Leather, leather, leather

I hit the jackpot. I happened to look up borean leather this morning and what do I find but stacks upon stacks of hugely underpriced stock. Awesome. I bought it all. Now when I’m low on arctic furs I won’t need to fork over hundreds of gold per leg armor, I can just turn in 10 heavy borean leathers and get it myself! This will help me lower the margin and force my competition out of the market. No one can keep up with 8g stacks of borean leather. Moral of the story kiddies? Keep checking prices, you never know when a farmer is going to come along and way undercut the usual buyouts.

Getting the leg up on competitors

Oh no! Over the course of a single week the AH has become flooded with 4 new dedicated leg armor crafters. Up to this point it has only been myself and one other leatherworker (a very pesky sonuvabitch I must say). Now, there’s a whole gang of us fighting for the market. What do I do?

On the one hand, I have enough gold to buy out all the auctions and resell them at my own price. This is a huge risk for me because of the sheer number of competitors that have entered the race. It is very likely that at least one of the other LWs would check their auctions over the course of the day, cancel, and then undercut me. Another route for me would be to farm my own mats and drive down the prices to a point where my competitors can no longer afford. Then again, what’s to say that they won’t just start farming too. Ehhhhh…

Until I come up with a better option I am doing my best to undercut at every opportunity. If prices get too low I buy out the lowest auctions and repost at a more reasonable level. I’m not trying to rip customers off, but I refuse to let leg armors go for under 200g!

Anyone else have any experience in this situation?

cornering the market: leather & furs

Lately I’ve gotten sick of not having the gold to buy what I want. So I decided to finally take advantage of skinning and leatherworking (ha) and make some extra change. The market? Leg armors. The auction house on the alliance side on my server is nearly empty when it comes to the three epics: earthen, frosthide, and icescale leg armors. So for several weeks it has been nothing but constant cash flow. I farm mammoths in Storm Peaks for a bit in the morning before work, create a few items to put on the market during the day, and then return to a full mailbox in the evening. What a life, right? The whole schmeal was going quite swimmingly until the price of arctic fur (2 of which are needed for each leg armor) suddenly went through the roof.

Here’s the deal: arctic fur is a rare item that can be acquired by skinning Northrend beasts. The problem is that it has a 1% or lower drop rate on the critters I have access to…i.e. I NEVER find any. This means that I have to buy it off of the AH in order to craft my leg armors. Normally this would not be an issue, but all of a sudden the price has skyrocketed from 50-60g to over 100g. Outrageous! So buying 2 arctic furs automatically puts me 200g in the hole, then add in the value of the other materials and suddenly I can’t justify my “bargain” deals. This leaves me with little option but to raise my own prices, leaving the market open to any competitors who are ambitious enough to farm their own mats.

However, all is not lost! With an increase in the price of arctic fur has come a decrease in the price of regular Northrend leathers. Why should I be relieved, you ask? Well because my little Dwarven friend Braeg Stoutbeard in Dalaran sells arctic furs for 10 heavy borean leather. Watch the price of borean leather (and heavy borean leather). If the price of 60 borean leather (= 10 heavy borean leather) drops below the price of an arctic fur, buy buy buy! Then check out Braeg in Dalaran and he’ll hook you up. Craft away little leatherworkers, craft away!