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2.20.2011

The Drag Hiding in Your Bag (or Hello Mr. Albatross!)

Instead of the cross, the Albatross
If you've been in the gold making business for any length of time I'm sure you've encountered an 'albatross'.

From Wikipedia: "The word 'albatross' is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)."

Today I'm going to talk about the things that we acquire in our gold making efforts that seem to stick around forever. No matter how hard we try they just seem to be there every time we log in mocking us.

A few of our readers may remember the post I made a while ago pondering whether I should sell the Forumla: Bracer - Major Strength or learn it and try to make gold selling enchants. In a fit of crazy I decided to go ahead and learn it.

At the time I learned it there had not been any Enchant Bracer -  Major Strength show up on my server yet. I thought maybe I could be the first and perhaps make back some of the 10k I had forked over for the formula.

About my neck was hung.
Fast forward a week and a half later and not only am I out the 10k but I've also tied up another 10k in mats crafting a few enchanting scrolls.

The prices for the scrolls have been steadily dropping as the few of us selling them continue to undercut each other searching for the price point at which the players will take these off our hands.

While I continue to make money in other areas (and I may end up making some money off this enchant also) what is bothering me more is having these two scrolls not selling day after day. This is my current albatross. This is what haunts me each time I log in.

This happens to us all at some point or another. A certain item (often worth a large amount of gold) will start to irritate us. It will start to make us itch. It will start to make us twitch. We start to loath its presence in our bags.

We start to feel like a failure. We start freaking out. It starts to cramp our AH mojo. We start to wonder simply "Y U NO SELL?!!"

Albatross...
If you are like me, I start to get antsy and just want to be rid of the thing. To me it's now covered in the plague. When this happens I am most likely to start slashing my prices just get it gone. Out with the bad juju!

I recently had a this experience with a Darkmoon Card: Hurricane. It sat there for weeks and weeks. When it finally sold I was relieved (even though it eventually sold for thousands less than I would have hoped). I was glad to have that albatross gone from around my neck.

Perhaps I just don't have the stomach for dealing in items that cost thousands and thousands of gold. I'm much more at ease when I have a steady stream of income coming in that adds up over time. Will I become too risk-averse?

The problem though is that by never taking big risks I miss out on some big opportunities. I will also never learn for myself what works and what doesn't. The trick is to find a way remove the current albatross from around my neck (thereby making room for the next one).

What albatrosses have you been carrying around lately? What techniques/habits/voodoo have you used to shake them off? Let us know in the comments.
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7 comments :

  1. I like your post, never seen it put that way. Here's mine:

    I have a bad habit of buying too much. It gets to a point where my tabs are full of mats/ores/inks/gear. Don't get my wrong, that's not a bad thing per se, but it's bad when you miss a week of logging in to toss them in auctions, and your farmers keep sending you ores everyday....Albatross.

    Or when you forget about sending all your converted prospecting necklaces and rings, then you log into your enchanter and have 400+ items to d/e. Albatross.

    So i guess my Albatross is trying to figure out to log in everyday so this doesn't happen, but in the real world, it's just not possible, so this bird will always be hovering, and sh!tting on my shoulders...

    What I do with the "high end" market (i.e items that cost more than 5K purchase price), I only purchase them for 50% (of market value), and remember that price.

    So if it's tossed in for 10K, I know I can go all the way down to 5.5K and still make a few hundo gold. I try not to think about them much, and the good thing is, when they sell, you get a nice boost that you "forgot" you had!

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  2. I'm super conservative I guess. Anything "large ticket" like that I really research before I buy and try to flip. Or if I make it myself I have to make sure my investment is so low I can undercut a lot and still make gold.

    For example, I bought the Elementium Destroyer's Ring pattern from the JC trainer but only after I saw on TUJ that there were only two other people selling them, and they only listed about one time every other day.


    The biggest cost mats are Volatile Air x75 and Chimera's Eye x4. I use my Alchemy xmute for the airs so I get enough every 5 days to make one ring. The 1200g I spend on the Chimera's Eye means I can list it at 5,000g but sell down to 2,500 or so if needed and still make good profit.

    I try to avoid the Albatross if I can.

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  3. Mine at the moment are The 20 stack of whiptails i got form 7g and now are selling fr 3g each.Dont even ask,and yes Alto its still in may bank probably waiting me to Mill at in a few months .

    And Now my next stunt was the also very cleaver move of buying 20 stacks of Blackfallow Ink ,for 11g each to try to flipe them to 29g ,tough a good idea at the time,big mistake they are now selling at 5g each.

    So those 2 bad boys are what keeping me awake at nights and giving me nightmares i want my 5K investment money back!!!!!

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  4. Hey Al, why don't you just invest more in them while the price is so low? Just my opinion, but they shouldn't drop to any less than that brother....

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  5. My albatross is the 18 Maelstrom Crystals I bought when the alchemist stone became non-disenchantable (is that even a word?? lol). They are selling & a bit above what I paid for them but sooooo slowly!

    I also shelled out for the new Agility meta gem but I was really lucky to be the only one with that cut for maybe 3 days so I did manage to make my money back. Just as well really because I now have 5 competitors, intent on selling their gems so driving the price down rapidly :(

    I too, have the feeling that big tickets items are not my strong point. I don't hesitate to shell out 10k on ore or herbs but I know what I'm doing with those. It's the 10k on a single item that has me chewing my fingernails!

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  6. Strangely enough I have the EXACT same ablatross' has you. I am still trying to sell my hurricane deck and I have one scroll bracer - major strength that just won't sell. It is even worse for me though because I am the only one currently with access to the major strength enchant (or at least the only one selling them). I am hoping it sells soon but this is getting ridiculous.

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  7. I usually leave lots of material I bought in my mail until it's almost too late.
    Then I'll have to go through 1500 mails and send all the items to 6 different characters, while they're obviously not sorted in my mail.

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