time will be different , leaving you trying at the wrong hours . Day of the Week . On weekends , ( Friday , Saturday , Sunday ) and holidays , player activity is significantly higher . Apparently Monday and Tuesday are the lowest activity days , since Blizzard put weekly maintenance on Tuesday mornings . This has led to many theories about when to post auctions . Some theorize that Sunday is the best day to post auctions for armor and weapons because casual players have just finished a weekend of levelling up and will be looking for new gear . Likewise , prices for trade goods may drop on weekends as less informed players all try to undercut each other . On the other hand , demand for these goods also rises on weekends . On weekdays there ' s a better chance that someone ( or yourself ) will try to create a monopoly on certain trade goods , driving prices up . Therefore , weekends are ( sometimes ) good for buying trade goods and weekdays are good for selling them . Some professions have a relation to player activity , like jewelcrafting . Players that loot new gear will often need new gems . You are likely to sell more gems on evenings that guilds raid ( can be both weekend and weekdays , but especially Wednesday and Friday ) . A smart time seems to be to post your gems around 20 : 00 - 22 : 00 , since a lot of your competition will be raiding , so won ' t undercut you after you posted , and raids end about 21 : 30 - 00 : 30 . Keeping an eye on what nights big guilds raid , and how active the LFG channel is , together with some experience , can help you pick good times . Weekly Maintenance . On some Monday night / Tuesday morning ( US ) or Tuesday night / Wednesday morning ( Europe ) , realms go down for several hours for maintenance . Auctions , however , still expire . Don ' t post auctions on a day before maintenance , unless you don ' t mind losing a lot of your auction ' s duration . If you bid on an auction with a short or medium duration remaining right before the server shuts down , you will win that auction because no one else will be able to bid on it . There ' s only one problem with this strategy : other people are also doing it . The time before shutdown is very active , with a few players furiously bidding on the good deals . It ' s exciting , but you ' d actually win just as many auctions by bidding on other nights , when fewer people are paying attention . Special Events . Whenever a special event such as a holiday occurs , pay attention to any items that can be traded . Things with limited availability may become more valuable as time passes . Special events may also be : new arena season ( new gear ) , game patches / content extensions , etc . Also pay attention to items required by new quests . When the Feast of Winter Veil appeared , the quest asked players to obtain Ice Cold Milk . Shockingly , many players didn ' t know or perhaps didn ' t care that the milk could simply be bought from a vendor . For a very brief time , milk was actually selling on the auction house for a hundred times its actual value . Much more lucrative was the jump in demand for certain trade goods when the Tier 0 . 5 quests were introduced . Keep an eye on reports from beta testing to predict future opportunities of this nature . Addons . Auctioneer ( http : / / www . auctioneeraddon . com / ) WowEcon ( http : / / www . wowecon . com ) AuctionLite ( http : / / wow . curse . com / downloads / wow - addons / details / auctionlite . aspx ) Auctionator ( http : / / wow . curse . com / downloads / wow - addons / details / auctionator . aspx ) AuctionMaster ( http : / / wow . curse . com / downloads / wow - addons / details / vendor . aspx ) External links .