Hall of Fame – 500K Gold Club: Pabstsmear of Ghostlands-US

The Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame interviews the few elite players that have hit the World of Warcraft gold cap of 999,999 gold 99 silver 99 copper as well as ones who have obtain 500k and 250k. We have with us, Pabstsmear of Ghostlands-US, who will be sharing their story with us today.

Please tell us a little about yourself and your gaming experience.

I’m Pabstsmear on the Ghostlands-US server. I started playing World of Warcraft on release but never got a character much past 20 or so before I quit. I bounced around a laundry list of other games but eventually came back to WoW around the release of WotLK. I was playing the auction house mainly because of how much I hate leveling. Doing so, I managed to turn a couple of hundred gold into nearly 10,000 before I got bored again. Finally, I noticed a facebook status of a college friend of mine talking about how they got their 310 drakes from Ulduar. I asked him if they had room in their guild and the rest is history.

Do you raid or PvP most? Both? How do you enjoy the game?

I haven’t done much PvP. I keep telling myself I’m going to start but always manage to find other things to do. I do enjoy raiding and manage to do so twice a week for 2 hours a night. I’m fortunate in that I’m part of a guild that not only has great players but great people as well. We may not be a top 100 guild progression wise, but we are people wise.

Why did you choose to collect this amount of gold?

I was close to flat broke when Cataclysm came out. I had a small reserve from Wrath which I immediately spent outfitting my main. I realized I wanted to be in a position where I could get anything I wanted without difficulty. So I started with a goal of 100K. Reached that, then got to 200K. I finally stopped at 300K since it just seemed like there was no reason to ever go higher. About 2 weeks ago, I saw your blog and decided I wanted to be inducted into the 500K hall of fame. So here we are.

How did you go about getting to this gold amount? Any creative or original ideas?

When I started trying to make gold in Wrath, I mainly flipped items on the AH. I would use Auctioneer to find undervalued items and flip them. This often worked well but occasionally had some disasterous results. Since I didn’t have any high level characters, I often had no idea what I was buying. Some of the things I bought would simply sit on my character for months eating relisting fees every 48 hours. It taught me a strong lesson in knowing the market.

Toward the end of Wrath, I learned the value of the transmutation alchemist. (I currently have 4 and would have 9 if I could stand leveling to any degree). Being able to create an epic gem every day was free money. In Cataclysm, I’ve made most of my money through jewelcrafting. The old obsidium shuffle. I’ve started to make a little bit with inscription, although I wish I had been around when it was really profitable.

To me, making money is all about volume. I didn’t make a lot of gold until I was able to make things that sold regularly. I also believe in the adage that you never turn down a profit. As an example, I bought a large quantity of volatiles at a very low price. Some time later there were none on the AH. I put a few up at about 4 times what I’d paid. A guy messaged me asking to buy several thousand dollars worth. I ended up getting more than double what I paid for the stack. Now, some people would have gotten too greedy and wouldn’t have made as much.

What is your master list?

Items that I consistently sell include:

• Cut “useful” rare gems of every color
• The big 3 meta gems as well as the healer one
• Glyphs that are selling for more than 40g
• Enchanting mats (mostly hypnotic dusts, essences, and heavenly shards)
• Rare rings and amulets
• The 346 relics–Jawbone, Eyeball, Leaf

What items are in your Snatch list?

• Obsidium/Elementium/Pyrite Ore
• All herbs (sans the first tier, silverleaf, earthroot, et al)
• Primal Might
• Glyph Mastery Books
• Frostweave and Embersilk Cloth

How did you learn to do it? Anyone or resource you would like to thank?

Probably somethingawful.com for their gold making thread. There are many people far richer than I in there.

What addons, if any, do you use to help you make gold and why are they needed?

• Auctionator – for ease of buying and selling – the default UI is awful
• TSM – glyph creation–can’t imaging doing glyphs without this
• I used to use Auctioneer but it was very bloated. I probably miss some excellent deals but c’est la vie.

Are you still going for more gold? If so, do you have a new goal? Are you close?

I’ll probably go for a million eventually. Since I just hit 500K, I’ll need some time. Depends on how bored I get with it. Since it’s really just “numbers on a ledger” at this point, I don’t know that I have the attention span to make it there.

Update @1 million gold:

I’m probably going to keep doing what I’m doing but with a lot less fervor. Now that I’ve hit this mark, I’m going to pretend that I have nothing and spend anything more I make on my guild and on other “fun” stuff.

Secondly, I’ve decided to start a gold making blog. Would it be possible to include my blog link somewhere on the post? I noticed some others had it. The website is http://wowbaron.wordpress.com

Do many people know you have this amount of gold?

I know a few of the folks in my guild have a fair amount but it isn’t something we brag about as it might change the way folks view you. Besides, anything anyone in my guild needs, they are welcome to it. It’s just pixel money.

Did you spend your gold on fun things? What have you bought? What things would you like to buy?

I’ve bought a few things for my main–tsunami deck, maldo’s sword cane. Mostly functional stuff, nothing “fun”. There’s nothing in the game I want that can be bought (I’m looking at you Zin’Rokh, Destroyer of Fun). There are a few things that I would pay a lot of gold for if they were in game:

Cosmetic slots for armor and weapons. I’d happily pay 50K per slot.

Potions of increased experience or leveling. I hate leveling and would gladly pay 100K to not have to go through Outlands and Northrend yet again.

Instant Flight Form — I’d buy a vial of the sands if it was an instant transformation. I’m always sad when I stop playing my druid and have to wait a while 1.5 seconds to mount.

If you were the professor of a gold making 101 college class, what would be some things you would talk about?

The first rule of gold making 101 is know your market. The second rule of gold making 101 is know your market. If you’re going to be serious about making gold you need to understand what people need and how much they are willing to pay for it. A great example of this for me is abyss crystals. I bought a whole bunch in WotLK for what I thought was a good price. What I didn’t realize was that with the new dungeons coming out, the price was going to drop, and boy did it ever. I had invested a large chunk of my capital in “oceanfront property” in Arizona. I sold at a loss because prices weren’t going to go back up any time soon.

The next thing I’d teach in gold making 101 is to understand that risk and return should be correlated the higher the risk the better the return should be. Back when cut green gems were going for 9g each, it was a low risk (no risk) investement for me to buy a stack of obsidum ore for less than 36g. Conversely, I bought a maldo’s sword cane when someone was selling it for 24K. I was able to flip it a day later on the AH for 45K. But this was a lot higher risk since I hadn’t seen it on the AH before, and the longer I held it, the less it was worth. The sword cane won’t be worth much in 4.2.

The final rule is that time is money, friend. If you want to make big bank you’re going to have to put the time in, there’s no question about it. But you want to make sure you maximize the gold you get out of your time investment. Back to the above example, the obsidum shuffle was a sure fire moneymaker, but the profit per hour was very low. I would make money but it might take an hour to do all the prospecting followed by gemcutting followed by selling to the vendor. The sword cane venture, on the other hand, took no time at all. I spent 2 minutes buying the thing and 10 seconds listing it. If I were new to the money making game, I would be willing to trade time for money. Now that I have the capital, it has to be worth my time. It is worth it to me to spend 2 hours to make 700g? Nope. But for someone starting out, it very well might be.

How about an advanced gold making class?

Advance gold making certainly keeps the rules above in mind. But I would add things like:

• Owning a Market–what are the signs that the time is right to try and take over
• Listing (and Relisting) for Fun and Profit — strategies to maximize your AH returns
• Profession Confession — understanding how to make money from every tradeskill

Do you have good farming strategies or spots?

No. I, by and large, find farming to be a huge waste of time. There are some that find it enjoyable, and I say good for them. The last thing I farmed was thorium ore for my blacksmith because I was impatient and didn’t want to wait for it to be cheap enough on the AH. Before that it was primal might when I was making my first transmute alchy. I just don’t find it an efficient use of time.

What was the best deal you ever came across?

Just recently I found an Agile Shadowspirit Diamond pattern on the AH for 18 gold. Given that it’s made me well over 15K so far, that was a good deal. In wrath I found an Enchant Weapon: Healing Power for 500g. Spend almost everything I had for it and it made me well over 6K in Wrath. That was a pretty good deal too.

Do you remember any of your worst deals?

I mentioned the abyss crystals. A few months ago I ended up buying a ton of obsidium for 70g a stack when that seemed like it was a good price. But the price plummeted from there until it was well under 40g a stack. Still probably made money at the end of the day by prospecting it, but overpaid at a time when supply was skyrocketing. You have to learn from your mistakes but keep a short memory.

What are your future plans with WoW?

Keep playing, keep raiding. Might try some PvP in the future, who knows?

What are you predictions for the future WoW economy?

Truegold will probably spike for the first few weeks of the new patch as everyone wants to get the new epics. When epic gems are patched in there will be a lot of money to be made. I think ore is going to bottom out at some point. The biggest danger to the WoW economy is people not logging in any more.

Please tell us a little bit about how you handle your real life finances. What are the differences and similarities with how you do things in WoW?

I wish I handled my personal finances the way I do with WoW. I’m a very risk averse person in real life but somewhat the opposite in WoW, since it’s just pixel money. I do think I’ve learned a bit about running a business. Take listing and relisting on the AH. It’s a cost of doing business. In the real world, you have its counterpart, advertising. It costs money to keep your goods on top of the AH and it costs money to advertise to get customers into your business.

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview for Warcraft Econ. Do you have any last words?

One last thing. There is (almost) NEVER any reason to undercut someone on the AH by more than 1c. Come to think of it, THAT should be rule number 1 of gold making 101.