Throughout Normal, Nightmare, and now sadly even Hell I have found numerous Rare items that are completely worthless to me. Their stats are not even remotely worth selling on the AH, and they have been replaced by bigger and better things. Assuming I don't want to save them for a potential next character, and I have no other reason to hang on to them. What is the best way to dispose of them to make the most out of them?
Would it be better to sell them to the merchant, break them down for crafting components, or something else? I have not yet found any great advantage to the Blacksmith, but I hear he can be quite profitable by level 10.
Best Answer
The issue here is not whether something will sell, (eventually, many things will), but rather is it worthwhile to keep your stash/bags full of items with mediocre stats, some of which require 2 to 3 AH listings to move?
Right now I believe it's more cost effective to vendor rares, but that may change in patch 1.0.3, in which Blizz has announced that they are "...looking to adjust the Blacksmith costs for training (gold and pages) and crafting from levels 1-59..." In this case I hope "adjusting" means "reducing."
My method for rare item triage has lots of room for improvement, but this is what I've been doing when I encounter a rare:
All that said, I have trouble following my own advice sometimes. I'm good about vendoring rares with truly horrific stats. It's the items right in the middle I have trouble parting with.