Any pointers on what items to look for when flipping?

[Takhesis]

Hey guys I am trying to get better at the AH. I found this guy on the Bliz Barb forums; He has provided a screenshot in another thread of the Auction entry for his weapon; he paid 75million for it.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5590643797?page=1

I friended him for a little chat and it boiled down to "buy low sell high all day". He said he just knows what items to look for and what price is worth buying for resell, and wouldn't get any more specific.

I am not looking for anyone to give me a "Diabloneering for Dummies" guide, just a little friendly advice to help me break into the "industry" as it were.

I have tried buying several items for a flip and gotten burned every time so far, luckily the only expensive buyout that hasnt sold I can make use of myself:

A helm with
60somethin STR
80somethin VIT
35RA
A socket.

I paid 150k for it since there was no other helm with similar stats at that price level, and attempted to resell it for 300k, it has 4 hours left before it comes back to me.

I feel like I am trapped in act 2 with no way to farm upgrades, and no cash to buy upgrades. It's really depressing to "need" act 3/4 gear to complete act 2 as a barbarian, but I want to stick to it and I think being less of a dummy on the AH would make that possible.



One thing I am very interested in is how some items can have a higher budget for certain stats. For instance I have read that Chest Armor has nearly double the budget for VIT? is there a compiled list somewhere with this information for all armor slots? I have seen that chart that shows what items can what which stats (rings/neck having IAS, gloves having Crit DMG) but I am looking for the increased budget also.



Sorry for making this thread so wordy, hopefully it's not a TLDR for everyone. Thanks for taking the time to look at my thread!

[MagisterMan]

Start out with one type of niche item and learn everything about it. Check the AH often to see which items sell and which don't to get an idea of what reasonable prizes are. Essentially become an expert in a item type such magic find amulets, life on hit rings, dps gloves, gold find shoulders etc. It is much more difficult to profitably trade cookie cutter items such as high dps weapons, all res items etc, because they are much more easy to price. Master the different filters. Most bargains only last for ten seconds before they get snatched up so you want a filter where you sort out enough to maybe get only a few hits, so you can quickly see if something new has been put up. Look for items with time left 1d 12h.

Also, I would advice against buying at 150k and selling at 300k when you are new, since you the profit (if there even is one) is going to be fairly small. Once you become an expert on pricing items, you can do such auctions. The best items I've found in the AH have pretty much all been in the 15k-200k range, and have sold for millions.

After you learn the basics, just stay updated with the current meta game and always think about what future patches may change, and how you can take advantage of that.

[jawron]

A helm with
60somethin STR
80somethin VIT
35RA
A socket.

I paid 150k for it since there was no other helm with similar stats at that price level, and attempted to resell it for 300k, it has 4 hours left before it comes back to me.

Hi

I'm just starting act I inferno, so I don't have much experience, but I would say, that this helm was already overpriced @ 150k (personally I got 108str 85int 17ra 41 life regen socket for 4,5k).

And when I was writing that, I obviously had to check exact stats ingame, so I did small price check. This way I just boughtClipboard03.jpg

IMO people tend to vastly overprice high-mid equip and underprice low-mid, and sometimes between these two there is chance for profit.

Cheers

Edit: also just yesterday I bought a legendary 300dps axe (I was just before 60lv, and I tend to exchange my gear almost every single lvlup) for 50k. 4 hours later I sold it for 75k, which would seem like nothing, but profit is still profit so I would say, that market on legendaries is also quite unstable and there is place for reselling profit.

[lyqlyq]

op, a few tips for you, 1. be on the ah more often, say for every hour you spend playing, 20 minutes should be spent on the ah. 2. if you are below 1mil in gold right now, SET MAX BUYOUT PRICE to 50k and never buy anything more expensive than 50k. 3. do searches like 0-60 rare/legendary, max buyout 5000, 10000, 50000 on a regular basis

[Takhesis]

Hey thanks for the answers guys!

Yes looking back now that helm was a really a bad buy, about the eighth I've made so far. I also just failed on a LoH dagger a minute ago, it was 70dps more than similar priced items so I bought it at 150k and raised the price to 225k but nobody wants it :(


I understand the whole concept of flipping, used to do it all the time in WoW, I guess I just don't know the market here yet.

UPDATE: someone bought the dagger 41k profit, not bad. I'm going to hold off on buying more items so my 7/10 unsold clear out and I get a better idea of what is worth the risk.

[Aznagroth]

I also have a hard time figuring out the real value of items. It's even harder when not having the possibility to filter all 6 stats. The possibility to filter away stats would also ease my task.

I got a lot of rares that I farmed in return. I've messed up especially with items I bought from vendors. I have a ring with 61int 14% ias that I wish I bought more of and an amu with 28vit 46str 106loh that I thought would sell, but later I have come to the conclusion that the loh was too low after talking to a friend of mine. I have tried selling some crafted gear too, but I'm down 5M on slag hammers and only 2M down on the req59 ilvl60 boots with 5stats.

Since the game is down now I can't check the stats of some boots I have on ah right now, but they were something like 50str 86dex 70int 158vit 30fireres and only 10%frw. I tried filtering for vit dex and frw and only got hits over 1M. I then tried searching for items with a bit lower stats and the price droped dramatically. After searching around checking combos of vit/int/frw, vit/dex/fres dex/int/frw I ended up posting it for 450k, but I actually think that is a bit too high. Some of my competition was gear with 1xx dex 120vit 12%frw. and just that. If I played a dh I would have bought the boots with the higher dex I think. Monks wants all res + one more res, don't they?

Sorry for getting a bit self centered there, but as you can see I struggle with the same as you. A lot of others also do. lyqlyq had a really good point about not binding too much of your money in one item. If you never spend more than 5% of your total on anything you will not go bankrupt if you do a mistake, and you will make them.

Speaking of mistakes. Don't flip when you are tired unless you are really familiar with the market. Myself I have had at least 3 items at the same time that I was trying to resell after making a bad call. I still have one of those items... All over 1M in value. Got lucky and managed to get rid of the two others without losing too much.

[Ossifrage]

I think you've just got to get used to what seperates items from, yeah that's pretty good, to holy flying monkeys that's amazing. I have trouble doing this myself but I think it mostly comes down to knowing the market-i.e. clicking through page after page of listings until you just kinda...get a feel for it. At first it takes a while like, a minute maybe to evaluate each listing compared to what's there. But with time it gets faster and then just instinctual (I hope not there yet myself ).

It's a lot of work but weirdly rewarding!

[VirtualAlex]

I have a different strategy which has been working moderately good. I filter for very NON specific things, and sort by buyout. For example amulet + magic find + rare. I just look at every rare amulet that has MF on it for 10k buyout. Sometimes you might find something good that isn't likely.

Or I will search for gloves with attack speed and nothing else and just try to snipe some that are good.