Your poorest bets

[viljarast]

Hi all,

After a bunch of bad investments I thought it could be fun to hear about other people's failures.

My most recent 'accident' has to be buying the red flawless star gem recipe and to see the gem value sink even before I got my own gold back. :doh:

Speculations gone wrong, flipping failures... You name it, someone has probably done it! Share the pain (and love)!

 

[altima]

Some time ago, I accidentally did not set the payment method on one of my items to pay pal, and it sold next to instantly for 12 euro. Still I was quite happy because I think selling a digital item for real money (even if useless) is an achievement. Normally I would not pay even a cent for items, but since I have 12 useless euro, why not gear up my wizard. At the time I needed a chest armor, so I set out to get that. The best I could afford had about 450 armor, 45 all res, 111 vitality and 3 sockets at the price of 6 euro. So I bought it and several moments later saw that I could have got such armor for about 100-200k gold. I felt very disappointed. Since then I triple check the items that I post on the RMAH in order to make sure that the money will go to my pay pal.

 

[Moik]

I gambled 300kgp that IAS gear would retain their original pre-nerf rolls and the patch would not be retroactive.

 

[semakka]

I bought over 100 flawless ruby when they were 4k eack.It is not much but I hate that I did it.

Also, I decided to sell about 2,000 ToJ's 2 weeks before 1.0.3.

While I used all the flaslesses upgradiung them and use/sell and make up a bit for the loss, I really really hate that I sold those ToJ's when they were 170 gold each....after 1.0.3 they were selling for 2-2,5 in first 3 days.

RMAH side...all I bought with real money - 5 items (yep, ofc I did that and will still do it) - I resold them for profit, so it is OK.Lose on gold, win on euros, good deal I say

 

[mxyzptlk]

ohhh i have so many.. lol

besides about 5m gold spent on unID items, all bad btw... i also tried the ruby (red) flawless star and perfect star.. although it didnt give me losses, the margin was not significant... the amount of times u spent crafting those jewels from flawless square all the way up to perfect star is soooo tedious.. lol

i also crafted items w/ 4-5 properties, helms, gloves, swords, chest.. lol soo much gold wasted on here too.. yea people dont waste ur gold in crafting 4-5 properties items sooo no worth it

and the one it hurts the most is when i was about to buy a sacred shield in the rmah... i was following this really good sacred shield.. and just few seconds before the bidding was over, i finally decided to bid on it.. but i did it on the wrong item.. wasted $50 on a similar sacred shield w the same price, but crappy stats..

and many moreee to comeee

 

[windstriker]

Was a little bit tired one evening and bought a weapon I didnt need for 7 mill. Kinda sucked for a bit, but a few days later I actually managed to sell the damn thing again and make a 800k profit out of it so turned round!

Guess that kinda means that my worst deal was buying gems quite early on in the game, before checking the actual prices for them.

It's been far worse for me with the selling part I believe. I constantly undervalue the items I sell to make them sell fast, but once or twice I've really been undervalueing them by quite a bit... Like a mill or 2

 

[diicowboy]

Some time ago, I accidentally did not set the payment method on one of my items to pay pal, and it sold next to instantly for 12 euro. Still I was quite happy because I think selling a digital item for real money (even if useless) is an achievement. Normally I would not pay even a cent for items, but since I have 12 useless euro, why not gear up my wizard. At the time I needed a chest armor, so I set out to get that. The best I could afford had about 450 armor, 45 all res, 111 vitality and 3 sockets at the price of 6 euro. So I bought it and several moments later saw that I could have got such armor for about 100-200k gold. I felt very disappointed. Since then I triple check the items that I post on the RMAH in order to make sure that the money will go to my pay pal.

I actually have this plan...hear me out! Make a whole bunch of small to medium purchases with funds going to battlenet account. you save the 1 dollar fee to paypal. Buy a really good item with the funds, say the item you buy is 50 bucks. Relist it going to paypal for the same (lower or higher depending on how you want to sell it) make money!

I mainly plan on doing this to gold sales, as they will be sold in increments of 100k, and i do think it will be rather cheap. so to lose out on 1 dollar+15% on gold is redic. sell gold for battle.net funds, then buy and resell items to paypal. i think there is a net profit to be made.

 

[viledevil]

it costs 15% to cash out, the dollar fee is per item on the rmah.

u cannot escape it.

 

[viledevil]

ok i have been thinking about this since this post started and while i've made a couple of plays that perhaps i let linger too long overall i'd say my biggest mistake was trusting that the bots would be kept out and not botting myself.

from botting gold to targeted ah bots there is a lot of money being made - so much so that the pesky problem of buying new accounts is just a nuisance. i am SHOCKED (yes, in caps) that bliz is allowing players to rehook up a paypal account that was previously attached to a banned account. at least make them work hard to get the money out.

 

[Ayewyn]

my biggest mistake was trusting that the bots would be kept out and not botting myself.

My feelings as well. The lack of an even playing field is staggering and shameful. Anyone not botting is at a massive disadvantage, and bliz does nothing to stop it. I've managed to make some money farming inferno rares, but I still feel like a fool for not botting considering the money that was, and is, being made doing it.

 

[viledevil]

its not just the money; i've made thousands which is fine for me (although not a lot compared to successful botters).

the problem is it means the ah is not a place for real humans to make money --- bots auto snipe items posted too low with frequent queries. we can never compare with that. imagine you sniped every low priced natalyas helm/ring that was posted, the profit from just that alone would dwarf what most will make in the game at all.

 

[LimaWhiskey]

the problem is it means the ah is not a place for real humans to make money --- bots auto snipe items posted too low with frequent queries. we can never compare with that.

Are you sure there are AH bots out there (that's a real questions) and not players refreshing searches a lot?

I've found a lot of great deals (1d12h, 1/5 of a real price) while trying to price check my items or shopping stuff.

 

[viledevil]

100% sure, i've seen the scripts they use and heard the qq when they get banned, not to mention they openly discuss it

 

[Moik]

The only way to be hacker-proof is to be not worth the time.
There will always be someone with a hack.
HOWEVER
It reeaaaaally strikes me very strongly that there is WAY less upper tier gear on the RMAH than normal since Tuesday.
I'm wondering if the outages on Monday made a lot of people quit, or if they actually managed to identify and ban a significant chunk of botters.

 

[viledevil]

botters got smashed at the end of june and then just the other day there was something else that went live that was stopping them from putting so many inputs into the game - ie. slowing their searches by a great deal was the only way to keep the bots running.