So this is an interesting post on how some Korean players are using a mod to enable bidding on items during a raid.   Interesting idea.   Frankly I’m surprised that no one has set up a commercial guild where you pay real money to go on the raids and get the items you want and the guild members split the cash (and still get the items they don’t sell).   Anyway, back the the point, this article points out that some items sell for as much as 9,000 gold which translates to about $270 (using the numbers in the article).  

In the U.S. the gold exchange rate is more like $100-$150 per 1,000 gold which would make this seem really expensive for a single item.   Also, the guilds in the U.S. that sell items (for gold) are selling them at much lower prices.  Here is a price list from Death and Taxes (one of the top guilds worldwide).  It puts the most expensive item at around $150. 

So, higher end items are between $50-$300 each.  These are items from 40-person raid instances so they are pretty hard to get.   Interestingly, these prices dovetail nicely with items purchased with the new honor system (discussed in several recent posts).   You can find an example of those prices here.  But basically, $200 gets you 21,000 honor points (not sure if this was before or after they reduced the honor generated).  But the best armor pieces and weapons in the honor system cost between 20,000 and 23,000 honor to purchase.   Amazingly all these prices align.

So whether you buy the items with gold or pay someone to get the honor for you, the prices are around $150-$200 per epic item.  You could also use that to calculate how much you are getting earning per hour played (although you cannot resell these items as they are all BOP – Bind on Pickup).  I don’t want to do that calculation though, because it will depress the crap out of me.