Just to give you some idea of what at least one other player does, here's my usual salvage/sell techniques. On a quick run, I mostly just pick up ilvl 61+ items only; both blues and yellows. I generally check what the exquisite essences are selling for and use that as a gauge. If they're selling below 700, I vendor all 61+ blues without regard to price. I used to go through and check the vendor price for each piece, but at this point I'll just look at the price point of the essences to decide if they all get salvaged or sold. For instance, just before and after 1.0.4, essences were in the 1300 range, so it was a no brainer to salvage all blues and some yellows. But now the prices are in the 750-850 range, so I just assume that all the blues when added together would make it about a wash so I sell the trash and move on.
I think 900 per essence on the AH is about when I would switch to salvaging blues. Of course, if you want to hoard them and wait for the price to go up, that is a viable gamble. I'd wager that 1.0.5 and 1.1 would see pretty good price bumps for a short while.
Ilvl61+ yellows that aren't worth listing on the AH, straight sold to the vendor. The yellow crafting mat is so worthless and the chance for a Fiery Brimstone is too low for my tastes, so yellows go straight to the vendor with complete disregard as to price/mat conversions.
Life is short. Time is money friend. Don't over-think it. Get a general idea of how you want to approach it and go from there.
So how exactly do you gauge an items true gold worth, if there are 4 items on the AH similar to yours, but they aer all stupidly overpriced ?
From a purely theoretical point of view, an item's 'true gold worth' is equal to the amount of gold you could have farmed in the time it took to find that item (or something of the same or greater value), minus the value of any items you found while doing so. That's basically the opportunity cost of farming the item (or something that could be directly exchanged for it) vs. buying it straight off the AH. Problematically, this is a somewhat recursive definition
Of course, there's a huge difference between 'true gold worth' and what people will actually pay. The most fundamental truth of economics is that humans are irrational actors... anyone who says otherwise is selling something, or has just discovered An Incredibly Profound Truth that happens to flatter their sensibilities and bears no relation to reality.
People will pay an Impatience Premium, or accrue Indifference Bonuses. They will differ wildly on the value they ascribe to items, or gold itself, because they misunderstand game mechanics or probability.
So, given all that annoying complexity, you calculate an item's market value the same way people have always done... looking at what other people are selling stuff for, then making a guess
People assume that the gold auction house is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.
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I think 900 per essence on the AH is about when I would switch to salvaging blues. Of course, if you want to hoard them and wait for the price to go up, that is a viable gamble. I'd wager that 1.0.5 and 1.1 would see pretty good price bumps for a short while.
Ilvl61+ yellows that aren't worth listing on the AH, straight sold to the vendor. The yellow crafting mat is so worthless and the chance for a Fiery Brimstone is too low for my tastes, so yellows go straight to the vendor with complete disregard as to price/mat conversions.
Life is short. Time is money friend. Don't over-think it. Get a general idea of how you want to approach it and go from there.
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People assume that the gold auction house is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.