Stockpiling- Do you Know When? How? Why?

*Edit After reading around this morning, I saw that Markco posted about "dog-piling", and that falls along jumping in and around markets. If you haven't read his post, go chickity-check it out.

Stockpiling. It's something that most of us do at one time or another. But do you really know when to do it? How to do it? Or why you do it? Do you even realize that you do it?



We all know the Darkmoon Faire is happening right now. If you don't, then you probably aren't a Scribe. I am going to use this as an example...most specifically, volatile life. But I will get back to this in a bit.




First I want to hit on market fluctuation. See the pic above? Yeah. Low server is 2'ish and high server is 14ish gold. A little bit of a difference there? Volatile life ferr shur. Let's get back to Stockpiling then come back to this "snowfall" screen.

If you ever "stockpiled" for the Faire, then you either A.) have been watching the herb markets (probably Whiptail due to having the highest investment/return), you have been watching the Card prices, as well as deck prices. B.) You have been buying up cheap cards to make decks (or to flip singles) C.) You have been buying up cheap Inferno Ink and Blackfallow Ink to convert.

Now dive a bit deeper: D.) Stockpiling Volatile Life. Why? On most servers, this item fluctuates more than Illinois weather does in a day. Midnight, you might see some posted for 17g each (1). Early morning? They drop to 8g (2). By the time you get your morning coffee, they are back to 13.5g (3). Noonish? Back to just shy of 9g each (4). By the time you order your take out for dinner, they are around 10g (5).

They are moving at every one of these prices too. Let's just do some quick math on this. You buy some at the 8g when you get up for work. You post them before you go back to work for 13.5g. 1600g investment. By the time you get home from work, they have sold at the 13.5g pricepoint. 2700g. 1100g profit on one item. Now some might say no way this happens, but I want you to look and see the "volatile" life of Volatile Life during this week. When to buy, when to sell...

Actually, I think that last paragraph covers Why as well. Why do we stockpile? Of course it all boils down to profitability with gold. Do you watch your markets? Do you know when, how and why to buy and resell?

Hopefully this post helps explain things for you. If you were having questions or issues, I hope that this gives you a bit of understanding and insight. Now go play the AH or something, would ya?!