The Auction Deposit Comes Out First
Every lot on the shelf is paid for before it sells. The deposit is small enough to ignore on a single listing and large enough to decide whether a bulk route pays for itself, and most of the arguments about it come from people who never checked which number it is calculated from.
What the deposit is actually charged on
The deposit is a hold rather than a fee. A seller pays it at the moment the lot goes up, gets it back in full when the item sells, and loses it when the listing runs out with nobody buying. The important detail is the number it is worked out from: not the price you ask, but the value the item carries at a shop counter, which is why what a vendor pays for an item matters to a seller who never intends to use a vendor at all.
That has a consequence people miss. Doubling your asking price does not double the hold, and dropping your price to clear a stack does not reduce it either. A cheap raw material with a respectable shop value can cost more to put up than a crafted piece that sells for many times as much, and nothing in how listings and bids work warns you about that before you confirm the posting.
Duration is the other multiplier. A long listing holds more coin for longer, which is the right trade for goods that sell slowly and the wrong one for anything you expect to move the same evening. Until the lot sells or expires, that coin is out of your purse and out of the market, which is the quiet part of costs charged on every listing.
The undercut mistake that pays twice
Here is the sequence that costs people the most. A seller posts a stack, checks back an hour later, finds somebody sitting a hair under them, cancels the lot, and puts it straight back up at the lower price. The cancellation does not refund the hold, and the fresh listing charges a new one. Two postings of the same stack, two deposits, one sale, and the margin that the undercut was supposed to protect has already gone sideways.
Done three or four times in an evening on the same goods, this turns into a real bill while feeling like free activity, which is why cancelling and reposting a lot deserves to be a decision rather than a reflex. The cheaper answer is usually to leave the lot alone: the person under you has a finite stack, and when it clears, yours is the listing standing.
Reposting is worth the second deposit in one case, which is when the first price was simply wrong rather than slightly high. That is a different problem from an undercut, and it is the one place where buying low to relist goods and ordinary selling follow the same rule: price once, with the duration you are actually willing to wait out.
When the hold eats what is left
The complaint that deposits eat the profit is true in one specific shape. It is true for high-volume, low-margin goods posted in many small lots, where the hold is charged per listing and the spread between what you paid and what you ask is thin to begin with. Splitting a large stack into singles multiplies the deposits without multiplying the buyers, and on materials that feed consumables sold in stacks that split is often the whole difference between a profitable evening and a flat one.
It is far less true for anything with a wide margin or a reliable buyer. A crafted piece that sells for a great deal more than its shop value carries a hold that barely registers, and the risk there is expiry rather than cost: a product with 2 buyers on the realm can sit through several full durations before one of them logs in.
There is a logistics side as well. Coin tied up in deposits is coin not available to buy the next batch of materials, which matters most to sellers running stock through a bank alt holding the stock. If the shelf is unreachable for a stretch, nothing expires any faster, but nothing refunds either, and hours when the shelf is offline are hours your working capital is frozen in listings you cannot touch.
What we do not know about the Forever numbers
We cannot give you the rate. We have not seen Blizzard publish the formula used on Forever, and we are not going to reconstruct one from screenshots and call it a fact. What we can say is the shape: calculated from shop value, scaled by stack size and duration, refunded on a sale, forfeited on an expiry or a cancellation.
The one figure that keeps circulating in beta discussion is a floor of 1 silver under the deposit on the cheapest goods. If that floor is real, it changes the maths only at the very bottom of the market, where a single cheap item can cost more to list than it is worth. We have not found that floor stated anywhere official, so treat it as a thing to test on your own realm rather than a number to plan around.
We also have no data on how often listings expire on Forever, which is the figure that would actually tell you what deposits cost the average seller over a week. Until somebody collects it, the practical habit is the dull one: check what a shop pays for the item before you post a large quantity of it, and pick the duration you can live with.
Questions
Do I get the deposit back when the item sells?
Yes. The deposit is a hold rather than a charge, and it returns in full alongside the sale proceeds when a buyer takes the lot. You only lose it if the listing runs its full duration without selling, or if you cancel it yourself before it ends.
Is the deposit based on my asking price?
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about it. The hold is worked out from the value the item carries at a shop counter, scaled by stack size and by how long you list for. Asking more or less for the same item does not change what you pay to put it up.
Should I cancel a listing when somebody undercuts me?
Usually not. Cancelling forfeits the deposit you already paid and reposting charges a new one, so a single undercut answered twice in an evening costs you two holds for one eventual sale. The exception is a lot you priced badly in the first place, which is worth fixing once.
Do deposits make bulk selling unprofitable?
Only in a specific case: many small lots of low-margin goods, where the hold is charged per listing and the spread is thin. Posting a large quantity as fewer, larger stacks reduces the number of deposits without reducing the number of buyers, which is the usual fix.
Sources
- Reference description of how auction deposits are calculated and refunded in the Classic line — Auction house guide, Wowhead Classic.
- Community reference on deposit mechanics and vendor value — Deposit, Warcraft Wiki.