I wrote a post a while back with my approach to BoE Flipping in Shadowlands. I’ve been testing it out, so let’s see how the market has actually been.
My Results
SInce I wrote the post I have spent 1.9 million gold on BoEs across my realms and I have made 1.5 million in sales. That’s a loss of about 400k. Of course I still have several left over, and this is a market that usually takes a while to get started, but I’ve certainly not made a profit yet.
No randomness means no deals
With the way gear works in Shadowlands there are no random variations. The only randomness in gearing comes from sockets and tertiary stats. These are not particularly impactful and it means that every item of the same type and ilvl is the same. With the new base UI it is very easy to post your items at the right price, so generally it is very hard to find undervalued BoEs.
Prices are trending down
Most BoEs will be in a fairly significant downwards trend. There’s nothing like new corruption builds or rare titanforging levels to give specific items a boost. As we go on items will just trend downwards, particularly if they are not mythic raid ilvl.
The old approach works
The approach I theorycrafted seems to work fairly well in a vacuum. I made a profit with quite a few of the items I’ve purchased, even if not all of them have panned out. The top item I flipped sold for a whooping 300k more than I bought it for.
Ilvl is king
Long term I think the higher item level stuff will always be the way to go. The ilvl 190 weapons are OK, but trending down rapidly as catch up gear gets better and better. That being said it is still by far the fastest way of getting that ilvl of gear for a fresh character.
Overall outlook
I do not really expect to make much gold with BoE flipping in Shadowlands. The lack of randomness means that it’s way too hard to find deals to really make significant profits long term. While it will be possible to make gold, I do not expect it to reach the levels it did in BfA and Legion.