A Story About a Failed Mog Seller

I have recently made friends with one of the other Mog Item sellers on my home server.

I can hear you tutting at me here, I know “There Can Be Only One” but I can be a soft touch.  So we made friends, and who knows he might help me out in the future.  Or maybe I was just feeling a little guilty for selling him mogging gear at 200g per piece, knowing he couldn’t sell that piece for more than that.

Last night, just before I was logging out after a quick repost in the AH, he whispered me, seeming quite depressed.

“Such a pain selling these sets :(”

“I give up 🙁 invested too much money :(“

I felt sorry for the poor guy. I knew exactly which fundamental rule of gold making he had broken.

[learn_more caption=”What’s a Mog Seller?”] A Mog Seller is a World of Warcraft Gold Making player who sells uncommon (green) or rare items for mogging. These items would normally have a low value for sale to players still leveling their characters. When the items are sold for mogging reasons, they are sold due to their visual appeal. With the transmogrification from patch 4.3 players can now alter the visual appearance of their equipped armor to match any soulbound item in their bags., Mog sellers typically farm low level instances, rare mobs, or use snatch lists to buy these items at a low level when they are wrongly priced for their ilevel or stats, rather than for their visual appeal and use for transmogrification (mogging).[/learn_more]

“You did,” I said. “You need to focus and think what you’re doing. Who are your buyers, how much will they pay, which items are valuable, how can you store and repost the gear.”

“How am I supposed to find this out when no-one buys the gear?”

“Besides it takes me hours to repost since I have to search for the name first (because of random enchantment) then post individually! 🙁

Then I was surprised to discover that he wasn’t even using Trade Skill Master to quickly relist failed auctions, using TSM categories and groups.  I was prepared to help him.  However, as he was my direct competitor in a lucrative market, then if he didn’t yet know how to relist the items quickly, then I wasn’t ready to teach him how to instantly undercut me by 1 copper! I’ll let him discover that part on his own.

“Nothing at all?” I asked. “Are you tracking sales?”

“No I got ridiculous number of spare pieces”
“Track sales?”

I wondered if this guy was just throwing his money at the auction house in the random hope that his extortionately priced auctions would sell to a passing idiot.

“What does that say about your prices?” I asked

🙁

Here was an otherwise intelligent guy, about to abandon the gold-making game he loved.  I tried to explain to him about mogging prices.  You can’t just post them at a random gold amount and hope the buyers don’t notice all the other items listed at 1/500th of your sale. I tried to explain to him the reasoning behind the prices I chose.

“Ok lets think about something like Queen’s Garnets.”
“They are suddenly available. Like Mogging Items.”
“But there are few. Not like Mogging items.”
“Prices start high because of rarity.”
“Now think about mogging items. There are many, and awareness is low”

“So consider: sell low, and as more and more people are interested, raise prices. Does that make economy sense?”

“If you buy an item for 5g and you sell it for 20g. That’s good or bad?”

“If it sells its good of course

“If you buy it for 5g and you post it for 5k and repost and repost … good or bad?”

“Not so good hm”

“So buy an item for 5g, sell for 20g.”
“Then buy an item for 20g and sell for 50g.”
“Then buy an item for 50g and sell for 100g.”
“That’s 95g profit from 5g.”

He thought about the pricing ideas for a while, and seemed already to be more optimistic.

“Ok one question for you? For example my Vanguard Shoulders I’ve only seen 1 on the server! How much would you sell it for?”

How to find the real selling price of mogging items

There are at least 3 other mog sellers on my server, apart from him and me.

“I’d look at the prices of the other sets and watch to see when they sell and at what price.  If they are selling at 5k, then put the shoulders at 4k and be grateful, rather than sad you didn’t get 5k.”

“ah”

“If they’re just being reposted and reposted at 5k …
“Then no one on the entire server wants them at 5k!”

“Good point.”

“If you have only one then you can hold them back. Create scarcity. And keep watching until other parts sell.”

“aah this sounds much more logical”

“See what price people are willing to pay.”

“and at the same time, look around, see if you can spot the person who bought the Vanguard items, or ask in trade chat. Because if someone bought the chest and you are the only one with the shoulders on the whole server they are going to pay a hell of a lot. Agree?”

“agreed 🙂

“So that’s two things you can do with that.”

“thank you ever so much for this”

Did you invest gold in mogging items?

Finally I needed to address the first more important issue, that he was throwing his money down the drain.

“By the way, you didn’t invest a lot of gold … you GAMBLED a lot of gold. Not the same 😛

“I stand corrected!”

I felt I’d been too harsh.  “It’s ok some people enjoy the rush of gambling.  Just start small, build up.  And watch”

“Keep notes if you dont use TSM accounting module or MySales”

“Will definitely do”

“You can do it”

“Thank you 🙂 motivational talk always works on me. Not meant in sarcastic way 🙂

Are you going to give up on the Mogging Market?

I hopefully inspired one player to re-try the mogging market, at a more realistic pace, with a buyer-led price point rather than a fantasy price.  Have you given up on the mogging market, or will you continue?

About the Author

The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.