One million gold!

This past year I've been spending more and more time playing the Auction House.  My major AH activity began when the inscriptions patch hit.  I had been stockpiling herbs for months and I was one of the first people to post glyphs the day of the patch.  I made several thousand gold that night alone.  It was so easy and addictive, I started refining my glyph making processes, learned how to use auctioneer and batch post, and started making tons of gold.

While on maternity leave last year, (after a short pregnancy-related WoW hiatus) I set a goal of hitting 100,000 gold.  It was surprisingly easy to do, especially since I didn't have to work and I was on a low pop server without very much competition.  When I finally hit six figures, I splurged on a Kirin Tor ring, Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, and motorcycle.  A few months later I hit gold cap.  I'm working towards 1 million gold now.

When you have this much gold, it changes the way you play.  I used to go farming for stuff when I needed it, but it is a far more effective use of my time to buy the items I need and spend the time working the AH instead.  Now I am back to working full time and have a baby to take care of so I have much less time to play around on the AH, but it is still more cost effective for me to let others do the farming and stick with what I do best, which is buying low and selling normal (Thanks Markco at JMTC).

I've had some major setbacks in reaching my 1 million goal.  Crafting 4 pieces of primordial saronite gear for my mage and priest cost about 50,000g, and then I loaned a bunch of gold to my hubby for his primordial saronite pieces.  In addition, there are a large number of level 1 gold-sellers that flood the market with cheap goods, usually farmed via teleport hacks or account hacks. They delete their level 1's and start new ones every 5-7 days or so to avoid detection by Blizzard.  I enjoy fierce competition as long as they are legitimate players, but it is becoming a lot harder to make a profit when I have to compete against gold sellers who are online 24/7 and are cheating or stealing to acquire their goods.