I started this exercise back when Blizzard took weeks to lower the floor on Gold prices in the RMAH from $1 / 250k to its current $.25 / 1 MM. When they dropped the price it stabilized at $1.90 / 1 MM which means about a 30% overprice.

No one was legitimately selling gold at that time in any noticeable quantities. You could, however, buy and sell high-priced Gems. By averaging prices over all 8 Perfect Star and Radiant Star Gems, we could get a proxy for the actual RMAH USD / Gold exchange rate (not the black market Gold price). I had estimated at price around $1.80 so it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't terrible.

The calculation is straightforward, but works fairly well. Sum up the cost of buying all 8 gems in US Gold, and then all 8 gems in USD. Divide one by the other and you're there.

According the the Auction House Price Tracker housed here on D3RMT, on 12/11/2012, 1 MM Gold was going for 0.33 USD. Using this summing method, we get a price of 0.344 USD which is a difference of 4%. On 1/26/2013, 1 MM Gold was priced at 0.27 USD and the summing method came up with 0.271 USD. I think it demonstrates it's not completely out of whack.

Currently, the RMAH is at 1 MM Gold / 0.25 USD. We all know that's too high. The summing method gives us 1 MM Gold for 0.224 USD which means the RMAH Gold price is currently inflated over the true price by around 10%.

If we have to wait for a 30% overprice as before, watch for RS Emerald price ratios indicating 1 MM / 0.175 USD. To make it even simpler, watch for RS Emerald priced at around $3.85 (since the gold price stabilized around 22 million in December). If Blizzard holds to last time, that's when we can expect a drop to about 1 MM / 0.10 USD.

There will always be black market Gold sellers and there will always be a large number of people not willing to sell or buy on the black market so we can expect this to happen at some point.

News isn't great. For 2/20/12 the calculated rate is down to 0.211 USD / 1 million Gold for an overprice of 18.66%.

Someone please check my math and logic in this next part. I think it's sound, but I'm not positive.

We may have reached the point where it's better to purchase a high quality gem on the RMAH and sell it for Gold than to simply buy Gold at 0.25 USD / 1 Million. For those of you with no sales tax, your best case scenario on 2/20/2013 was Radiant Star Emerald and worst case was Perfect Star Amethysts:

Buy a Perfect Star Amethyst for $6.53 on the RMAH
Sell it for 31,978,532 Gold on the GAH
Take out 15% GAH cut to make it a net sale of 27,181,752 Gold
$6.53 / 27,181,752 = 0.240 USD / 1 million Gold

Buy a Perfect Star Amethyst for $1.69 on the RMAH
Sell it for 7,267,979 Gold on the GAH
Take out 15% GAH cut to make it a net sale of 6,177,782 Gold
$1.69 / 6,177,782 = 0.274 USD / 1 million Gold

If you cashed out with RS Emeralds, you would actually be buying Gold at 0.24 USD/1 million Gold. Of course, if Blizzard lowered the floor to 0.10 USD / 1 million Gold, you would only be paying 0.21 USD / 1 million Gold. Thanks, Blizz.

I just picked up my calculator to get some numbers for European players like me.

RS Emerald is 4.52 € in RMAH (atm, fluctuates between 4.48 € and 4.52 € for me) and about 32,000,000 gold in GAH.
So best price for 1 million gold on European server would actually be 4.52 € / 32,000,000 * 0,85 = 0,12 € / 1 million gold, right?

Sounds good to me, thanks for the post!

@MaximumStock. I'm getting 0,166 € / 1 million Gold.

I think you mixed up your order of operations. The 0,85 * 32,000,000 need to be done first.
4,52 € / (32,000,000 * 0,85) = 4,52 € / 27,200,000 = 0,166 € / 1 million Gold

You could round to 0,17 €. The AH tracker here appears to have a typo in the RS Topaz EUR price (should be 2,92 €, I suspect) which gives around 0,165 € / 1 MM Gold. Incidentally, there isn't nearly as much fluctuation in the € / 1 Million Gold between the RS gems as their is in the USD / 1 million Gold.

I don't know what the means, but it looks like it doesn't matter much on the European servers which RS gem you deal in. In NA, it could mean a difference of 3-4% if you try to buy/sell the wrong RS.

Oh ya, I forgot the brackets, thank you ;).

I must admit I haven't thought of this being a viable option to cash out, or at least I haven't tried to calculate it (correctly :D). I feel like I have to do it this way since sales aren't going too well atm.

Thanks @ecocd for the heads up! Interesting stuff.

This kinda sucks as I have 100M up for sale on RMAH and it's not selling. I am hoping it will today because it is Friday, but any alternatives? I was looking at Perfect Star Emeralds. They are currently going for $6.36 on RMAH and 32M on GAH. Do the Emeralds sell well on the RMAH? Oh and I am a newb to this forum so hello all...been reading it for a while though.

EDIT: I mean Radiant Star Emeralds...see, told ya I am a newb =)

Welcome @Pastamon! Radiant Star Emeralds sell fairly well. Perfect Star gems have had the slowest sales for me, but they all pretty much sell.

To get a feeling for the market at any given time, go to the AH listing and simply refresh the auction listing for the Gem. If the "average price" moves, that means there was a sale. Don't expect them to go as fast a flawless star Gems, but even if you have 20 to move, it shouldn't take more than a few days to move all of them depending upon how patient you are.

Great to see new faces around here. Don't forget to link your battlenet profile if you think you're going to stick around. I have had zero problems with D3 spam for registering here.

Done, and thanks for the info @ecocd

Also, if you're looking to sell gold in bulk, the best way is to invest that gold into good last-minute bids on the GAH and then flip the items on the RMAH. If you're looking to cash in on your paypal, Blizz does take 15%, but it's better than the 30% cut they take when you sell your gold directly.

Thanks for that advice @arpger although I am sure I will be competing with some of you doing that =)

Posted by Pastamon at 02/22/2013 07:19 AM

I am hoping it will today because it is Friday

Posted by nuhertz at 02/22/2013 03:51 PM

Posted by Pastamon at 02/22/2013 07:19 AM

I am hoping it will today because it is Friday

Oh Noes! It's Friday, I knew I was going to regret clicking on that link.

For some reason I have always been cautious of having gold in game and prefer to leave earnings on RMAH and only transfer over when making a purchase. This would save me if blizzard dropped the floor on gold.

I wonder how long its taking people to sell gold at .25 now?

Posted by ninjax at 02/23/2013 08:29 AM

For some reason I have always been cautious of having gold in game and prefer to leave earnings on RMAH and only transfer over when making a purchase. This would save me if blizzard dropped the floor on gold.

I wonder how long its taking people to sell gold at .25 now?

I had 5 million up when I made the update post on Thursday and it didn't sell in 12 hours. I just ended up taking it down.

Probably like it used to be, only sells in the last seconds of your auction if your auction is at the top of the list when someone purchases.

If three people posted up 10 mil gold 1 second apart, each would have a one second window to sell gold. The first person to list would get priority until sold out, assuming all is listed at .25, only then would the person who listed a second later be able to sell his.

Volume of gold up for sale matters, and I would generally assume those who list at off hours get the least competition and have the longest "window" to sell in. That's also why multiple auctions seconds apart will sell gold faster than a single large auction.

When gold hit the floor last time, even listing 10 units, since I remember the unit being 200 or 250k, I wouldn't sell all, only partial.

That said, no one here should be listing gold on the rmah. You can sell it faster with a better exchange rate many other ways.

Listing gold seems like a waste of time unless it would go back up to at least .33/M. I sunk 22M on a trifecta amulet, all the other ones comparable were 135M+ we will see what it goes for on RMAH, I am confident that it will sell for more than $5....

@Pastamon Any word on the trifecta amulet selling?

If anyone cares, yesterday was a bad day for Gold exchange rate. It dropped 7% Sunday to Monday and sits at 0.188 USD / 1 MM Gold. Within 2 weeks, I think we're likely to hit the previous 30% overprice threshold that corresponded to the last price floor drop.

Last price drop, my method resulted in an estimate of 1.80 USD / 1 MM Gold. The price dropped the first day as low as 1.32 USD / 1 MM and 2 days later stabilized at 1.85-1.90 USD. If we see the price floor change and you're in the market to buy Gold, you'll probably get your best price in the first day watching for it to bottom out; I'll guess 0.12-0.13 USD and hold off on selling your Gold for a few days until it's stabilized around 0.17-0.18 USD / 1 MM. I don't think there will be enough movement to try to actually time the market to flip Gold.

Ok,so where do i get it for .188/1mm? :-D
My personal flip market went dead after 1.07 and now i'm getting low again :-/

Yup gems are crashing on RMAH, which reflects the price that gold really is right now... so much for the gold sink!

There is another possibility, oversupply of gems....

Duping?

Unlikely,I think people can't sell gold so they are buying gems (and prob other matts) and selling them on RMAH instead so there is oversupply. There was a thread over on b.net forums talking about frustration of not being able to sell gold.

1 player was selling 30b gold on RMAH.. lol.

Wow. Didn't realize so many people sell gold.

I'm glad they do to keep prices low, but can't imagine doing it myself.

Think anyone would give me a cut to sell gold for them?

@ninjax I would hope Blizzard knew it was going to be more effective as a mat sink than a Gold sink. There are hundreds of billions, if not trillions of Gold out there. A few crafted shoulders aren't going to put a dent in that.

@nuhertz Oversupply would cause both the GAH and RMAH prices to drop together. Since the RMAH is dropping faster than the GAH price, that implies a change in the exchange rate.