[WoW] AH "antics"

Bear Flanks still make me giddy. Admittedly this is probably because I'm still used to being WoW-poor, but selling bear parts for 5G a piece? Especially when I'm already killing bears for other things? Awesome.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Bear Flanks still make me giddy. Admittedly this is probably because I'm still used to being WoW-poor, but selling bear parts for 5G a piece? Especially when I'm already killing bears for other things? Awesome.

Yeah, as a fellow who recently levelled cooking on one of my toons, I hate the bear flank market

Aries wrote:
duckilama wrote:

Don't use the Scan button.
/aadv getall
is far, far, FAR faster. I went from your 10-15 minute scans down to - honestly - 2-4 minute scans.
Try it. It's blazing.

Holy sh*t, that's the tip of the year right there!

YE GODS.

I love you Duc!

Some /getall caveats from the Auctioneer FAQ:

Auctioneer FAQ wrote:

Q13: What is the deal with the new GetAll, fast-scanning functionality? Does it really work that fast?

A: Yes, GetAll is fast. Really fast. Yes, we are getting all the auctions, we're not skipping anything. The GetAll scanning process should take about 2-3 minutes, if you have a reasonable connection and CPU, as compared to ~8-10 minutes or more using a regular scan on a typically sized auction house. We can do this now because blizzard provided new functionality that lets us download the whole AH in one big chunk, rather than having to page through 200+ pages of 50 auctions at a time.

There are some trade-offs and caveats, though:

* You can only do one GetAll scan per 15 minutes, unless you logout and back in. This shouldn't be much an issue, since why would you want to do two complete rescans so quickly?

* GetAll may cause you to disconnect. This appears to be an issue on Blizzard's side which we cannot do much about. We have, at best, anecdotal suggestions about how you can minimize the chances of this happening: have a reasonably recent computer and CPU; do not try to scan when the server itself is behaving sluggishly, or when you have high latency ping times; do not attempt when there are lots of people using the AH; do not attempt when a lot of people are physically nearby. Basically, try using GetAll at off hours and at the less populated Ha's if you have trouble getting disconnected while using GetAll. e.g. Silver Moon City for Horde and Exodar or Darnassus for Alliance

* GetAll will not have seller info for most auctions. This is caused by a Blizzard limitation in how quickly we can request seller names for auctions. We have adjusted our code so that most of our auctioneering functionality is not affected, but this will affect any seller filters you have in place (as you won't be able to filter them out if we don't know who the seller is when the scan is processing). If you want to get seller information, your only option is to use the regular, page by page scan (possibly in conjunction with a GetAll scan).

* When using GetAll, we no longer have to worry about items slipping between pages while scanning, so any items missing from the GetAll scan are immediately removed from the snapshot (as opposed to needing to be missing from two successive scans, as we require during regular scans).

Enix wrote:

What I found interesting, though, is that in his video he went through the four items in his bag to see whether or not he should list them. That's smart to do -- believe me, I've made plenty of money listing items that are in high demand and/or short supply -- but that sort of manual inspection takes time, too.

I figure the video was worth my time because I learned about the auctioneer tooltip option that shows the color-coded price breakdown of what's on the AH; I only had to figure out where to turn it on in the config screens. I'll be sending my banker rooting through his bank looking for things worth pulling out and posting. Maybe it's time for some of those snowballs, or random bits of spiderweb I've got stashed away.

Enix wrote:

Thanks for the getall tip. I'll try that on my next scan. I wonder why it's so much quicker that a full scan? The program still has to collect the same amount of data. I'll withdraw my that-claim-is-crap claim.

As robkid mentioned, they are able to do a mass dump of the whole AH instead of page-by-page.

And then you have to re-list everything. It's not nearly as quick or as easy as this guy claims in his video.

What I found interesting, though, is that in his video he went through the four items in his bag to see whether or not he should list them. That's smart to do -- believe me, I've made plenty of money listing items that are in high demand and/or short supply -- but that sort of manual inspection takes time, too.

I haven't watched the video yet, but don't use the "Post" interface, ***especially*** if you're planning on doing regular business in a given market/item. Use Appraiser. Always. It takes time to get set up right(mine still isn't perfect), but it's a lot faster to zip through all the items in your bags that you plan to sell on the left pane, setting pricing, stack-size, and max-number-of-listing settings, then just batch posting(Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Click the Batch Post button) everything. And if you have a set price for items, it's easy to set a fixed price and once you have that item configured in Appraiser, don't even look at it. Once it's set to batchpost, it'll do so according to your rules every time you hit batch post.
That does mean, however, if the market crashes on some item you always post, or if it soars, you do need to either adjust your pricing or turn off batch for that one item.

I almost never use the normal auction posting UI any more. Batch mail opening + Batch auction posting = happy fun TV time, or /trade watching time or /guild chatting time.

Oh, the Eternal Fire -> Crystallized Fire market is .. er... hot again.
Folks listing 5 Eternals for 55-60g = 12g per = 1.2g per Crystallized.
Crystallized are listing for a little over 2g per - unless you pick up the odd-sized stacks of 5 and 6, which were going for about 1.1g per - split into singles, they sold in under an hour for 1.8g per.

No, I'm not making any big scores, but 0.5-1g 5-10 times per day + 150-300% profit on glyphs* = steady cash.

And knowing my mat cost on glyphs(aggregate/average, not per production cycle) means I can run other folks away from my bottom.
Price! Bottom price! Sheesh!

Again, I'm seeing lots of Adder's tongue between 18 and 26g per stack.
*Math at 24g per stack
---------------------------
Average number of glyphs created from stack = 6
Average cost per glyph = 4.5g (50s paper)
AH margin = ~ 0.23g
Break-even point = 4.73g

So I can go down to 5g per glyph and still make 25s profit.
Any glyph listed below 10 will usually sell quick.
Many glyphs start flying at 15.
Some still sell at around 20.

So, in relation to my Auctioneer Appraiser bit above, I *could* set every glyph I have to 9g/9g and never - NEVER - have to price anything manually or list it manually and STILL have a 90% profit MARGIN.

Anyone using Auctioneer solely to determine what to sell their glyphs at is going to see the price dropping below market and decide to just get out of the market for a while, or just quit selling THAT glyph or buy me out and mark it up. All of these is fine with me because my glyph still sells.

If I can get my Appraiser set up better, once this crazy market fluctuation of 3.1 subsides, I should be able to do a lot of posting with maybe 30 minutes of "work".
5 minutes to buy and ship Adder's Tongue,
10-15 to make everything with a market price above 10g, preferably above 15(Lil Sparky's Workshop is awesome here).
5 to scan.
10-15 to list, decreasing as the market evens out. So, even now I could list a couple hundred Glyphs in about 45 minutes. My process is not nearly as refined as Gevlon's, but I'm trying to make things more efficient when I can.

Oh, yeah. If you're gonna play the market, pick a small piece and get to know it. I'm still just dabbling, tinkering in the Eternal/Crystallized Fire market, but it's such easy gold for such little effort. When the markets equalize, I just take a break and keep watching for them to diverge again. Boingy boingy boingy!

Edit: Could I make more money per day/hour by AoE farming or mining/herbing farming?
Undoubtedly. But I can't do those things while running Naxx or Wintergrasp or 5-mans. Auctions run and sell whether I'm clicking the refresh button or not. It's super-low-maintenance income. I think in the real world, they call it passive income. This isn't passive, but it's about as close as you can get in WoW. Pick a market, streamline your process, go raid while the goblins send you money in the mail.

Enix wrote:

Also note that the video, while showing how much money this guy brings in, doesn't show the amount of money he spends to acquire all this stuff. I'd love to see his margins.

He doesn't make a point of showing it the same way he does the successful auctions, but if you maximize the video you can see some of the things he is purchasing and at what amounts. There's also the gold indicator in the corner of the Auctioneer frame. It looks like he is pretty much investing most of his earnings back into the auction house.

ruhk wrote:

He doesn't make a point of showing it the same way he does the successful auctions ...

Exactly. Cash flow and inventory management are the issues that don't come up in these MAKE 5 BAZILLION GOLD A DAY!!1! videos because they're a big fat pain in the butt if you're dealing with that kind of volume.

You can make good money playing the AH. But it takes a little more effort than just running a couple of AH scans and dumping your bags.

As Ducki says, find a market (or two or three) and stick with it. It's not hard to find raw mats to upsell into something else, and the margins on up-sells can be good (I'm looking at you, Knothide Leather Scraps) if you have a good sense of your price points on both the buying and selling end. The only real trick is patience. I'd rather hold onto something and sell it at my price rather than dump it for only a small gain or risk losing the listing fee because something won't sell.

Another thing that usually gets glazed over is the reason for learning your chosen market - it is ***really*** easy to "trick" new Auctioneer users into thinking something is a bargain when it's really badly overpriced. Learn the "regular" players in your market, learn the "real" market price - not what auctioneer sees as the market price, but what people really will pay. You might see 10 Widgets posted at 10g each with a scanned "market" price of 14g, but you might have missed the fact that BozoX has been posting on the weekends at 100g each and skewing the data when the price that people really will pay for the widgets is 8g. So it looks like a bargain at 10, you buy them out and relist at 14 only to find out you're stuck with 10 widgets that you'll probably take a 20g loss on.

That's the really, really great thing about all the moneymaking blogs that do these 0-1000 or 0-20k experiments - when you start at 0, you have to really work it and can't take huge gambles right off the bat. You necessarily spend time learning the markets and finding ones you like.

If someone who facerolled a toon to 80 and just farms on the weekends decides to start a AH alt with 1k gold, they're more likely to take a 200g gamble on something that Auctioneer tells them is good, but they don't really know.

I have done this twice now. The first time, I had to send more money to my alt to cover listing fees. Listing fees! The minute I made the gold back, I paid myself back, but it was a stupid thing to do.
The second time, I'm still recovering from. I was up over 9k across all toons, am now down around 7, I think, but with lots of inventory. I'm really only "down" by about 1200.
I think the Book of Glyph Mastery was a mistake. No more big gambles for me. Slow and steady gets the mount.

duckilama wrote:

No more big gambles for me. ...

No kidding. ... [looks around] ... pssst ... Hey, you, yeah, you ... Ya wanna buy an Armor Plated Combat Shotgun? I got one -- cheap!

Even though I don't play the AH, I absolutely love this thread -- it's a fun little window in the the fact that WoW is many different games to many different people, and that that auction house in itself is as brilliantly conceived as the best mini-games in any other game.

My approach to the WoW economy? I look for ways to reduce my personal expenses and to generate low-risk, guaranteed (or nearly guaranteed) income so that I can spend a minimal time worrying about economy and more time playing the parts of the game that interest me personally. Often times I may end up spending more time acquiring resources than I would have to if I was smart about playing the AH, but I find the way I go about things more enjoyable given my personal gaming tastes.

- Where possible, I acquire my own mats for consumables. I mine metal for ammo and uncut gems for socketing. I kill the beasts that drop the meats I use for my buff food (mammoth genocide!) and run cooking dailies for the needed spices. I skin the mats for the occasional piece of LW crafted gear I need. Also, all greens/low quality blues I find become enchanting mats for future upgrades. Soon, I'll be gathering my own herbs for flasks and elixirs.

- In the process of acquiring mats for my own purposes, anything of value that I don't have personal use for goes on the AH assuming there is a decent market price; when the market sucks for an item or when a true AH player is running the market for it, it either gets donated to a guildmate, saved for a market shift, or just plain vendored.

- After raiding/running instances, questing is the part of the game I enjoy most, so other than profits from selling unneeded mats my income comes purely from doing that and vendoring the trash I pick up along the way. When it comes to repeating dailies, I stick to either what I need for rep (or mats, as is the case with the cooking daily), or dailies with a very nice reward to effort ratio; currently, that is either Hodir or Ebon Hand quests, and in BC that was Shattered Sun quests.

With this approach to the WoW economy, I am able to have ample gold to cover the remaining recurring costs of raiding (repairs, and for the time being, elixirs) and to give tips to crafters/enchanters when they will accept them. Also, I have had enough excess gold to get epic flight for two characters and a Greatness card for my hunter. That said, though, you won't ever see me being able to afford things like buying epics off the AH, getting vanity mounts, or funding the exploits of the large army of alts that other players seem to be able to field. That said, it keeps me playing the game the way I want to, and it keeps me marveling at the myriad of other games that people play within WoW.

ZeroKFE wrote:

Even though I don't play the AH, I absolutely love this thread -- it's a fun little window in the the fact that WoW is many different games to many different people, and that that auction house in itself is as brilliantly conceived as the best mini-games in any other game.

This is actually a really interesting point to me. Most games with some sort of a more advanced economy system tend to have a pseudo PvP game in the economy. While WoW's is by no means super advanced, it's still interesting to watch trends, see how people will snipe prices, etc.

AnimeJ wrote:
ZeroKFE wrote:

Even though I don't play the AH, I absolutely love this thread -- it's a fun little window in the the fact that WoW is many different games to many different people, and that that auction house in itself is as brilliantly conceived as the best mini-games in any other game.

This is actually a really interesting point to me. Most games with some sort of a more advanced economy system tend to have a pseudo PvP game in the economy. While WoW's is by no means super advanced, it's still interesting to watch trends, see how people will snipe prices, etc.

Actually, it's funny that you mention that, because as I was writing that post it dawned on me that what I do is essentially PvE economy, while the AH players are doing PvP economy. Personally, I prefer PvE in most types of gaming scenarios, so it's no surprise that the AH game doesn't float my boat. That said, I think it's cool that just as with combat mechanics, Blizzard seems to be interested in fostering equally healthy economy mechanics no matter what your preference is between PvP and PvE.

zeroKFE wrote:

Actually, it's funny that you mention that, because as I was writing that post it dawned on me that what I do is essentially PvE economy, while the AH players are doing PvP economy. Personally, I prefer PvE in most types of gaming scenarios, so it's no surprise that the AH game doesn't float my boat. That said, I think it's cool that just as with combat mechanics, Blizzard seems to be interested in fostering equally healthy economy mechanics no matter what your preference is between PvP and PvE.

I've had numerous discussions about this with one of my rl friends who just can't wrap his head around the AH. I never really thought of it as a pvp environment before, though. Interesting, considering that I generally dislike the conventional pvp in the game. I guess this is how I get my payback for all the level 80's who've swooped in on their epic mounts and stolen sh*t out from under me while I was leveling.

zeroKFE wrote:

... what I do is essentially PvE economy, while the AH players are doing PvP economy. ...

Kind of yes, kind of no.

Yes, I'm competing against other bank alts in a sense. I know the main bank alts on my server -- they're my benchmarks on pricing and markets because their prices and presence in (or absence from) a certain part of the market will influence my decisions.

But unlike PvP, there's no e-peen factor in the AH world. Sure, my bank alt is well-dressed, but he has no kills, no gear, no achievements, no title and no fancy mount. (He's level 1.) There's nothing that makes him stand out because you can't click on him to see how much money he has in the bank.

Playing the AH (as Zero mentioned) is indeed a minigame. My economic approach is a lot like Zero's -- I use my characters' crafting and gathering skills to create maximum value from the items I acquire, and it's my bank alt's job is to handle inventory and sales as efficiently as possible. But I take the extra step and invest in raw materials that can be made into something of more value to other players and put more cash in my pocket. (My pet business? I look at that like I'm a wholesaler. You pay for the convenience of me finding them.)

But I'd argue that the AH minigame is more like PvE than PvP. Some people quest. Some people raid. Some people collect small pets and achievements. My bank alt collects gold.

Some other quick tips:

If other people keep undercutting your chosen auctions, addfriend them so you know when they log on and off, then nip in and do your stuff when they are gone

I'm a tailor + enchanter and items like Wispcloak or Deathchill cloak cost like 600g and often sell for 900-1200g. Also look at getting those vellums from inscribers (I usually get ripped off and buy them for like 15g each), and enchant them with *in demand* stuff. Dont put cruddy enchants, only stuff like spellpower to weapon, berzerker, or spellpower to bracers etc. The mats are expensive, but just mark it up by a huge amount again. People will pay (provided you dont keep getting undercut :P). This way I focus on like maybe 5 items (so its quick), and the profits are *huge*.

I also was talking to a guy in work about this and he came up with this one: If there's a small number of popular enchant materials (cosmic essences or Abyss crystals) listed, buy them up (even if its more expensive than usual), and relist them all at the higher price. He also came up with the idea of relisting them using an alt, then on his enchanting main offering to do enchants which require those mats for free on the /trade chan if they get the mats (by buying his alts overpriced auctions). Very evul.

Another common one (like splitting the cosmic essences from greater into lesser or visa versa), is to look at buying cheap stacks of items and relisting things singly (auctioneer can do this for you automatically). So if the current listing for Armor Vellum III is:
1x = 8g
5x = 40g
5x = 75g
Buy the first 6, and relist singly at say 25g each. Even though someone could buy a stack for 75, people often only need 1.

Lirril wrote:

Dont put cruddy enchants ...

Yep. And don't forget old-world stuff. For instance: I have a 50 priest who is slowly leveling up enchanting. One of my best sellers is the Crusader enchant. I can get 4 Large Brilliant Shards, two Righteous Orbs and an Armor Vellum II for a combined total of less than 50 gold. I sell the enchant for 100-110 gold. Minus the 5 percent AH cut, I pocket at least 50G per enchant.

If I can't buy Righteous Orbs for less than 10 gold each, I wait. And if someone has listed Crusader at less than 100, I wait for that to get bought or expire. If it's less than, say, 50, I'll buy it and relist it.

There's a lot of gold floating around right now, and folks are always leveling alts. I want my alts to have stuff I didn't have (like decent enchants) when I leveled my main, and I figure other folks do, too. So far I think I'm right.

Lirril wrote:

I also was talking to a guy in work about this and he came up with this one ...

Very clever and definitely evil, but that takes waaaay too much time.

Most of what I deal in is gathered or produced by my characters as they level, and I have a ton of alts. My paladin is mining tons (pun intended) of Iron Ore, which is a byproduct of questing in STV, Badlands and The Hinterlands. On one hand I can sell each piece of ore for 75-90 silver each (or 7.5G to 9G per stack of 10, which is how I sell it). On the other I can buy up any stray pieces on the AH that are priced a lot lower and re-sell them. It's quick and relatively painless and doesn't require dealing with other people directly.

Lirril wrote:

Another common one ... is to look at buying cheap stacks of items ...

Yep. Some folks will essentially give you a discount if you buy in bulk. I can't tell you how many Armor Kits (Heavy and on up) I've bought and bulk, split up into singles and sold for decent money. Frozen Orbs can work the same way if you have the stones to spend that kind of money all at once. (I don't.)

That tactic squarely falls under the Know Thy Market mandate. I've tried the same with uncut Outlands gems but had my ass handed to me every time.

Enix wrote:

That tactic squarely falls under the Know Thy Market mandate. I've tried the same with uncut Outlands gems but had my ass handed to me every time.

Yeah this mantra is insanely important. I can price and move ilvl 200 crafted epics (specifically, leather) because I know when to undercut and when to buy. Likewise, I can basically steal people's titansteel cooldowns if I'm quick enough in trade chat. But when I venture into unfamiliar raw materials markets -- enchanting materials, recently -- I get buttslammed.

Well, thanks to a little planning ahead, I've already started to make a killing on Children's Week.

I made a stack of tasty cupcakes, and about 18 delicious chocolate cakes. As well, I bought stacks upon stacks of ice cream, brownies, doughnuts, and cupcakes for resale. It's amazing how many people will just go to the AH and buy stuff at over inflated prices, so they don't have to go find it themselves.

The weird part is, I put the ice cream up a couple stacks (split into singles) with 1g buyout, a couple more with 75s buyout, and the rest at 50s, having bought them for 1s each. And more of the more expensive ones have been sold.

I've also put out cake slices, which have a 1/2hr cooldown to use the cakes to get 5 slices. Used 3 cakes on each of my 3 toons above 75 over the course of an hour. I think I've spent maybe 175g or so, but make almost 800g, and we're only 8 hours in.

Enix wrote:

Pure prophet!

Excellent speculative ability, possibly, but prophetic?

well, I've sold a few cakes at 95g. Brownies and doughnuts and the like at 5g, slices of cake for 15. Doesn't even matter if I've got leftovers, I've made more than I've spent.

Grats, Strewth. I didn't think to list the ice cream, etc. That seems too easy -- like stealing candy from war orphans.

I did list 10 cakes at 25G last night -- I wasn't the low seller (someone had listed theirs for 22G or thereabouts), but I was far from the highest (some folks had priced theirs at 50+G).

I was hoping to log on this morning and re-stock, but I couldn't even connect to the game. Drag.

I'm out almost nothing but time (for the eggs) and pocket change (for the flour, milk and spices). Pure profit!

P.S. Keep in mind that the cakes aren't stackable, and they take a bunch of mats that don't stack so well. I apologize to anyone I knocked over during my sprints from the mailbox to the kitchen in Dalaran yesterday afternoon.

(edited to change prophet to profit - yes, I get paid to type things on the Interweb. Why do you ask?)

Seth wrote:
Enix wrote:

Pure prophet!

Excellent speculative ability, possibly, but prophetic?

I spell phonetically until the coffee kicks in.

By "kicks in," I mean fourth.

Children's Week AAR report:

Thursday night, right before the dawn of Children's Week, I listed 8 (of 25) Delicious Chocolate Cakes on the AH. 25G each seemed reasonable -- that was 3X and change more than its normal price, and some folks had listed theirs at 50G+. I was definitely on the low end of the scale, and I wanted quick sales because these suckers don't stack.

By Friday afternoon, the first eight had sold. Buyout prices were still holding steady at around 50G, so I listed another 8 at 47G each. Around 4 p.m. (and after my second batch sold), I listed the remaining nine. By dinner time I was out of cakes and up just shy of 1,000 gold.

The bad: Egg farming sucks, and the cakes require a bunch of mats that don't stack well and aren't available in one convenient place.

The good: I made nearly 1,000 gold in about two hours of work (including the farming and the baking).

Conclusion: Can Children's Week be twice a year this year?

My Noblegarden + Children's Week report :
Rituals of the New Moon are selling like crazy.
Last week, I had hit my goal of 10k on all my characters so I could give Cutiepi enough for epic flight. She only needed 3500, I think, but that took me down to 6500.
I'm one more sale away from 10k again.

1) About 25-30g in mats. No farming, just buy Shadow and Adder's Tongue/Icethorn on AH.
2) List on the AH higher than I really "want" to sell for - say 350-400-500. No listing cost, just a placeholder.
3) Log into AH mule 2-3 times per day, usually at the beginning and end of my play session. Check for competition on AH.
4) Start barking in /trade with (in my mind) witty sales pitches, or just emphasizing the "be a huge wolf" aspect. Price = 300g.
5) ?
6 Profit

Seriosuly, I'm selling between 2 and 6 of these on a given day. Yesterday, I logged in at lunchtime to check my auctions, got one nibble.
He needed CoD, which I did for 300. Then he saw my next sales link, which had a different color wolf effect and wanted one of each, but for 200.
Talked him up to 225 per. 900g in my mailbox last night from one guy.

There do seem to be other people out there with the recipe, because for 2-4 days, I had some competition on the AH - not counting the very first guy I sold to, who thought he'd get a tidy profit on AH relisting at 600 from a sale price of 400. But after one or two listings, everyone else has disappeared. There's probably at least 2 other folks with the recipe.

I think what happened was that I listed high on the AH. No listing fee meant I could afford to relist indefinitely.
Then, and this is the important part, I started really working /trade. Not spamming, but really, really working it. Thinking of clever wolf-themed hooks to use, playing on many hunter's love of their wolf pets, playing on jealousy of Shaman wolf-form, etc. And ignoring all the /trade naysayers, and not being afraid to talk back to them with sales *volume* numbers. I'm also not hiding how I make it. Anyone that asks, I tell them it's a rare, BoP world drop recipe. I don't give out mat costs, though I will say "not much, I don't track it, really. noone else is selling them, so it's not a big deal yet."

I'm glad I went out to farm for Book of Glyph mastery, or I'd not have stumbled on this goldmine.

Oh, and as always, glyphs keep selling and Eternal Fire -> Crystallized Fire is remarkably, predictably cyclical. 4-5 days stabilization/equalization, 3-4 days opportunity.
I'm completely out of the JC market.

you're that guy! the "plus it turns you into a GIGANTIC wolf!" guy!

yes, your sales pitch is witty enough that I remember it on a Monday. =)

YEah, that's me. And it works. Vanity pets are cool, but turning into a vanity animal yourself is about 300g cool.

Edit: The downside to selling in /trade, however, is that I don't believe Beancounter keeps track. I have no hard numbers on sales, but it's a good business to be in.

So, I was curious about using the neutral AH to ferry highly desired items to each opposing AH, and I did 2 things.
Started a Blood Elf Hunter(easy levelling due to hunterness after 10 and easy levelling + quest bags due to being TBC race).
Checked out some realm stats at http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census... :

Online Date: 2004-12-31
Total Characters: 11,905
Showing Guild: All
Total Alliance: 9,058 - 76%
Total Horde: 2,847 - 24%
A to H Ratio: 3.2 : 1
Activity Ratio: 1.2 : 1
26 : 5*
* Number of entries in last 30 days

I haven't done any verification of stats or even reviewed how they get the stats, but if the ratio is even close to true, I think there is probably a good opportunity for finding "rare" Horde-only drop and vendor pets to sell to Alliance.
Gonna try to get to wherever the BE AH is and get a scan going so I can at least see what the numbers are like between factions. I wonder if my Rituals book could sell for even more Horde-side. And glyphs. Hmm....
I wish I'd held onto the White Kitten I got in Stormwind long enough to have this idea.

Another "working the /trade" pseudo-tip.

Pluck the heartstrings.

I get a lot of folks lowballing me on the Rituals. I'm not really even interested anywhere below 250.
When I do get a 250ish bite, I just throw in a non-whiny reference to my quest for epic flight. Keep it cheerful and no QQ.

"Sure, I'll take 250. Getting mighty close to epic flight! Wheee!"

That little bit of cheerful hunger is usually worth at least 25g. So a 250 bite becomes a 275 sale with no actual haggling.