When to salvage mods off golds?

Do people pay purely for the skin of items?

Yes, they do. Mods & requirements will affect the pricing, tho.

Yes.

It's usually best to sell exactly the way you get something to save you time, money, and a perfect salv. kit.

If it's a crappy gold, salv. mods and then merch it.

basically, say you get a req. 9 insc. elemental sword, with a bad insc. and bad mods. get a perfect salvage kit and get the mods off of it and sell it clean, cause with crap mods you probably won't sell it.

If you mean, will buyers pay more for better mods on rare skins, then NO.

Waste of upgrade to try to max a rare skin. You will get more selling skin as is and the max upgrade separately.

Yet even if it isn;t clean, people can still mod it the way they want in the same way as if it WERE clean. Wierd really. Just like people pay +14k more for 1hp on a mod >.>

I quit trying to sell any Golds to individuals, I just ID and merchant. I would think, for example, max dmg bow, req 11, should be worth 1k, no matter what other mods are on it. When I get that "You 'noob'" cra*, I go straight to the merchant. I can't tell you what skin is rare and which isn't by looking at it, so to the merchant I go.

Some do, some don't. Some people will buy things just for the skin, knowing they can mod it whatever way they like - especially now that they can get a perfect salvage kit.
Some people don't seem to actually know that they can overwrite or replace mods, so they try to buy weapons with the mods they want on them already.

But generally speaking, it's best to remove any "perfect" mods off a weapon and sell them separately, because you don't know what the buyer actually wants for mods.

Let's say you get a "perfect" sword (of some rare skin) that has 15^50, health+30 and 20/20 sundering. The mods on it may seem really good, but they are of no importance to someone who is looking for (or wants) a sword with a Fiery Hilt, 20% enchant pommel and a +5 energy inscription. They would just have to strip all the mods off the "perfect" sword anyway.

Then again, if it has 20/19 sundering and +29 health, you might just as well leave the mods on it.

So should i salvage mods off reg golds + merch unless it has a rare skin?

Most probably, yes.
I do keep a small 'stock' of perfect or one-off mods, but I don't salvage them when there are two of those on one weapon.
I never know which ones guildies or I myself might need in the future.
It also explains my everlasting shortage of storage

You should salvage max mods off of everything. You should also check in the forums or auctions to see if the weapon is worth anything. If the weapon is worth selling, especially if it is very rare/valuable, you may want use a Perfect Salvage Kit so you don't lose it when you salvage it.
Just use an Expert/Superior Salvage Kit on items that are worth less. You'd need to factor the cost of the salvage kit into whether it's worth it or not.

If you can't get a Perfect Salvage Kit, you may want to leave the mods on a rare weapon, rather than take the chance of destroying it.