How To Buy, Sell And Bid In The World Of Warcraft Auction Houses

The auction house is the central core of the World of Warcraft economy, as lucrative as the auction house is, it is also slightly confusing at first. This WoW auction house guide will demonstrate getting started in the auction house as well as the best buying price and best selling price for items.

Where to find Auction Houses?

Auction houses can be located in the cities and a few of the towns that are located throughout Azeroth. If you’re playing the for the Alliance then auction houses can be located in the following cities; Stormwind, Darnassus, Ironforge and Exodar. If youre playing for the Horde side then the auction houses can be located in Undercity, Ogrimmar, Thunderbluff and Silvermoon City.

Using the Auction House

The first thing to do once you reach an AH is speak with the auctioneer, simply click on the character to start proceeding. To the left of the dialogue window you’ll notice that there are categories for items listed, for example; weaponry and armor. By simply clicking on the category you want to explore you’ll open a new dialogue window will appear where you can now sift through the items on offer at the auction house.

Filters

It’s worth getting familiar with the filters sooner rather than later as this can save a heap of time! There are lots of items available in the AH and if you don’t apply filters and be more specific you could be scouting around in there for hours! To apply a filter you’d simply click on the “All” tab and apply your filters from there.

If by chance you happen to know the name of the item you’re trying to acquire then you can just go ahead and punch that into the search filter then click search and see if they have the item you require straight away (be sure to type the item name correctly!).

A nice little tip for the fashion freaks is that you can actually see how an item will look on your character before actually committing to buying it! This is commonly referred to as the dressing room, to do this you’d hold down the CTRL key and then click on the item you want to equip to preview it on your character.

Price Checking

Before you fully commit to buying any item be sure that you know the price first! If you found that the item was good value for money and wanted it there and then, you could “buyout” at the asking price. To do this you would select the item you want to buy then click on the “buyout” tab which can be found at the bottom of the AH window.

Bidding For An Item

The auction house is no different from a real world auction house (in theory), if you decide to bid for an item you can expect that other players will also be bidding as well. You should definitely start bidding as soon as the auction begins though in case you can get out clean with no competition (highly unlikely but you never know).

To bid on an item you’d click on the bid tab which is located near the “buyout” tab. Note, that when you bid for any given item, the amount of gold you bid will automatically taken from your funds, if another player does outbid you then the gold that was deducted will be returned to you in the post, check your mailbox!

Selling In The Auction House

Selling items in the auction house is a little more complexed than bidding for items but still easy enough once you’ve done it a couple of times. If you want make more gold in WoW then auction houses are a safe bet. To get started selling an item in the AH you’ll need to select the “Auctions” tab located to the left of the screen and then place the item you want to sell in the vacant item slot.

You’ll need to set a starting price and buyout price for your item. Be sure to know your items monetary worth before placing for sale in the auction. The best way here if you’re unsure is to check for the same item in the auction and set your starting and buyout price slightly lower than theirs.Then you’ll want to select the duration of your auctioned item to either 12 hrs, 24 hrs or 48 hrs.

Then BINGO, if your item sold successfully you’ll receive mail with your WoW gold payment awaiting inside, ready to be collected.

There’s a little bit more to truly mastering AH but that will get you started and hopefully making some gold.