It Is All In The Color...

If your new to WoW you may be wondering what the color code on the text means. Did I confuse you? Apologies if I did... Anyways this is important. Why? If you are not familiar with the color break down of items then you could throw away something of value. Chances of this happening are slim, but I have seen it happen.

So what am I talking about. Every time a item drops it will have either: grey text, white text, green text, blue text or purple text. Refer to the above picture of the grey text item if you are still confused.
These colors tell you if the item is garbage or an AH seller. And in some cases it could be an upgrade for your character.

Here is a breakdown

Grey Items: These items for the most part are useless, this does not mean you should not pick these items up though. At low levels, and even high you should pick these up if you got the bag space and turn around and sell it to vendor. In the beginning you may see a few copper and silver, at higher level though you get a lot of silver, and even up to 3 gold and more on some items. So though useless, I say keep them and collect some pocket change.

White Items: These items sometimes can be junk, depending on your character, but most white items can be used for quest, professions, sometimes low quality upgrades even. You could even sell some of it on the AH and possibly get more of a profit then selling to vendor. So before deciding myself, I carry those items, head to the AH and check prices. At this point you can decide if its worth selling on the AH or to vendor.

Green Items: Good quality items. Starting out at low level most characters are thrilled to see greens drop, that can benefit them anyways. Normally if a green is worthless to you, you can sell it on the AH for someone who can use it. Some greens are not worth selling IMO, so those I vendor trash. Now if you have an enchanter though, I'd say to send the items to your enchanter, they can disenchant the item and get dust or a shard for enchanting. Enchanting mats sell good on the AH most of the time. So selling the disenchant items is a good source of gold, or just keeping it for later enchants.

Blue Items: Rare items, can be worth lots of gold sometimes. However chances of selling these items in the AH sometimes are slim. Most blue items are BOP (Bind On Pickup) so that item will become soulbound to the character who gets it. Meaning if you want to sell it because its worthless to you, you only can to vendor. Or again keep in mind the enchanter can disenchant. There are some BOE (Bind On Equip) blue items but I do believe they have low drop rates. Either way though even if you get BOP items that are no good you can sell to vendor or like said before, send to enchanter.

Purple Items: Epic items. Well if I remember correctly you won't see these until level 30 maybe? I could be wrong on that. Chances are seem very slim to none that a BOE epic will drop but it can happen. Some of these can sell for hundreds to thousands... I got nothing more to say on these because I have always seen only BOP drops that were purple, no wait I guess one time I had a ring drop, took forever to sell though...

Anyways I know most people already knows this, but its here for the newbies and lowbies who may not know. As you quest it is important to know IMO, trashin a good item is sad when you could potentially sell if for lots of gold. Anyhow hope this helps :)