The other day I was going through the AH, looking to see if any interesting looking shields were available for my level 60 resto shaman. The shield that I would love to have for her isn’t actually available unless I want to race change her to Alliance then back again. My shammy is supposed to be part of the Horde Navy, so running around with a ship wheel on her back seems appropriate. Alas, it’s not to be.
As I was flipping through the available shields, I happened to see a Zulian Swirling Shield listed for a mere 100g. Clearly the person listing it didn’t realize what an amazing transmog piece this is, as demonstrated on Water Bender, Mist Weaver. I knew it had to be worth more than 100g due to the transmog market alone and I bought that thing and sent it off to my bank alt, considering what to do with it.
I should stop now to say that I suck at the Auction House. I just don’t have the interest to be good at it, and therefore most of my gold comes from doing dailies and randoms. This has always been enough to sustain me just fine, though I can’t get the higher priced vanity items and mounts that I like. I’m okay with that though. I always think that I’m going to somehow use my professions to make money, but I never do it. I’m just not interested in the buy low/sell high nature of the AH. There are other things I’d rather do with my time.
Transmog had slightly sparked my interest more in the AH, mostly because I had a huge collection of BoE gear sitting on my bank alt from years of questing that I think I intended to use to “level enchanting.” Since that never happened, I decided to send it all off to my Alliance alt before I transferred her to Wyrmrest Accord to put up onto their AH since it tends to be better than Argent Dawn’s. I’ve made a nice little profit so far, enough that I can fund my alts there to get them flying and decent sized bags. But still, it was never enough to get me to want to try to do much else with it.
Until that shield. After I found that shield so cheap, I decided to look through the rest of the AH to see if there was any cool looking gear priced low. There was. I bought that too. It didn’t feel like a waste of time either, because I like looking at pretty gear.
As I was buying up all this gear, I had flashbacks to last summer. I was visiting my grandmother and we were watching American Pickers together. She used to be a bit of a picker herself, and I always remember the wonderful things she would find at yardsales and flea markets when I was growing up. My entire collection of Star Wars toys was due to my amazing grandmother, who would find buckets of them selling for $5 and buy the entire thing to bring home to me. I’ll never forget when I was 8 and she called me to say “You have to come to my house right now, I got you something neat.” I jumped onto my bike and sped to her house and then was totally extatic to see that she found me an Ewok village. My grandmother was a cool lady.
Anyway, she loved American Pickers. I think she might have had a crush on one of the guys, because when we would both stay up late playing out respective video games, we would either watch that or Phillies games. And the best moments were when she would turn to tell me about some amazing little gem she found at a yard sale 40 years ago that ended up being worth thousands of dollars when the person only wanted $50.
I could almost hear my grandmother sitting next to me when I was looking over this bag full of transmog gear that I bought cheap on the AH. It’s not quite as cool as finding a giant owl umbrella stand for $5 or a Tiffany lamp for $35, but it still felt fun all the same. And it gave me a little connection to the grandmother that I lost around this time last July.
I doubt I’ll ever be an Auction House maven, but it’s a fun little thing for me to play with, especially since it reminds me so much of my grandmom. So yeah. If you see a feisty redhead with a name like Charlotte on your realm, watch out. The Azerothian picker is there to find rusty pieces of pixelated gold. I might not be making too much of a profit, but I still think my grandmother would get a kick out of seeing her namesake running around laughing about people who are silly enough to sell their Arachnidian Robes for 50g.
The Dancing Tree 