World of Warcraft Gold Challenge: Alpha Competition - Hour 7

Stormwind City, Auction House - This hour started with a bang and ended with a whimper.  A Signet of Edward the Odd revealed itself on the AH for the tantalizing price of 115g.  I snatched it and relisted it at 799, though 12 hours later there haven't been any bites on it.  It is worrisome that we are so close to the expansion hitting.  Players just don't want to spend good gold on items that will be able to be replaced by dungeon blues in a month.  Though, I'm counting on a few wanting to have a polished character to level with, and that ring will always be worth it at 115g.  I just may need to lower the price below 500 to see it move.  It is the first of my true "assets I'm going to let sit for a while".

I also managed to win one of the Brain Hacker on bid for 60 gold.  Part of the problem in flipping purple items with low absolute profit margin is that the posting deposit to list on the Auction House is relatively high.  I forget what the exact deposit was on the Hacker, but I remember thinking that it'd need to sell at the 100g within 2 or 3 weeks before I was taking a loss on it.

My dilemma right now seems to be that I still don't have enough capital to move into the commodities markets with any force.  In order to corner a specific market for a few days, I need a lot of capital backing the original investment.  Spreading myself more broadly is viable, but it takes longer, and I am trying to complete this challenge as quickly as possible.

I've been having continued success with flipping blue items for 200-300% profit.  Once I have more capital, I'll begin to look for blues that I can flip with only 50-100% profit, but for now, I continue to look for items that are significantly underpriced.

The whimper at the end of this session came when I realized I was down below 50 liquid gold.  I've made a lot of blue-item purchases and pushed into markets I'm not very clear with on liquidity.  The stack of primal shadow I was concerned with in my last hour's post still hasn't sold, plus I have a few stacks of gold bars and other odds and ends that just may not move even in a mid-expansion market.

Total Assets at the end of 7 hours:  About 1500 gold (nearly half of which is the assumption that I'll get 700 or more for Signet of Edward the odd)

Go To Hour 8 of the Alpha Competition