Strider Insolence - Some flippin' good deals

I've been hyping these boots in no less than two previous posts. Time to finally see how much they sold for, right after the jump.

Why is there so much dramatic buildup for these boots?
Well, because nobody was buying em

The first part of this series is here. The final part is here.

In the previous article, we covered some techniques for finding items to snipe. Topics like the 90% search were covered; you should refresh yourself on that one in case you forgot, it's kind of a big deal. There will be an exam at the end of this post. There will be a section with additional commentary about the 90% search in today's post.

In this article, I'm going to cover the cornucopia of topics that didn't really fit into the previous one. They are in no particular order. Let's begin!

But first

I should probably tell you why there was no post yesterday.

The answer is simple. I've made so much money from the RMAH that I can finally afford to have nice things.

So, when I finally made the sale on Strider Insolence,  I felt like I had enough to take Lia out on a fancy date!

Where did we go last sunday?

It wasn't as nice as this one

...Minigolf!

I made enough money from the RMAH that I even paid for her pass... The full amount! I didn't even ask her to chip in for the gas.

I totally won

Afterwards, I treated her to a fancy meal at this place. We had samosas. Okay, actually, we split a single samosa. Pretty tasty though.

It was a good day.

Back to the main topic.

Pick your fights

my kind of fight

This is kind of a self-fullfilling tip: Don't try to master every market. Pick the ones you are good at and flip items in those specific markets.

I lucked upon a couple of high end bows with sockets in my act 3 farming runs, so I was essentially forced into the market by virtue of wanting to get rid of all the extra bows. I also craft boots, so I naturally need to know the ins and outs of the boots market. I also look at amulets on the AH quite often, trying to upgrade the one I currently have. As a result, I'm currently proficient in pricing amulets.

Those are my major markets. You will probably notice that most of my flips are in those categories. Whenever I find something not in those markets, I have to take risks and make decisions not in my field of mastery. It's hard. Focus on something you know about, and learn it in great detail. Only then can you profit.

Look for pad-fails

Pad-fail: Any tablet running windows

Remember the padding article? In that post, I described ways to game Blizzard's crappy AH by putting gems in your sockets. The reverse, known as a pad-fail search (or gem-less item search), can also be used to your advantage.

Look for items with sockets that have no gems in them. Because they will not show up on most searches for primary criteria, they will go unnoticed and can be easily won by bidding or a buyout.

A personal example of this is the Nat's armor from this post. The seller had this 111-dex roll at auction with no Emeralds in the sockets, which meant that even a 40-dex roll (+34 +34 +34 gems = 142 dex via search) had precedence over this chest piece. I doubt anyone even saw the chest plate which I eventually bought; I snatched it at low 8 million gold. You can go see how much I made on the armor for yourself.

Executing this type of search is easy. Because pants and chest armor have the most sockets, you generally want to start with those. You stand to gain the most profit. Simply type in your affixes (mf, resist all, vit) and a primary stat value you would want on the armor (and not from gems), and then click search. If you wanted an armor with a natural 120 intelligence on the armor, then you would type in 120.

Once your results come up, just scroll down through the list and look for items that don't have the corresponding gems in them. If you searched for 120 intelligence, then look for armors without Topaz gems in it (since they add intelligence). If it has an Amethyst or any other gem, that's fine; you are good as long as it doesn't have Topazes.

Once you've found an item without the corresponding gems in it, then check the price. These are most likely mispriced, because they don't have the added benefit of gems to boost their AH ranking. If the price is right, then buy it right away! You're halfway to making a profit.

Usually these items are snatched up right away because this technique is a very common strategy; to add a little bit of oomph into your search speed, you might want to implement the end-time rule to further filter your results. If you forgot the end-time rule, go re-read it here.

We are the 99 90% percent

The 90% search. I discussed it in part 1.

The 90% search is where you look for flippable items by using a primary attribute search criteria with a minimum value of ~90% of its max affix value (along with some other key affixes).

Example: Hats have 300 max int. So I search on 300 * .90 = 270 int. For the other 2 criteria, let's throw in 4% crit rate, and a socket. The other 2 criteria can also be 18% mf and a socket. It doesn't really matter, as long as the criteria are good rolls. I can quickly scan through the list of results to see if there is a flippable item. If not, I can pick different secondary criteria, or look for hats with 200 dex (the max roll for dex on hats) * .90 = 180 dex instead.

The point of the 90% search is to show only the items that are guaranteed to be good. In essence, a 90% search filters out 90% of the crap that you don't want to see (well, it's actually more like 99.99% of the crap). Boots with good affixes such as 20 mf and 12% move speed mean nothing if they only have 60 str. The same boots with a 190 strength roll, on the other hand, are worth tons.

I can't stress enough the importance of this technique. By far, this is the most important piece of advice in the previous article. I mean, this is how you're going to find cheap things to flip. How can you flip things without having things to flip?

Try and try again

And then try some more. That's what I want you to do when your AH items don't sell.

The most common comment I get goes something like this:

Stuff never sells on the AH for me! Please give me some tips on how to sell things! I feel like the auction house has slowed down over the past weeks, probably due to all the rage on the forums!

 My response is two-fold:

1. Of course the market is slowing down. It's not like more people are coming into the game. Do you really think 1 million gold is worth 2$? I sure don't; the market is just settling to equilibrium. Sure, botters are making it worse, but what are you really going to do about that? Also, it's not slowing down as much as people claim. The forums are generally rage-y because the people enjoying the game generally don't waste time on the forums... they are having fun in the game. Stop believing the garbage in the forums. 
2. You should really re-consider your selling strategy. That's the real reason why you feel the market is slow.

Let's talk about proper selling strategy.

Protip 1: Relist your stuff

When your items don't sell, you should relist them (duh). But don't just relist them at the exact same price. That's foolish. Your items don't have a fixed price, they are always rated against other items on the AH that other players have posted. You must do the same search again to find similar items, and somehow make your items look more attractive (usually by undercutting them). 

Corollary: Say you want to sell a pair of boots. You do a search and see a similar pair of boots on the AH. The problem is, these boots are drastically undercutting every other item. It's so cheap that you barely have a profit margin if you sell your boots for less than these. Time to consider the options.

1. You can simply not sell your item. Sell something else, and wait for someone to buy that extremely cheap item before you list yours. You don't have to compete if you don't think you have a good profit margin.
2. Buy it yourself. You could flip their item. Use your good judgement here. If you do this, then you can list your item at a higher price since you don't have to pricefight against this cheap item anymore.
3. List it anyway. If an item undercuts you, it will eventually get sold because it's cheaper than yours. When that happens, your item is now the cheapest! Someone else may buy it.

Protip 2: Dumb down your searches

be flexible

 When doing price lookups to determine the value of your items, don't make ridiculously strict searches. Be flexible. Make sure you dumb down your search values until you can find something that is similar to your item. The worst thing you can do is set your search too strict and not find anything like your item. Then you'll just be confused and list stuff at 250$ or some stupid amount.

Your godly pair of 190 dex shoulders are really not that different from another pair of shoulders with 185 dex. Hell, the 185 dex pair might have 80 resist all or 12% life, and look much better than yours. Remember, you are selling your items against everyone else's items. If you don't make your items look more appealing, then it simply won't sell.

To price check Strider Insolence, I would search on 180 int, 60 resist all, and 20 mf. Why? Because boots with 180 int, 60 resist all, and 20 mf are close enough to what I have. The 46 vit just isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. You're looking on the auction house for something similar to your item, not it's exact twin brother. I'll just price mine about 10% higher to compensate.

A similar concept applies to stuff like 14 mf, or 15% gold find. Those are such low affixes that you shouldn't even bother searching or pricing them at all. If it's not close to the maximum affix value, then you shouldn't place much value on it.

Rarity (x-axis) vs Cost (y-axis)

I know I've used that curve way too much. But there's a reason for this. Let me reiterate the point:

Items with high affix rolls are worth a ton (right side of the curve). Stuff with low affix rolls are worth nothing (left side of the curve). 

The point of this curve is to indicate that at some point the affix roll goes from being worthless to being worth something. 14 mf (for me) is on the worthless side. You have to make the judgement where the breakpoint is.

See the following 2 articles for more insight on this curve:
http://diabloshit.blogspot.com/2012/07/guide-to-crafting-part-2.html
http://diabloshit.blogspot.com/2012/07/flipping-part-1.html

Protip 3: Quit hoarding

Is this your inventory?

If you have half a dozen mules, then this is the advice for you: Get rid of your crap. Sell it. Or vendor it.

Look through your piles of crap and extract the things that have the most profit margin, and sell those on the AH. And the rest of the stuff? Just get rid of them. To succeed in the AH, you want to sell big things, for big profits. You only have 10/10 slots after all. Don't clutter them up with crap. In fact, always keep 1 slot open in case you make a good snipe, and want to go for the turn-around right away.

At my level, I don't even bother selling stuff under 200k. It's just a waste of time. For things under 400k, I drastically under cut the market so they move quickly. You should find a breakpoint at which you refuse to sell things, and just get rid of everything less than that. It'll save you a headache. Nobody likes playing inventory Tetris.

Protip 4: Take pictures

Take screenshots of your auction prices after you list them. It helps to get a ballpark of how much your stuff is worth when you eventually fail to sell it. Just make sure you follow tip #1, and don't just relist it at the same price. It also helps to create archive folders labeled with dates so you have a reasonably small directory of recent screenshots. I make a new folder every week and throw all the screenshots of that week into there (after deleting some of the accidental screencaps).

You should also take screenshots of single items after you list them on the RMAH. After selling something on the RMAH, there is no way to see the stats of your item. On the Gold AH, there is a technique where you can shiftclick the gold amount before you send it to your stash to see the item stats. After you've sold something, it's a good idea to see what the stats of your item was for learning purposes. If all you see is an item name and a price, it doesn't really teach you anything. However, if you can say, "Oh these boots with x int and y resist all and z move speed sold for 59$," then you can use this knowledge in the future.

Protip 5: The exception

Sometimes it's okay to relist things at the same price. I'm not trolling you. This tip covers the times when it's a good idea to relist things at the same price.

1. If you wake up in the morning and feel like P Diddy, then you're probably a busy person with stuff to do in the city. Go ahead, relist things at the same price. Having screenshots makes this really simple. Your item can't sell if it isn't on the market, so this is the best option if you're pressed on time.
2. If you have a very expensive item and popular that you are looking to maximize value on. These things will eventually sell when the right buyer comes.
3. If you have an RMAH item or a niche item. The RMAH gets much less viewing traffic, so it might be a good idea to keep your prices the same instead of lowering it by 5% every 36 hours. I lower my prices on the RMAH much slower than I do on the Gold AH.

Serious business

Even the baby says so

Flipping is hard work. There's 2 complicated tasks at hand here: Finding cheap items to buy, and selling them for the right price.

But the rewards are there. At this point in the game, I'm making far more money just flipping items than I am finding stuff in the game. This isn't so difficult when a single flip can make a profit of tens of millions of gold, and can happen in 10 seconds.

Scroll down to see how much those boots flipped for.

In case you don't remember, I bought these boots for 500k.
The final sell price is 75$ before fees.