What's it Worth? Better yet, What's it's Value?

"An item's worth is only what someone will pay"

We hit on this on A2A, Cold and Wes talked about it on  AHJ this last weekend, and it has been in buzz chat since the mount's release. Anytime something 'new' hits, like the new BoE mount, we all start to speculate on pricing....But how do you actually get a starting price?

Looking at a tooltip will only give you as much information as you have data stored. But let's look anyways...

TSM or DBMarket (1) is the most recent price, so you could use that to "figure" a price (although in this case, it's unkown- bad Alto for slacking here). Or, if you keep up on your scans, you might use Auctioneer's tooltip (2). Now this will tell you how many your AH has seen (in this case 19), and what the "simple" auction price is....Right tool, right job?!

I still get a kick outta this item....I still think something cheesy should be added, like "A girls best friend" or something of that sort.

Now lets look at TheUndermineJournal. Easy to search. On the main page, you can go to the search tab and type in your Reins of Poseidus. Scroll down to the middle'ish of the page, and look at the "snowfall" screen.

Here, you can mouse over any of the "snowflakes" to see prices and server info (alot of folks don't know this, but the left of the screen is low pop, the right is high pop servers- obviously up and down is prices). This is probably the best judge of finding a "starting price" if your server has not seen a specific item.

Now, onto blogs and/or "wow knowledge-based" websites. Since there are more "server" specific ways to judge starter prices, I do not recommend this way unless absolutely necessary. If you really feel the need, wowhead, wowwiki, or mmochamp will have fairly updated info- READ THE COMMENTS! That will help you more than the actual prices. Yeah, it might take a few minutes, but is a few minutes worth 10's of thousands of gold?

With that being said, those are just a few options you can use to reference your items "worth" or "value". Using any of those tools you have in your "wow" shed can be great, but is it the right tool for the job?

I was talking with a fellow blogger earlier when she mentioned the price of Poseidus on her server. This reminded me...I saw one on the AH a few days back, added the "seller" to my friends list, and forgot about it. Till now. I log in, see that he is on, and within a few clicks of my AH search, he pops in trade selling the Reins for 75K. I immediately send him a tell, and offer 40K (the price that I will pay, not what he is selling for).

Now some folks would say that was a complete and utter lowball (think of this in smaller terms)... A stack of Twilight Jasmine is offered in trade for 75g, and you offer 40g. Normally, you will get laughed at for the lowball, and if you are lucky, an ignore from the seller. But....

To my surprise, there was ZERO negotiation. Nothing but a "ok". So I instantly invited him to group, went over to meet him, and completed the trade. Good deal? Or bad? Hmmm....

What does this mean the 'worth' is on the Reins? 40K? What's it's Value? 85K? Not sure, as that is what I reposted for. Will it sell? Only time will tell. I know that the AH takes 5%, so, in all reality, I can sell it for around 42K and break even (if selling in the "local" AH).

Do you use a "price finder" different than what I have listed above? How do you determine the value on a "never before seen" item on your server? Or is it just a "guesstimate"?