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Apple I fetches $374.5K at Sotheby's auction, Steve Jobs Atari note goes for $27.5K
Here's an update for all the collectors of vintage Apple Computer-wares out there. If you'll recall, it was a few weeks back when Sotheby's announced it would auction off an Apple 1 motherboard, cassette interface and its BASIC programming manual, originally set to fetch upwards of $180,000. Just this week, the hand-built piece of computing history from 1976 was sold to one lucky phone bidder for an even more massive $374,500. As Apple Insider notes, the computer is one of six that's accounted for out of 50 that are likely still out there -- ensuring these will only remain for folks with deep pockets indeed. Past that, a hand-written note from Steve Jobs during his time at Atari was also on the auction block, garnering $27,500 even though it was only estimated to sell for less than half that price. Knowing the cost of collecting a premiere piece (arguably) from the fruits of Woz and Jobs, it certainly makes that new MacBook Pro with Retina display seem like a grand bargain in comparison. Details at the links below.
Apple I up for auction: buy a bit of Apple history for the bulk of your net worth
Attention Apple lovers: here's your chance to get your hands on an original piece of company history, but the past has proven that you better have a lot of extra cash lying around. Sotheby's auction house is offering a working Apple I computer, which is the original design that was built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak back in 1976 -- by hand. It's expected to fetch between $140,000 - 180,000, and those dollars buy you a mobo, cassette interface and the original BASIC manual to get you programming partying like it's 1979. This isn't the first Apple I to hit the auction block, but with only 200 of the things in existence, the winning bidder will join the upper echelon of Apple enthusiasts. So, if you've got cash to burn and fancy yourself the ultimate fanboy, head on down to the source link for the full details. [Thanks, Deepa]
Gold Capped: Dealing with Neutral Auction House sniping
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Neutral auction house sniping is the practice of lurking at the neutral auction house (which is usable by both factions) until someone tries to use it to move items from one of their characters to another across factions, and then stealing it. Unlike someone who ninjas a mount in a PUG, this type of theft is totally OK with Blizzard -- all the sniper is doing is buying a posted auction.
Gold Capped: Cataclysm glyph addons
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The glyph market has spawned quite a few of the important modern auction house addons. It's a uniquely challenging market, as there are hundreds of different products, each with their own balance of suppliers, buyers, and materials. The challenges faced by early glyph producers were met by a hodgepodge of fairly complex addons and macros, and only recently have unified solutions began to appear. I remember that at one point, I had addons to: Keep track of how many glyphs I had on the AH, in various characters' banks and in their inventories. Allow me to queue a list of glyphs and build a materials list (that allowed me to buy the vendor mats with one click). Automatically queue enough glyphs in the second addon to assure that I kept stock levels at my desired level. Automatically post every glyph I made onto the AH. The tasks needed for this market are not unique, and so the most important tool that can trace its origin to the glyph market is certainly TradeSkillMaster. TSM is an addon that I've covered before, and it's built from the ground up to be perfect for glyphs. It's also perfect for a lot of other markets, but mostly those you can treat like glyphs.
Gold Capped: 5 addons for profitable buying, selling and crafting
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! You can make gold in World of Warcraft without addons. You can also PvP and raid without addons; however, for the vast majority of people, that would result in lower performance. Unlike PvP and raiding, however, there is absolutely no way to use the default UI to be as productive in the auction house as you would be with addons. The default Blizzard UI for professions and the AH was not built for making money. I divide gold addon users into two groups: the people who want everything to be as efficient and streamlined as possible, and the people who simply want to be able to do basic tasks without as much hassle as the default UI imposes on us. Let's call them "power auctioneers" and "retail auctioneers." What addons are available now, and how can you use them to accomplish your goals?
Gold Capped: Competition in tailoring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! This week's community post is the most recent recording of the weekly JMTC's meeting. I was invited to attend this one and answer a couple of questions. I got an email from Aralo on Altar of Storms recently that I wanted to share. I know cloth is not what a person would call a high profit market. It's cut more often then gems, skinned more than leather, melted down more than ore, and well you know where all these puns go. In Wrath on my sever, I was able to (haphazardly at least) able to maintain a steady hold on the more demanded markets. In Cataclysm, though, I'm struggling to stay afloat. Embersilk is particularly rough. I bring this up because never have I seen you really talk cloth that was not a cooldown. Do you have any ideas on how to stay afloat on threads or maybe some add-ons other than auctioneer to help build and maintain my market? Admittedly, part of the reason I want to share this is all the awesome puns. Secondly, I do have a few answers. I'll be writing up a proper tailoring guide next, I promise, but in the meantime, I want to talk about that "steady hold" on the market.
Enter at Your Own Rift: Sightseeing in Sanctum
One of the things I love about RIFT is its smaller, more intimate feel. Don't get me wrong -- there's still plenty of space to explore and get lost in, but the space that is present is used to great effect and isn't just there to make it seem bigger for bigger's sake. This is echoed in the two capital cities of the game, Sanctum (Guardian) and Meridian (Defiant). Both are gorgeously detailed and impressive in their own way, yet they're comfortable and accessible instead of sprawling and vast. If one thinks of the quest hubs, camps and villages dotting the world as mom and pop stores, then the capital cities are the Walmarts of RIFT: one-stop shops for all your character's needs. They're both fairly compact, although I found myself preferring Sanctum's beachfront atmosphere and circular layout over Meridian's underground labyrinth. Because all players will be traveling to and extensively using capital cities during the course of their in-game careers, I figured we might as well take a look at what capital cities -- Sanctum specifically -- have to offer. Jump on our people-mover as we wind our way through the sights and sounds of civilization!
Gold Capped: The Undermine Journal may have to close down
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For Gold Capped's inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! The Undermine Journal is an invaluable site that a lot of auctioneers have been making great use of. I wrote about it when it was in alpha, as well as how to use its market alert to watch for cheap deals. Unfortunately, the days of having a convenient graph showing you the price history for your realm are numbered. There's a very real possibility that this service will be killed by Blizzard's new auction house interface, and we'd be back to each keeping our own spreadsheets.
Gold Capped: Sleazy auctioneers and giving away trade secrets
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! I walk a strange line. There are two distinct extremes in the readers of this column: those who feel I shouldn't be telling people their "secrets" about how to make gold, and those who believe that anyone who uses the auction house to make gold is somehow bad (in skill or character -- I get both). While the majority of readers are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between these extremes, let's look at the arguments.
Gold Capped News: Critical AH addons broken by patch 4.0.1
Welcome to a special edition of Gold Capped. Every week, this column (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday (or whenever there's breaking news). Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! If you were to install the PTR right now and try to post a batch of auctions for sale with your favorite addon, there's a good chance it wouldn't work. Blizzard has changed the way that addons can interact with the auction house so that it's no longer possible to queue up a large volume of auctions and let them post while you read my columns. Both Auctioneer and Quickauctions 3 have been hit hard, obviously. These are the most commonly used addons for queuing up a bunch of auctions. The rule previously seemed to be that we're not allowed to buy in batches, but we are allowed to sell in batches. Well, it looks like Blizzard has decided that we can no longer sell in batches, either. In addition, QA3 has lost its ability to automatically cancel auctions that have been undercut. The new patch requires a hardware event per action, and this has not (at the time of publishing) been written into these addons. So what is a batch? Since you can queue up multiple stacks of the same item using the default UI, that seems to be allowed still. What is no longer allowed is putting together a list of different types of items that you want to sell at the same time. Take heart, dear reader: There is a workaround!
Gold Capped: Quick Auctions Poster does the undercutting for you
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Quick Auctions Poster is here, and it's going to change your life. It was written by one of the auctioneers who inhabit the Just My Two Copper forums, and here's the description of what it does, straight from the download page: This addon is a plugin for Quick Auctions that adds a checkbox to the auction house posting frame with which you can toggle continuous scanning and posting of Quick Auctions. It saves you the effort of hitting the post button whenever a scan has finished. Sadly, because this Quick Auctions button doesn't have a name and its function is private, this action can't be macroed, but this addon manages to obtain the correct button and simulates a click on it. In essence, you can fill your bags up with stock, and instead of using QA3 to post a single batch, it will keep refreshing your scan for you while you wander off to do something else. It will keep automatically undercutting everyone until you run out of stock.
Gold Capped: How to calculate inscription costs and prices
Every week, Gold Capped brings you tips on how to make money on the auction house. This article from inscription specialist Steve Zamboni has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. With its myriad of materials and finished items, inscription can be one of the more complicated professions for a crafter who's trying to track his expenses and profits (or even to know if he's made a profit at all). Herb prices have changed dramatically over the past several months, dropping to record lows as farming bots proliferate and climbing just as dramatically during the ban wave that followed. After months of being spoiled by a market overflowing with cheap herbs, many players stopped paying attention to what they were paying to make each item. Now that herb prices are climbing, it's left a number of sellers scrambling to reprice their items and to take a closer look at what they're paying for their supplies.
Gold Capped Ask an Auctioneer: My first mailbag
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I've gotten quite the mail bag of questions emailed to me. I'm going to select a few and answer them approximately whenever I feel like it. Remember when writing your question that if you want to remain anonymous, all you need to do is ask! The first question comes to us from Mahgo, from Dath'Remar (US): I am emailing your for some advice regarding making gold on the auction house. I have most professions at max level. I currently use Auctioneer to undercut when I am selling what I make. Do you have any advice or could you please point me for some help regarding niche markets, or how to tackle the whole market?
Gold Capped: The Undermine Journal
So you want to make gold in WoW? Basil "Euripides" Berntsen is here to help! Auction house PvP is the only true PvP: There are no relevant racials, all classes are equally balanced, and the only differentiators are knowledge and guts. Gold Capped can help with the first one, and if you can make it through a whole article's worth of my typos, bad puns and feral druid jokes every Wednesday, you're guaranteed to have the second one. There's a new tool in my kit. The Undermine Journal, whose alpha was just recently launched, is a site that lets you see data from your auction house live from the internet. My realm was recently added, and when I searched for Eternal Belt Buckles, it showed me a convenient Google Finance-style graph of the price and availability, as well as the mats needed for it, and a list of my competition! Words fail me, so hop past the break for a screengrab.
Gold Capped: Where have all the farmers gone?
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) (we're recruiting!) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail. Basil is also soliciting questions for an upcoming Gold Capped series, "Ask an auctioneer" via email. This post is best read while imagining me singing the title to the tune of "Where have all the cowboys gone" by Paula Cole. There -- good luck getting that out of your head! Auctioneers rely on farmers for raw materials for various businesses. In fact, we rely very heavily on them, and there are quite a few markets that are only more profitable than farming in terms of gold per hour if we can do them on a very large scale ... much more than any one person can farm. I've been flying circles around Sholazar Basin and boy, are my arms tired! The interesting thing about the markets we work on is that it's almost no more actual work to make, for example, 150 Titansteel Bars than it is to make 20. The only difference is in how annoying it is to find mats, and the number of Dr. Who episodes you get to watch while AFK crafting. The difficulty of finding lots of cheap mats is really the only barrier we worry about. And any experienced auctioneer will tell you that, historically in Wrath of the Lich King, it's been no trouble at all. For some reason, the majority of mornings I'd log in to do my buying, I'd see absolutely dumbfounding amounts of raw mats available for ridiculous prices. Cobalt Ore for under 20g a stack, Saronite Ore for as low as 7g a stack, Adder's Tongue for under 5g a stack and Eternal Shadow for as low as 15g a stack. I have access to unlimited storage and basically unlimited money, so I did what any opportunist with a basement full of toilet paper would do: I bought every last scrap every single time, reasoning that I'd eventually find time to use it.
Gold Capped: Meta gem deep dive
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I've talked before about meta gems, however I feel they deserve more than a paragraph buried in the middle of a jewelcrafting post. Like many of the best businesses, metas are purchased by all end game players and many leveling players. They provide a hefty bonus to PvE and PvP, come in a variety of flavors and (most importantly) get purchased every time someone upgrades their helm.
Gold Capped: The basics of selling glyphs
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Selling glyphs can be very profitable. It requires a lot of addons to work, and the market reacts to competition differently than other markets. However, a lot of auctioneers got their start with it. I know I did! Glyph toolbox To successfully sell glyphs, you need to be able to manage 345 different products, each with their own mix of supply and demand. They also don't share the same mats for creation, and there's no really efficient way to pare down that list without costing yourself money. A lot of people will stick to the "core" glyphs (the proper ones for PvE and PvP for each class), hoping that the increased demand will yield higher profitability, however because there are people who do this, the supply for this subset of all the glyphs in the game is also higher. Long story short, the default UI is not made for managing auctions in this volume. You absolutely need addons. Let's break this down by task, and look at what the addons do for us.
Gold Capped: GDKP raiding for fun and profit
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you make or spend gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! A very interesting form of raiding has been gaining popularity. GDKP stands, literally, for "gold dragon kill points." It's a badly named system, but essentially, it means that instead of some effort-based DKP system, people participating in the raid use real currency: gold. So what is this GDKP thing, anyway? In a GDKP raid, all items of value, whether they're BoP gear, Primordial Saronite, BoE drops, Precious's Ribbon or quest items, are auctioned off in an open bidding system to all participants. The person willing to pay the most for it will get the item in exchange for gold, and at the end of the night, all the gold that was collected is divided out among the raiders.
Gold Capped: Market timing
Want to get Gold Capped? Watch this space every week as Basil (also of the Call to Auction podcast, the Hunting Party podcast and outdps.com writes about making gold in the World of Warcraft. Have questions, comments, or threats for him to get off your damned server? Email Basil! The prices for all kinds of things fluctuate. I talked a little about this in my post for casual auctioneers, but there is serious money to be made with market timing for very little investment. Basically, the goal is to watch prices for a few weeks, try to predict their next swing, and take advantage by buying low and selling high. Watching prices Easier said than done, like most things worth doing. You might get hundreds of items you'd like to watch, and short of a photographic memory or a manual spreadsheet, you're going to need some help keeping track of it all. Enter Market Watcher. This is a nifty addon that, once configured, allows you to scan the auction house for just the things you're interested in, and will show you a graph of their prices over time once you get a couple scans done.
Gold Capped: Casual auctioneering
Want to get Gold Capped? This column shows you how. Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast will endeavor to fill your head with so much economic wisdom that you won't be able to see straight afterwards! Making money in game can seem complex. Well, it is. The real pros have addons and UI customizations most people would never bother developing, keen understanding of the chains of supply and demand in the in-game economy, as well as inordinate amounts of time to spend in the auction house. What if you're just out to fund your epic flyer, though? If you're reading my column to see whether there's a cap on the amount of gold you can stuff into a guild bank, chances are you've already carved out a niche for yourself. If, however, you don't plan on spending any more time in the AH than you absolutely need to, what can you do to make more money there than you make grinding dailies?
