Hey there,

since this is my first thread, I thought I start one that can add some insights on the rather unknown realms
of the GAH - the niche markets.
Aside from sets and legendarys, what does it really take a rare to be like for it to constantly sell. We all know that a high roll in primary stat plus reasonable to high roll in Vit along with a decent set of other affixes raises the chances to sell.
But having played since release day, I constantly sold items on the GAH which didn´t fit that description. When I rememered such a sale the next time I found something similar, I went back to the "completed" tab to see if I can figure out why something sells and tried to take advantage, selling items in the GAH, I would´ve normally vendored.
Being inspired by Khans´ "Low level Rares = extra gold"-thread, I thought it must be possible to collect certain criteria that are needed to make an item sell for, say, more than 20k gold without being worth that amount at the first look. I remembered when
"+XP"-Gear was starting to sell good on the low level sector and still kinda is. Most pieces with a high "+XP" roll sell even with mediocre to bad other stats - often in complete abscence of a main stat and for prices I wasn´t expecting.
So the question is what other items commonly sell without respectable main stat/Vit rolls and why?
What niche items have you sold constantly for more than 20k gold? Share the Wisdom!

For starters heres my "niche":

- Helmets with a Socket and any combination (at least two, three or more is obv. better) of the following mostly sell without any main stats and/or Vit: (More affixes drives the item price up - duh!)

+ 19 XP (or more) for each Kill
+4,5% (or more) Crit Chance
+ 19% (or more) Magic Find
+ 19% (or more) Gold Find
+ 250 (or more) life regen
2 (or higher) Spirit-Regeneration per second (Monk spirit stone)
8 or 9 Seconds reduced CD on Zombie Dogs (WD)
+ 100 (or higher) max. Mana (WD voodoo mask)
+10 Arcane power on Crit (Wizard helmet, only sold constantly with other Wizard affixes, such as reduced costs of spells)
+10% (or more) life
+ 6 (or more) Pickup Radius
+ 70 (or more) all resistance
+

- the minimum numbers are averages, so its entirely possible that you can sell a rare socket helmet with lower numbers, as long as there are enough affixes and in an appealing combination.
- there´s more to helmets, I will edit when I find my text file of helmet niches.
- care to comment? :)


greetings
gabhh

Okay, so I doubt @gabhh was expecting an essay, but I'm nothing if not verbose. I'll bold the tl;dr parts.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that many of your mins have hit near the break points for affix level (alvl) 63 mods. D3Inferno is an invaluable site which lists the mods and their associated possible stat rolls values by alvl. An item with ilvl 57 (dropped form Act 3 Hell, for instance), can have rolls up to alvl 57, but they can roll any alvl below alvl 57, too. With the introduction of Monster Power, all items from Inferno MP0 Act 3-4 or MP1+ all Acts are ilvl 63 items and can drop up to alvl 63. With Patch 1.05, all jewelry can also roll alvl 63 mods.

Some mods skew towards rolling at the high alvls (stat rolls), other mods flatten out across alvls (Life On Hit) and some skew towards the lower end (Life Regen).

As some examples, the range of alvl 63 All Resist mod is 71-80 so when you're price checking an item with 74 AR, you'll want to lower your search parameter to 71. That's in line with your "+ 70 (or more) all resistance" guideline. Life Regen Secondary drops on all non-chest armor armors (chest armor rolls Life Regen Primary) with the alvl 63 range 235-342. Again, that's pretty close to your "+ 250 (or more) life regen" guideline. GF and MF alvl 63 rolls between 19%-20%. Lo and behold, that matches "+ 19% (or more) Magic Find"

When determining the stats of an item, the Random Number Generator (RNG) first chooses the alvl of the drop and then the stat roll within that alvl. The distribution of rolls within an alvl are likewise skew high, low or flat depending upon the mod. Hence, to roll an 80 AR item, the RNG first needs to roll the AR mod, then it needs to roll alvl 63, and finally needs to roll an 80 from then 71-80 range. There's some evidence that AR rolls within alvl are bell curve shaped so rolling a 79-80 may only happen with 1 in 7 alvl 63 AR items, for instance. It's this 2-step rolling process (alvl -> stat roll within alvl) that makes the top items so rare (it's also paradoxically why an AR 70 item is more rare than an AR 74 item in Inferno).

The biggest call out here is Critical Hit Damage on weapons. On one-handed weapons, alvl 62 can only roll up to 65% CD whereas alvl 63 can roll up to 100% CD (2-handed weapons are 130% and 200% respectively). This makes 90%+ CD rolls particularly rare. Next time you roll 66% CD on weapon you'll know to celebrate your good luck (alvl 63!) and curse your terrible luck (min stat roll!).

Practically speaking, no one browses the AH and says "oh! 235 Life Regen! That worth way more than 234 Life Regen, because it's an alvl 63 roll instead of an alvl 62 roll! I'll double my bid now." It follows that using precise alvl range breakpoints is really only important for the limited range stat rolls like Crit Chance, GF/MF, Attack Speed, and Power Cooldown Reduction. In these cases, knowing the alvl 63 breakpoints is vital, because they can only be found on dropped items. alvl 62 mods can roll on crafted items which makes them considerably less rare. The best example for this is gloves. You can craft AS/CC/CD gloves, but they're capped at alvl 62 so you'll never craft a pair of gloves with 9%+ CC or 35%+ CD. Search the Auction House and you'll find far more 7%/30% Gloves than 9%/40% Gloves.

TBH, I still think the best niche is Legendaries and Set items because there are always people looking for them. They're easily searchable for buyers and easier to advertise for sellers. I don't know what your bankroll is, but I've made anywhere from 2-10M fairly often flipping items either on one market or between markets. The most I've made is $50 profit on a single item and it was a really quick sale too, so it's possible to make a large amount of gold pretty quickly. It's definitely more difficult now because of the inflation of gold and the relative age of the game, but there are still a few items that seem to be overpriced frequently for whatever reason. Just a few I have flipped successfully:

Immortal King's Irons (looked for ones with really high STR)
Inna's Temperance (Vit ones)
Chantodo's Force
Chantodo's Will
Vile Ward
Zunimassa's Trail

Clearly, the more you spend, the more certain you have to be that you are going to be able to at least break even if you put it back up. For me, something like 5M isn't much and if I lost 80% of that, I wouldn't really care. But if I'm going to flip something that costs 50M, I'm really careful about it. I check both markets, competing items, slightly lower/higher end items that are similar, and finally, I just go with my gut. But yeah, I've only done that a few times.

It does take some patience. I might spend 15-30 minutes a day just looking at these items and 90% of the time, I don't buy anything. But on that rare occasion you find some crazy deal, it feels really good knowing you got your money's worth. It's also a nice break from a long streak of finding absolute crap.

Finally, a thing that I look at every time is the "Time Left". I tend to only look at items with 1d11h or 1d10h. The reason being that there's a reason an item has been up for a long time: it's probably overpriced. That's not to say all of those items are good deals or you won't find good deals with 1d1h or something. It just helps me with my decision, especially with items that I myself wouldn't use. I almost never buy items after 1d though...

What constantly sell despite bad rolls?

GF + Pick Up Radius.

I have sold a huge amount of these (no flipping, just from normal loots). High GF% combined with pick up radius can sell really well. If your definition of good is more than 20k then this market definitely beats it by miles. Some with good rolls can go up to millions (just sold a GF pants with sockets for 2m). Mine is always the "best bang for your bucks" in the AH - help the bots out!

What niche? Black Weapon with A,B,C (you know what they are :))

In my previous quest for a better offhand combined with my Inna's +8% to Holy Damage, I have tried and switched a few off-hand. Whatever I was done with, I relisted them in AH and often made a profit on those. I think I have sold about 7-8 pieces, and flipped more than 50m gold on them (the most flip is 30m gained). The funny thing is I bought one at 10m, then successfully flip it for 20m, then I found the same weapon in the AH for higher....someone trying to flip it higher lol.

DANGER : A difficult market to price. Not all players value them, and those who have enough gold (but not a good enough weapon yet) to buy your item.

the easiest loot to sell is 20% MF rings.
you simply undercut the cheapest one by a few thousands and it sells almost instantly (after 5mn)
it seems to be a bot-controlled market.
too bad they sell for only 200k-250k :D

@Metta Just my 2c.

I do the exact opposite. I never look at items with more than say 1 or 2 hours on them.

(Numbers just as an example)
What happens quite often is someone would put up something like 200k start 20mil buyout. But the item is worth roughly 2 mil when compared to other similar items.

So putting in a 500k or so bid in that last hour gets me an item I can then re-post quite easily for buyout 1.2 mil. So my buyout is far under market value, but I make a clean profit.

I'm pretty horrible when it comes to selling things on the AH. However, for the most part, I'm usually able to sell stuff with "Reduced Level Requirement". Though trying to accurately price such items is often a royal pain... :-0

Also, like @Bort, I will often arrange things by time & see what's about to expire within the next hour or so. Often times there are items that are still being sold at vendor prices (which is silly, cause after the 15% cut by Blizzard, it means the original owner is actually going to *lose* money if the item gets sold to me), which I'll snap up & re-list for at least double the price. Even if it doesn't sell, I can always sell it in-game to the vendor without sustaining a loss.

@Metta @Bort

I do both. 1d11-12 for good bargain. 1-2 hours left for bid war, if the bid is low enough.

@bort @douvinsky

Yeah I do both, but I usually do the first method now because I'm playing pretty casually so I don't really feel like doing the whole bid sniping thing. I just check to see if anyone prices stuff badly and I buy it instantly. Back when I was pretty hardcore, I went the bid war route and won some pretty nice stuff for cheap. I used to set up a stopwatch within like, 3 minutes of the auction ending and get it down to the exact second (just keep refreshing the tab). I would then just stomp the highest bidder (highest bid at like 10M? I bid 20M.) about 10 seconds before the auction ended. It works well since it prevents an idiot from raising the bid for no reason as well as letting me know, hey, if my bid failed, I'm not dropping more than 20M on this item.

Both methods work. I'm just doing the 1d11 method because I don't have to wait or plan stuff out.

Posted by gabhh at 12/09/2012 09:59 AM

Hey there,
"+XP"-Gear was starting to sell good on the low level sector and still kinda is. Most pieces with a high "+XP" roll sell even with mediocre to bad other stats - often in complete abscence of a main stat and for prices I wasn´t expecting.

Just out of curiosity is the +19 exp/kill the bare minimum you've found that sells, & is that only for helms?

Cause I've got a number of rings in my stash w/ bonus exp on them, but have no idea how to price them, and was just wondering if there's a ballpark figure where I should just automatically vendor those...?

It kind of makes sense that exp items would sell even w/o a main stat & what not; after all, if the character isn't 60 yet, then they still can't use best-in-slot items anyways, so the bonus experience equipment is simply a temporary item to get the hero to 60 faster (after which it can then be swapped out for BIS item(s)...)

@eastdragon42 For what it's worth, below is a list of the item levels and the maximum experience per kill available, respectively. On Act 2 Normal runs, I check for Exp 7+. If it's ilvl 14, I look for 7-8 Exp and if it's ilvl 17 it needs 9-10. Once a character hits clvl 22, they can wear Cain's set so +Exp items aren't as useful at that point.
1: 2
5: 4
9: 6
13: 8
17: 10
21: 12
25: 14
29: 16
34: 18
41: 20
48: 22
55: 24

Posted by ecocd at 12/10/2012 04:27 AM

@eastdragon42 For what it's worth, below is a list of the item levels and the maximum experience per kill available, respectively. On Act 2 Normal runs, I check for Exp 7+. If it's ilvl 14, I look for 7-8 Exp and if it's ilvl 17 it needs 9-10. Once a character hits clvl 22, they can wear Cain's set so +Exp items aren't as useful at that point.
1: 2
5: 4
9: 6
13: 8
17: 10
21: 12
25: 14
29: 16
34: 18
41: 20
48: 22
55: 24

Thanks--that's awesome! Definitely good to know. :)

Hallo here on the us forum... I live in Denmark so i play the euro serves.. i will talke abourt how i make profit in here so i dont destroy my own market in europa... Aughild`s peak helmet makes me tons of gold here are the helmet i sell 2.0 c chance and socket 500k-600k - 18-20% xp and socket 450k- 600k - 100-120 str and socket 450k 550k allso over 100 vit sales well... this is my little niche... allso borns defiance shoulders whit xp and high mainstats sells really well i make millions every day on thise items not bad at all..........:) i will share my gold wisdom in here with you americans :))))

@eastdragon42

The best way to price the Reduced Level Required items is to check the stats like normal, but in the level range, move the minimum level to 0 and put in the items required level in the max level slot. (say it's equippable at level 55, put in 55)

I usually do this and it works well, since people that are just hitting that level and want to upgrade their equips are only looking for items up to that level. Because of the way the AH works on searches for lower level characters, they can't see level 60 items and thus, they can't compare the price for the items a few levels down the road unless they actually put in a higher max level in their search.

On a side note, this actually works for all lower level gear. I've sold level 13 items for over 1m doing this type of pricing just because it had a higher primary stat than most of the other level 13 and lower gear.

Hope this helps in pricing your loot! ^^

Posted by ZRyoku16 at 12/20/2012 12:29 PM

@eastdragon42
The best way to price the Reduced Level Required items is to check the stats like normal, but in the level range, move the minimum level to 0 and put in the items required level in the max level slot. (say it's equippable at level 55, put in 55)

Great tip!

Nearly as niche as they come, the Balanced white ranged weapons can roll up to 20% attack speed. Azurewrath kills this market for all 1H weapons. They're a novelty item, but so rare on the AH that they go for at least 250k each at ilvl 62 or 63. They aren't quick sales, but I've never had one not sell within the 36 hour auction time. I had a 250k sale on a 20% Balanced Strike Wand just last night.

For a good sale, keep an eye out for Balanced Impellor, Balanced Exorcist, Balanced Strike Wand and Balanced Desolator Wand.

I've never found a Balanced Phantom Bow or Balanced Revenant Bow, but those might sell, too.

@ecocd

That's actually really interesting! I never thought Whites would be worth 1k, let alone 250k. I'll keep an eye out for any on my runs tonight! Thanks! ^^

I am always looking (twice a day) for natalyas old chest armor (61) buy it till 150.000 (with bids at the end) and resell it between 400-600k. There are always people offering bids for 3400. And thats the way with all items, i just snipe it and resell it for over twice the price at least

Posted by ecocd at 12/21/2012 07:54 AM

Nearly as niche as they come, the Balanced white ranged weapons can roll up to 20% attack speed. Azurewrath kills this market for all 1H weapons. They're a novelty item, but so rare on the AH that they go for at least 250k each at ilvl 62 or 63. They aren't quick sales, but I've never had one not sell within the 36 hour auction time. I had a 250k sale on a 20% Balanced Strike Wand just last night.

For a good sale, keep an eye out for Balanced Impellor, Balanced Exorcist, Balanced Strike Wand and Balanced Desolator Wand.

I've never found a Balanced Phantom Bow or Balanced Revenant Bow, but those might sell, too.

Pretty interesting.
Over my last two runs I paid notice to the whites, and looted 6 Balanced Whites including a Balanced Strike Wand with +20% AS, and also a Balance Slag Hammer with +12% AS (highest in AH is only +11%, and no other balanced white 2H mace existing in AH). I am dedicating a page of stash to the balanced whites now. Are they actually useful?

Posted by douvinsky at 12/24/2012 07:44 AM

I am dedicating a page of stash to the balanced whites now. Are they actually useful?

tl;dr: No.

At clvl 60, they're useful only in getting your attack speed up into the stratosphere for the fun of it which is why only the +20% attack speed weapons have any value. They're strictly novelty items.

At the lowest levels of difficulty, however, they will increase your kill speed somewhat if the rest of your gear is good enough. Sockets add a ton of damage to a weapon at the lowest levels, but what's the point of doing 600 damage to a monster with 300 HP when you could do 300 damage with 20% attack speed? I've found +20% white items sell over the course of 24 hours at ilvl 17 almost without fail.

Oic. I might want to try it myself.

Hey again,

been on holiday and some time off the internet. I am impressed, this thread is going somewhere - I wanted to adress some of the comments :
Also, on a side note, I play on the europe servers and use the EUAH. So prices might differ a bit from the USAH.

-@ecocd-
Thanks for the link to the D3 Inferno website and your insights on mods and stats in general, I didn´t know such a resource existed. I agree with you that knowing the alvl breakpoints of the limited stat rolls is vital - the values I mentioned were only taken from my personal experience from selling. Now I know why. So thanx again!

-White IAS Weapons-
I forgot those in the initial post but can confirm that they sell regulary, the 1H market is far from dead though - And they are not just novelty items. Daggers with 1.5 APS and 20% IAS end up being 1.8 APS Zombie Dog enablers for WDs in their Zombie Dog/Sacrifice Builds. A balanced Darkblade with 230-ish DPS and 20% IAS normally doesn´t sell for under a million. The 17-19% ones Ive seen, sold for 100-200k, although I heard of higher prices. Last time I checked, there weren´t any daggers in the 19-20% range available at all. For reference to the build, check this YT-Video.
References to the exact build and gear are below the video window.

EDIT: He recently switched the white Dagger for a rare 1,1k DPS with Socket, 10% IAS and CritDamage Emerald, ending up at 1.65 APS - the reference to the white one is still in the comments though.

Of other white 1H weapons, I constantly sold Balanced Impellors and Balanced Strike Wands in the 17-20% region, even though I dont know if similar uses (i.e. builds) exist for those. None of these items took more than 24h to sell.
I didn´t sell 2H Weapons yet, no one seems to need them, not even the 20% ones even though I adjusted the prices to very low levels, to see if theres any interest.

- Reduced level req. gear -

@Zryoku16 Thanks for your guideline to price them. To give you an idea, here are my recent sales of those and the gold I got from them, maybe I priced them too low:



79k Gold



57k Gold



143k Gold



85k Gold

All prices are the buyout value and already without the 15% fee. If thats too low - pls leave comments.

-XP Gear-

I think that you also have to take into account the overall usability of the Item when pricing it. Certain Items may not be worth wearing, if they only got a high amount of +XP but nothing else. Item types which also appear in the Cains Set (Helmet, Boots, Gloves) have to be really good in addition to their +XP value to even sell. Then there are the character specific items like, for example Demonhunter Chests with +XP and a really high +INT Roll. I normally vendor these. And then there are items any char can wear in addition to Cains Set which you regret selling at all or bang your head for not pricing them higher. Take this for example:



I found this in the first week of June and I recently sold it for 600k *frown*

I haven´t looked up the maximum possible outcome of the item but in my book, this chest piece is about as good as it gets for a rare ANY character leveling from 54-60 can use. And thats what I meant with "overall usability" - Any Char can wear this, so it has more universal use and should be worth more gold. I think I sold this way too cheap.
True, you can wear Cains Set from lvl 22 but why stop there if you got other good +XP gear to add to the XP/Kill value to level faster?
@ecocd Isn´t other +XP gear also useful from lvl 22 onwards? It adds to your total XP/Kill count and Cains Set / Leorics Signet increase this value by their respective percentages. I may have missed your point there, if I did, clarify pls.

On the AH side, XP gear should remain useful, considering the banned botters might wanna make use of it after every ban wave, leveling up their chars again. Theres a thread on the forums regarding the risen price of flawless emeralds since the last bannings and someone linked it to possible demand of botters in need for crafted emeralds for their helmets. Dunno if thats correct, but it also would hint to why XP Gear sells higher since the recent bans. Can´t back that up with hard data, just tried it out with some items and they sold higher than normal. Interestingly, Plans for Helm of Command also peaked. But thats another story for another thread. Comments?

@gabhh, nice! Dang I should have kept those instead of vending them.

@gabhh
That Witch Doctor build is one of the most fantabulous things I've ever seen. I can't believe I didn't know it existed. I need to get out more (in terms of Diablo 3, I mean). I would imagine it costs a bundle to build, but it's supremely entertaining.

I guess +XP gear can be useful past lvl 22, but it's substantially less important. Socketed Cain's pants alone will add 80-100 stat points. Add in dual-socketed armor, a socketed amulet and a Hellfire Ring and you don't need any other damage for a great many levels. Heck, I wear Cain's Set XP farming in MP0 Act 3 Inferno.

With 3 pieces of equipment with +15 XP each, Cain's Set, Signet, Hellfire Ring and Hellfire Ring on Follower that's +30 +20 +35 +9% = 94% before MP level boosts which makes the +45 into about +90 XP per kill. I guess +90 XP / kill could actually still make a difference above clvl 22.

@gabhh

Those prices look pretty close to what I'd expect. Good work!

There's actually a price break at about the 8 lvls reduced mark where things start going up in price more. I have a 1h sword that has lvl required reduced 15, has 355 dps or so, and about 100 dex and a socket. I priced it at 4m about a week ago.

Also, for lower lvl gear, anything under lvl 45 with a decent primary stat will start shooting up in price. This is because (I believe) Reduce lvl requirement maxes at 15 and most items with this are lvl 60, meaning anything under 45 with a decent roll is that much harder to find.