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3/26/2011

The Economics of Elementium Lockboxes

A while back I posted about selling Obsidium Skeleton Keys on the auction house. (See "Obsidium Skeleton Keys: Gold Hiding Right On Our Keyring?") Since then I had been curious of it was economically viable to use a 29 gold Obsidium Skeleton Key to open an Elementium Lockbox.

We had about 12 Elementium Lockboxes sitting in our guild bank so I decided to open them up and calculate the average gold value of their contents.

The Setup
I started with 12 Elementium Lockboxes. I opened all of them (with the help of a rogue) and recorded the gold contained inside as well as the current auction house value of the green item inside.

One funny thing I noticed is that the Elementium Lockboxes can often contain another Elememtium Lockbox. This actually happened quite a few times.

The Math
Lockbox
Gold
Lockbox
Item Value*
1
28.8631
1
119.637
2
30.1816
2
52.3833
3
37.001
3
30.7057
4
33.1813
4
59.1796
5
37.0316
5
44.456
6
35.0761
6
44.4059
7
34.2545
7
100.504
8
35.4537
8
65.261
9
32.4502
9
63.876
10
34.1016
10
68.5174
11
28.0698
11
46.5907
12
28.6484
12
60.5046
13
29.1267
Average
63.0017
14
29.5506
*Average auction value on my server.
15
34.0745
16
34.5984



Average
32.6039




The Result
The results show that each Elementium Lockbox has an average value of around 95 gold. With this high of a value I no longer feel bad about selling the keys for 29 gold.

With the convenience of not having to track down a rogue and being able to unlock Elementium Lockboxes anywhere everyone should carrying a few Obsidum Skeleton Keys around with them at all times.

If your Auction House doesn't have Obsidium Skeleton Keys up be sure to get some up there if you have access to a blacksmith to craft them. Just remember you have to put them on the AH from your Keyring and not your bags.

Talking Points

  • How have your Obsidium Skeleton Key sales been?
  • How do you open your Elementium Lockboxes?
  • Have you ever received anything else but greens from Elementium Lockboxes?


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Posted by iiimjiiim on 3/26/2011 Labels: , , , , , , , ,

5 comments :

  1. JasonMar 26, 2011, 9:35:00 PM

    After reading your post I made up about 25 Keys and just let them sit on my AH, I've sold around 15 @ 30g each, but I am rather leary of barking them in trade as my server tends to jump on gold making fad's and rip them apart... So far I use a guild rogue for my personal lock boxes but they have been few and far between... however one lock box of note had a lock box inside another lock box (3 total) so I received not only a 2 fresh lock box's but the cash as well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. iiimjiiimMar 26, 2011, 11:39:00 PM

    @Syntalating I had the same experience. Was autolooting and noth paying a ton of attention to the loot. I kept thinking to myself "I thought i unlocked all of these."

    As you can see out of 12 lockboxes I ended up getting 4 "extra". There are 16 gold entries and 12 item entries.

    Glad to see the keys are selling for you. I don't bark them either for the same reason as you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. VayazMar 27, 2011, 2:38:00 AM

    I've been trying to sell them since you first posted about it, but none have sold so far.

    Rather strange, given that I even sold some Truesilver Keys etc (which requires Blacksmithing), but none of the actually non-restricted Obsidium Keys.

    There's also no competition, so tha's not the reason.

    ReplyDelete
  4. iiimjiiimMar 27, 2011, 3:04:00 AM

    @Vayaz You might try whispering anyone you see looking for someone to open lockboxes in trade and let them know about the keys on the AH.

    Hopefully word of mouth will spread once people learn they can use them w/o BS.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ColdMar 27, 2011, 9:01:00 AM

    I am gonna look into selling the keys on my server as well.

    ReplyDelete

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