Method

How a number gets onto this sheet, and what it means.

Where the prices come from

Every figure is read from the same recorded Auction House snapshots that power the item pages on TheWoWDB.com. There is no separate feed here and nothing is typed in by hand.

Herbs and ore are commodities. The Auction House prices commodities per region, so a herb costs the same on every realm in your region and there is no cheapest realm for them. Only gear and other non-stackable items vary by realm.

Quality tiers

Gathered materials come in Silver and Gold quality, with Gold worth more. The roster tracks both item IDs per material and prices the canonical Gold one, which is what a maxed gatherer actually produces.

Freshness

Snapshots usually refresh about once an hour. That is fresh for a market that moves on raid resets and stale for one that moves on patch day, so verify in game before you commit.

What this sheet refuses to do

No estimated hourly figures. A route gets a number after it is walked, or none.

No projections. There is no column predicting where a price is going and there will not be one.

No filled gaps. A material with no recorded price shows an empty state rather than the last number we happened to have.