Economic kamikaze

I didn't spend much time in WoW this weekend after cancelling my account, but the little time I did spend was used flooding the auction house with underpriced goods. There is a well-documented trend of deflation for items like Titansteel Bars or Ebonweave, and I found I had 47 of the former, and 16 of the latter. If I kept them and came back in half a year or a year, I'd probably find them being worth just half of what they are worth now. So selling them now is the better idea, even if I have to undercut going prices by 10% to 20% to make them move at a fast speed.

The funny thing is that of course selling so much stuff changes the going rate of items on the AH. It's the economic equivalent of the guy in the movie with the finger on the red button shouting "If I'm going, I'll take you all down with me!". :) Economic kamikaze.

I found it interesting how Gevlon has the opposite problem: He is moving to a different server where he bought himself into a guild, but can take only 20k gold in cash, which leaves him with the problem of having to buy goods for 194k gold. Obviously if you buy a lot of goods, you risk changing AH prices too, although some people are creatures of habit and post their items always for the same price, even if they all sold out.

Makes you wonder to what extent AH prices are determined by people leaving servers, doing either fire sales like mine, or buying up things to move like Gevlon. Might explain some strange local fluctuations in prices.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:49 AM Permanent Link