One way to make some quick gold on the auction house is to corner the market. The risk/reward for this method is very high, but, if done correctly, can be extremely profitable. I hope to turn this into a weekly series where I choose a different item each week and report on the profitability.

How to Corner the Market

The goal here is to find a particular item, buy all of it low, and resell all of it with a decent markup. You will need to take many factors into consideration when doing this so you don’t get stuck with an item.

• Try to find an item that is in recurring demand and not easily obtainable
• Find an item or a material that is regularly sought after on a daily basis
• Try researching profession leveling guides and see if there are tiers where a particular material is needed in bulk

What to Avoid

You’ll want to stay away from items that can be farmed up with little effort. Copper Bars, for example, are a bad choice. Unless you time it just right and find someone power-leveling Blacksmithing, Engineering, or Jewelcrafting, you’re going to be stuck with these. There are usually a few pages worth of bars already on the auction house, and it can be expensive to buy up the market’s share of Copper Bars. I’ve tried this before with Tin Bars and it didn’t work out so well.

Read on to see the results from this week’s experiment.