Buying and Selling Gold in Diablo 3

When is the right time to buy and sell gold in Diablo 3? Buying it, maybe never. Selling it, as soon as possible. Consider that gold is going to be in huge demand early in the game. Players are going to be racing to level their artisans, acquire high tier gems, buy exquisite essences and purchase that last piece of gear to help them max that last stat on their character. This gold rush is going to go on for some time. There is no shortage of things to buy in Diablo 3 and there are a suitable number of gold sinks.

Most players are not going to be selling their gold early in the game. Think about it, how many players are going to sell the gold they have when they are still level 30? or when they are still trying to reach level 60 or level their artisans? or when they are trying to upgrade their gear so that they can beat Inferno difficulty? How many players are going to want to buy some cheap gold on the RMAH so that they can catch up to their buddies, or catch up to me?

This gold rush is going to be insane in the first few days and weeks of the game. If you want to make gold in Diablo 3 do it by selling your gold early. Sacrifice the progression of your artisan, it will be cheaper tomorrow. Sacrifice a few stats on your character or just level faster than everyone else so that you don’t have to sacrifice anything. Either way, but among the first people to sell your gold on the RMAH. Even if it’s only 10,000 or 100,000 gold.

Selling gold will never be more profitable than in the first day and first week of D3. It’s one of the few guarantees that we have coming into the game. Even if you sell the gold on day 1 and buy it back on day 2 you will make a profit. This trend will continue as Diablo 3 becomes history and players focus back on Mists of Pandaria, so take advantage of it right away.

As far as buying gold, I don’t think you should ever do it. Unless you have a very specific reason that you believe that buying it will help you later sell something for more later. Perhaps at some point a month into the game when prices have equalized and you think that buying some gold will help you build a set of gear that will help you earn more gold than you bought… then maybe, but that’s a lot of speculation.

I personally have no intention of putting real money into Diablo 3. I signed up for WoW’s Annual Pass so I will be playing Diablo 3 for free. I have every intention and expectation to profit in Diablo 3 during theĀ initialĀ gold rush.

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.

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7 Comments.

  1. The launch of D3 will see a big test of the gold sinks they’ve designed. I don’t see stash space and artisan development as major gold sinks for the dedicated players.

    But I do think repair costs might be.

    We may even see a scenario when the rational thing for a level 60 player to do is to buy gold and farm items in Inferno rather than farm Act 1 Hell for gold to cover repair costs.

    If that happens gold will stabilise or even become more expensive if the rate at which people incur repair bills on incredibly unforgiving Inferno content exceeds the capacity of the game’s gold farmers.

  2. Good points. During the first few weeks gold will be at a premium. I will attempt to sell everything I can in that period. Only problem is that I will need about 20-30K to expand the stash. Hmm… or maybe I can do without that, we’ll see.

  3. At the same time of selling your gold in the first weeks wouldn’t it also be more profitable to keep the gold and just spend it all on artisans and getting good gear while leveling them up and selling that for a higher price since anyone can farm gold but not everyone would be willing to invest in their artisans for the fact that, it costs gold and resources. Some players might not even look at their artisans until later in the game just because they want to sell gold making the supply of gold and demand decent but the demand for artisan items could be higher than the gold demand due to the lack of supply. Just a theory and thought, what do you think?

    • Stark, it depends when you think you can make gold with the Artisan. I see most people putting a moderate amount of gold into their artisans and then having access to the crafts themselves.

      If 1k gold is worth $1.00 on day 1 and $0.90 on day two, then you need to be able to make 10 cents on 1k gold in that day time with your artisan to fend off inflation.

      More realistically, at the end of the first week gold could be worth 1/10th of what it was on day 1. So if you sold 100,000 gold for $100 on day 1 it would only be worth $10 on day 8. How do you plan to make the difference in those 7 days?

      If you sell the gold for RM and then buy gold back on day 8 you can catch your artisan up. I don’t think the artisans are going to be profitable until people reach the end levels and crafting material prices start to level off.

      Thanks for the comment!

  4. Man there’s no way 1k gold is gonna be $1.00US.
    I would guess more like 20,000 gold + for 1$

    Gold is extremely easy to make. Having played WoW for a few years, I’d say making 1000 gold in WoW takes about 15 times longer at least

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