A Foolproof* Way to Transfer Items in the AH (with pictures!)

[Yomo Kimyata]

Every once in a while, someone asks how to sell something they own to themselves using the AH, so I thought I'd make this guide with an example.  Yes, it is possible.  I do it every marketing day.  Let's start with the two main rules:

 

A.  You *CANNOT* sell from one character to the same character.  The AH is flagged specifically so you can't do that.

B.  You *CAN* sell from one character to another character on the same account, or to one on another account.

 

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THIS?

 

Back on Live, before the email system, the only way to transfer cash or items between alts was either by trading through the AH or by finding a trustworthy counterparty.  Pfft, like I'd trust a counterparty.  If you wanted to transfer across servers, this was the only way.  But now the easiest way to transfer inf is to email it to yourself, and you can transfer items via email as well.  (Or if you are on the same server, you can be in the same SG and use base storage.)

 

But on Homecoming, I do this for two reasons:  to swap an unattuned IO for an attuned IO (or vice versa), or to change the level of a given recipe or IO.  Remember that on Homecoming, certain items are fungible, or bucketed.  A Red Fortune triple IO of any level goes into the AH system, and can be purchased at any level, or can be purchased as an attuned.  I mostly do this with recipes or IOs that I crafted at one level, but I want them at a different level in order to convert them.

 

NOTE:  Since you are trading between two characters, you will pay a fee to the AH that is net 10% of the transfer price.  I'm afraid that's non-negotiable.

 

Let's give a specific example.  I was looking through my alts, and I found one with this in her inventory:

 

 

Hey, I can make that into a Luck of the Gambler!  But at level 37, there are five different Defense IOs available, and I only have a 1/4 chance of getting a LotG if I convert by category: defense.  If only this were a level 41, there would only be three Defense IOs available, and I would have a 50% chance to get a LotG.  Improving those odds will save me a lot of converters over the long run!  So how do I change this to a level 41?  Well, my first step is to craft it (I could do this without crafting, but it's a little cheaper if I craft the lvl 37 recipe than if I trade it for a lvl 41 recipe and then craft it):

 

 

So I've put it in the auction house and pull up the past history.  Now comes the tricky part -- figuring out where to list it.  There are two methods, depending on how exact you want to be.  You want to find a level that is in the middle of the highest outstanding bid and the lowest outstanding offer.  The exact (or close to exact) method would be to bid creep until you buy one, then sell the one you buy at 5 inf, and now you have a good idea of what the two goalposts are.  Well, that's a pain in the tuckus, so I'm gonna use my years of experience and take an educated guess (which is the second method).  In the Last 5, we see trades at 3mm and at 5mm, and I'd guess that it's going to be somewhere in the middle, and probably very close to if not equal to 3mm.  So I throw in a 3.1mm bid to see what happens (I don't expect to buy anything):

 

 

It does not transact, so we know that there isn't anything for sale at that level or lower.  Now, and this is important, *TAKE YOUR BID DOWN*.  We are going to be selling this exact item, and remember what I said before about not being able to trade with yourself on the same character.  If you have bids and offers on the same item, the queue gets wonky and does things you may not expect.  Ok, we take down that bid, and now we offer the item at that level.  I like to use a number that is not a round number, so I can be sure the system is working correctly.  So now I am going to offer the lvl 37 Red Fortune triple at that same level of 3.1mm.  The risk I have here is that someone else has a bid at 3.1mm or higher that came into the system since the last trade.  I'm willing to take that risk:

 

 

Ok, since it didn't trade away, we know that my offer is higher than any outstanding bid, and since we didn't buy one earlier there is no other one offered more cheaply.  This is now what I call the Lowest Outstanding Offer, and if I move relatively quickly, I know that I can buy it there on another character.  NOTE:  the AH charged me 5% of 3.1mm, or 155,000 inf.  That note comes up in your chat log, but I forgot to take a screenie of it.

 

So I log out and log on another character.  Since I want to buy it at level 41, I set the parameters and put in a bid and presto!:

 

 

If I now log out and log back on to the first character, I'll see that I sold it at my price:

 

 

Note that the AH charged me an additional 155,000 inf, for a total net cost of 310,000 inf.  It's up to you to decide if changing a lvl 37 to a lvl 41 is worth that fee or not.  But changing a lvl 37 to an attuned certainly is, since otherwise it would cost you a catalyst that will cost you 1-2mm.

 

Thus endeth the lesson.  Thanks for coming to my TED Talk!

 

* Not legally proof against fools.

 

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by Yomo Kimyata
who's asking?

[Ukase]

Hey, you redacted the best part! 

[UltraAlt]

10 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Hey, you redacted the best part! 

Edited November 3, 2021 by UltraAlt

[Yomo Kimyata]

17 hours ago, Ukase said:

Hey, you redacted the best part! 

 

Nobody sees my doodle unless I *want* them to see my doodle.  Or unless I forget.

[High_Beam]

Forgive my ignorance here but where do you select "attuned" in the buy process, or how does that even happen.  The Homecoming Wiki says

 

Quote

For regular IO sets the attuned and non-attuned IOs are linked on the market on Homecoming (meaning that sell offers for one can be used to fulfil bids for the others). Therefore, buying an attuned version of an IO costs the same as buying a regular non-attuned version. "AH laundry" (selling a non-attuned IO and buying an otherwise identical attuned one) is almost always a cheaper way to get an attuned enhancement than using a Catalyst, even if an unslotter is needed. You can sell items to a character on the same account, but a single character cannot sell an item to itself.

 

But doesn't get into the how part.

[AboveTheChemist]

4 hours ago, High_Beam said:

Forgive my ignorance here but where do you select "attuned" in the buy process, or how does that even happen.

 

In the AH interface, click the [+] beside the Enhancements category. This will expand to provide sub-categories for Attuned Enhancements and Crafted Enhancements (and perhaps some others, I'm going off memory and an old screenshot). Choose the attuned enhancements from the Attuned Enhancements category, and non-attuned from the Crafted Enhancements category.

 

 

You can also set both the min and max level in the search bar to 1 and any set IO you search for via the search bar should bring up just the attuned version.

Edited June 13, 2022 by AboveTheChemist
search bar settings, typo

[High_Beam]

Right in front of my face.  Thank you.