Report 5-4

NOTE: I updated The List to include all the enchants and gems I deal in currently. So for those of you who want to know there it is.

It's that time again, resets, crashes, bugs, and reports. Today is the day where I, Stokpile the well dressed and lover of all things shiny provide you with some nice reading material while angrily awaiting blizz to get servers back up. As usual, numbers and bottom lines come first.


Income per banker
Epic gems, rare orange gems, vendor pets: 39,000

Rare gems, meta gems, LW, misc: 22,000g

Flasks: 2,500g

Smithing and enchanting: 71,500g

Glyphs: 8,500g

Total weekly sales: 143,500g
Weekly profit: 82,000
Total gold: 965,000

I picked up a hilt this week for 10k and also had the ICC boots crafted at 5.5k for my DK as I'm sick of looking at the leather booties that totally don't match her gear. The hilt quest chain had some fun parts but was over all a let down. If the weapon wasn't so cool looking I'd consider it an absolute waste. But plopping another 15k on top of those weekly profits would be damned nice too. Also did you notice the tiny number next to flasks? There hasn't been a single piece of lichbloom under 3g...

All.
Week.
Long!
/qq


Detailed Recap
--------------
It's official, the epic gem market is crashing, and fast. And yet I'm still being camped, I don't get it. I've completely removed all selling thresholds and am no longer purchasing or crafting epic gems (mostly) until the prices settle down. Though it seems that towards the end of the week, things started to level off. I'll still be waiting a bit more before I start stokpiling epic gems again, but if the new raid gets released this week I'll empty the whole AH. Yet in face of this massive market crash, rare and meta gems are still going strong. This is where being experienced in the AH games will give you the answer and tell you where to shift your focus.

Where do epic gems come from?
10/20 emblems
10k honor
Titanium ore prospecting
Alchemist xmutes
Icy prism CD

Where do rare gems come from?
Saronite ore prospecting
Icy prism CD

Where do meta gems come from?
Alchemist xmutes

See the trend there? Oodles of people have excess honor and emblems now to turn into epic gems to sell cheap for a quick buck. Where as rare gems are very limited, primarily coming out of prospecting. And then there's meta gems with only a single source which is why I'm still able to sell them for 100g a pop... almost the price of an epic gem. So I'm going to be losing a bit of money on gems, but I'll still be recouping at least 90% of my losses which I can live with. I still have two stacks of each color left in wait for an increase in price.

I'm giving my competition the impression that I'm still fully in the market and keeping them cutting now worthless gems (mostly orange/red cuts) and camping me. That's the reason for still selling cut gems that have crashed and not stashing them as well as the raw ones. This way they'll be losing far more gold than I am and wind up with a huge stock of gems which they'll have to sell for at a loss. They'll still be selling in the mean time because they've "won" the AH fight but little do they know they're still losing without me even competing. I love that. As of this posting they're still selling a ton of gems for under material cost, both pre and post crash prices that is.

I'm also taking a much more hands on approach to epic gems which I'll be covering in another entry later on. Basically I'm manually checking the current prices of gems after raid time and crafting then, and just doing my normal cancel/post in the afternoon. Basically I'm spending a bit more time doing my evening auctions (about 20 minutes) to ensure that I'm not losing any money by crafting sub 100g gems while still making a good profit on the rest. It sure is funny to buy a raw gem for 90g, cut it, and resell for 180g. Makes me wiggle. So far this little bit of extra time is greatly paying off as I'm quickly moving a great number of my massive gem stash at a huge profit while I see others still cutting their losses at 100g sales. This is why it pays to pay attention. ya see wut i did thar. Hell that's a double pun dammit! That's some clever shit!

LW has been very good to me this week, as has blacksmithing. Both of their niche markets (bags and rods) have been picking up speed plenty as people are leveling new alts and therefore professions. Once this time of an expansion hits these are the markets you'll be seeing an increase in; raw materials and necessary trade goods. Sarontie bars are going up (by that I mean doubled in price) as will cobalt and all old world mats. So if you're thinking of putting a leveling kit together, now's the time before prices go up too much for it to be worth it.

I've also taken to selling the LW drums (of the wild and of forgotten kings). I tried this a while ago but they were always below material cost to the point that crafting one was a 40g loss. But since the fortitude scrolls from inscription are selling well with an acceptable profit I figured I'd revisit these. I looked on the AH and saw the drums listed for 180g each. Naturally I was skeptical, but since the scales they use (icy dragon and jormungar) weren't on the AH and usually aren't I crafted a pair of each. Sure enough, 30 minutes before the standard raid time of 9pm server I had sold them for over 100g profit on each sale. Holy shit. Time to add another few mats to my buying list. A few days later I sold another handful of drums so these are now standard inventory.

I finally managed to sell the ToC tanking chest and mail dps bracers. But I also sold yet another pair of dps plate and tailoring chest pieces and plate dps bracers. I probably am getting slow sales on the LW bracers as only two classes and specs can use them (hunters and enh shammys) and the tanking chest has only one spec and three classes that use it. While any plate classes can use the crafted bracers and any clothie can use the robes. So I've made up my losses and got about a 50g profit (if that, maybe a small loss) on the mail bracers and won't be making another set of them. I'll make another tank chest just to see if it was a slow week. I know that it's hard to get a tank geared enough to hold your own with so many people out gearing your blues so I can easily see that it's a viable market. We'll see if my thoughts stay that way.

Shortly after writing that I just sold another tanking chest for 3900g, heh. I also just got rid of another dps chest/bracers and am now out of titansteel. From now on I'll stop selling the titansteel bars raw and use them to make more of these ToC epics, but blade ward enchants will still come first. It's amazing how often they're selling and for over a thousand gold profit on each. Props to niche markets! I am once again in desperate need of saronite ore to turn into titansteel.

Enchanting is also starting to come down as more gear is being sharded instead of enchanted. People have collected off specs for alts and alts from toc by now and have less of a need for item enhancements. So due to that I'm slowing down my purchases of NR enchanting mats but I'll continue to stay stocked up on old world mats to help alts part with their gold. I'll still be keeping a good stock of greater cosmics as they always run out faster than crystals. A supply of unwanted epics is far more common than green weapons not being vendored or bound to non enchanters. BoA enchants have been exploding. I've sold almost a dozen caster enchants and almost 20 crusader enchants. So much so that I've raised my buying price of righteous orbs so I can keep up with the demand.

Buckles are on a very noticeable down turn, but I'll continue to craft those as their sales are still very consistent, just not for the insane profit I was making a few weeks ago. But when the prices of saronite go up so will the price of the buckles. So no matter what I'll be coming out ahead on this one. The prices of them have been yo-yo'ing up and down from 90g to 25g all week long. I set my undercut to 10g on the buckles and the threshold at 1g above material costs. Hopefully that'll take care of the campers and new commers.

Oddly enough, spellthreads are up! They're back to selling for 200g+ like when I first started to work that market. The same thing goes for netherweave bags, I'm getting up to 20g a piece which is more than triple the price of the cloth.

It also appears that the campers have eased off of glyphs again, but I'm still not going to raise the 7g price barricade for a while. I was also unable to take advantage most of the week because my glyphs got into a phase where they were expiring all at once and always after I was done handling that market. So most of the time I could've had some epic sales I had none up. I'm still making a great profit and that 1k+ per day isn't good enough for the campers so I'll ensure that it STAYS that way. After all it saves me time canceling and collecting 800 glyphs from the mail box heh.

Over all this has been a great week for profits and it's all due to my massive stokpiling of raw mats. There has been a massive shortage of materials for all professions. And by shortage I mean just that, there isn't even a stack of saronite ore on AH for 600g either, just all gone. So with a shortage in place, I obviously haven't been buying all that much so my weekly money going out has been nearly zero and it's all been spent on scraps of saronite and crusader orbs. I've finally managed to acquire enough at a decent price to have two of every ToC epic I can craft, 1 on AH and one laying in wait.

And lastly for the time being I have the only bakery in all of orgrimmar and am now selling cupcakes at 10g and they're selling like, well, hot cakes. I did it again! Damn I'm good!


Thanks for stopping by!