Prelude

First posts are always the hardest. Especially when trying to enter into a very specific corner of the blogosphere where it's hard not to just repeat what other like-minded people have posted numerous times before. I'll try it anyway, since my story will be of interest to the bigger part of the goldmaking community - the players who are nowhere near the gold cap (be it old or new) and who have no friggin' idea how to make sense of it all.

I am the Apprentice Trader, and you'll join me on my journey to learn the in's and out's of World of Warcraft trading.

I am a long-time WoW player and former raid leader, but to say I have much experience in WoW trading other than listing items at a price close to the lowest one would be a lie. My first epic mount in Classic was financed by the daily transmute of Arcanite Bars and farming cultists and Lost ones in Blasted Lands on my Rogue alt in hopes of finding a Flawless Draenethyst Sphere to exchange into a blue item satchel. My luck, and that of millions of WoW players, was the introduction of daily quests and the bonus gold awarded for completing quests at max level. Otherwise most of us would only have one char with an epic flyer even today.

My interest in trading was sparked halfway through TBC, when a raid member asked me if he could borrow some gold as a starting investment for auction house trading, since he had just blown all his money on getting his Hunter up to speed for raiding. At that time I had a little less than 3k gold and he wanted all I can spare. I figured I'd need 500 would be enough to keep me stocked for raiding, so I told him he could get 2500 gold. Since this was a pretty big risk for me to take, he promised to pay me back double my investment one month later. I said, "ya right *wink*", but sure enough, one month later during a raid invite he traded me 5000 gold back. Now this was mid TBC (before T5 attunements were removed), when this was a lot of money. I asked him how much he made, but he never answered me directly. To this day I don't know how he did it (he never used his main character or any known alts), but needless to say, I was impressed.

I left World of Warcraft in late Fall of 2009, after we cleared Ulduar, and while I never missed anything in particular, two things kept returning to my mind when remembering my time in game, "I never got that friggin' Zul'Gurub Raptor" and "how the heck did he make that much gold in one month?" Since I wrapped up my RL stuff that caused me to leave the game, I returned the week 4.0.1 was released. I never got that ZG Raptor, but I will sure as hell figure out how that trading thing is done.

I have two accounts. The first is my seasoned one with plenty of toons between level 70 and 85 and various professions close to or at the cap. The second one is a fairly new one (bought it the week before Cataclysm was released) and it's in a different region, so I started from scratch.
My learning experience will focus on both accounts, hopefully allowing me to separate between general tactics and strategies and server specific rules and intricacies. My posts will thus fall into two categories: all the basics I implement along the way on my new account on the one hand and making the most of my old characters.

You have learned a new skill: [Apprentice Trading].