Guild Wars 2

I was wondering if anyone could give me any examples on “playing” the AH? Since i dont have vats of money right now can you play it at a smaller scale and instead of buying thousands of an item, maybe by a couple hundred? and how do you do it exactly? Is there a planning process? (For example….watch the price for ~ a week, find the day when it usually goes low, buy, then resell on projected “high” day?) Thanks.

edit: and what items do people usually buy to play the ah

One of the basics is to look for times to make a profit.
If you know something sells and someone puts it up (or enough put it up that you can buy it out) for less than a 15% difference, that is one way to make a profit.

I don’t think people are going to be too open about the methods they use, if they tell everyone then everyone will be competing with them. For that reason I give you the 15% which is fairly simple and nothing complicated or something I would consider no huge secret so run with it

oh well i just figured since everyone is on a different server it wouldn’t matter

Many servers, but only one economy. The TP is universal.

Johnson.4867:

edit: and what items do people usually buy to play the ah

Something that hasn’t been publicly recommended as a good idem to manipulate. Because if it becomes a public recommendation, the flood of people trying to manipulate it makes it unprofitable to manipulate.

I started playing the TP with only 1g 58s to my name… I’m still a small player compared to some, but it’s proving to be a nice way to supplement the income I’m making from actually playing the game.

There are a number of ways you can do this, but it can depend on how much risk you’re willing to take. I’ll cover the lower risk method that I’ve been employing.

I look for items with a decent gap between the buy and sell listings. I tend to aim for a gap of about 33% (that is, the sell price is 33% higher than the buy price). Ideally, there should also be a decent volume of trades taking place (but that can be harder to determine).

Once I find an item, I put in a buy order slightly above the current highest buy order. As soon as this buy order starts being filled, I relist the items slightly below the lowest sell listing (usually, sometimes at the lowest price, or if there is a small listing that is severely undercutting the next lowest price, I will list it just below the next lowest price).

It is important to not invest everything in one item, and that you remember to cancel your unfilled buy orders before you log out, as sometimes the market can change abruptly. By choosing items with such a large difference, I have room to take down items that aren’t selling and relist them at a slightly lower price and still make a profit after fees.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Something that hasn’t been publicly recommended as a good idem to manipulate. Because if it becomes a public recommendation, the flood of people trying to manipulate it makes it unprofitable to manipulate.

Given the size of the market, manipulation can never work in the long term. I suspect that most people playing the TP are working within existing buy/sell margins rather than trying to manipulate the overall price.

If everyone knew how to play the TP, then nobody would be able to play the TP. So you’re not going to get much out of asking.

If you only have 1.5g try farming more while you study the markets. In the 1-2 weeks of studying the markets you should have ideas and money to play with.

Pay attention to how much the things you are farming are selling for. Most people start in markets they are comfortable.

I know once i started seeing buying opportunities I really needed about 10g to not have the risk of all my money being tied up for several days.

The amount of starting capital that you need depends on the price of the item which you are buying (and realistically how much profit you make per copper invested).

1.5g may be useless if you want to flip precursors, but it’s plenty if you find an item selling for a few copper (and I flip many items which cost 20-80c and sell for 1-3s – all of which you could get started on with just 1.5g)

The OP didn’t state the exact amount of capital they had to start with… the 1.5g was what I started with. I was still levelling at the time, but even the small profits I was making were useful for paying for things such as the trait books.