Sunday, March 6, 2011

Investments & Bracer enchants


With the new bracer enchants and me posting a loss on the recipe having only made back 3k or the 15 I spent I figured I should take today to talk about how I learned from my mistakes. One of the most important things in playing the AH is learning from your mistakes and not making up excuses. I screwed up on this investment and lost about 12k on it. Even though I can afford to that's not the point. In short I forgot one key piece of my own advice that I've given in the past. Do your homework!


As we all know, an investment is when you spend money now to make more money later. But what some tend to forget is that you have to actually use what you invested in to make the money back or else it's a loss. The simple example is you buy a raw inferno ruby for 100g and turn it into a brilliant inferno ruby. You just made a 100g investment and you have to sell that new cut gem for more than 100g to make a profit. If you just sold an enchant scroll for 500g but vendor the gem you still lost money on your investment.

When it comes to investing, it doesn't matter that you're making money. The important part is where that money is coming from. When you primarily invest in materials, it's a lot easier to make mistakes and not notice if/when you lose out on something because the same gem gets used for many different cuts. But when you buy a recipe for, oh I don't know, a 15k bracer enchant recipe, things take a turn. Here's the way it works.

You drop 15k on a recipe, be it a new bracer enchant or 30 spell power from MC. You now have a 15k investment on that enchant spell and ONLY that one enchant. All the money you make from every other enchant in your book has zero effect on your investment. So you need to sell that single enchant on a scroll or for tips enough times to make 15k profit on the materials. And once you have you -still- haven't made profit from it, you have only made back your initial investment. Yes you can still be in the black come the end of the week, But you still haven't made any profit from that investment what so ever.

This is why it's so important to diversify. Don't put all your gold in the same coin purse as it were. When you branch out into several different markets, you can afford to risk your gold on more investments. When one turns out to be a bad idea you'll still be turning a profit thanks to your steady cash flow from other professions. These investments are a necessity though, as you'll spend a year or five trying to hit the cap just safely doing daily quests and nothing more.

So what of the new bracer enchants? If you can pick them up for like 5k or so then I'd say go for it, but anything more and you'll be waiting a very long time to make your money back on them. However this is entirely dependent on your server population and progression. If you have many guilds regularly clearing content then there's a lot more gear that is "worth" putting this enchant onto and more crystals to be used on it. Unfortunately on my server horde side, there's only 2-3 big raid guilds and only one of them has cleared everything on normal mode.

Because of that these enchants won't be profitable on a scroll for some time to come. However if blizz keeps up with the "free purples for everybody" style the wait won't be too long if you bought one. When the next patch comes and everybody gets suited up in new purples they'll have a ton of points left over to spend on gear that will get DE'd into crystals which will drastically drop the price on them. In addition to that there will be a lot more "worthwhile" gear around that people can justify spending this much on enchanting.

With the new heroics dropping purples the price will be going down after a few weeks and people get "epics" for their 10 alts these will be worth visiting again. They might not be a viable market on a lot of servers still, but I'll be checking them out once prices bottom out again. However if there's another gear reset you can be assured that when that happens these will be much more valuable.

In short if you spend a ton on these, all is not lost. Just wait for crystals to drop a ton when the new heroics come out and you can make your money back. And always remember what you're investing in has to make profit or you have turned a loss. I don't expect to make my money back on that investment for at least another two months. But we all make mistakes and so long as we learn from them there's no reason to get down about it or have that scare you off from future risks and investments.


Thanks for stopping by!

9 comments:

  1. I took a 10k bath on my first strength bracer enchant. I skilled up on two scrolls but have yet to sell any (another 6k bath). That was a bust (so far).

    The mats are just too expensive.

    That didn't keep me from picking up the agility bracer enchant but this time I was able to pick it up off trade chat for 3.25k.

    If I can't flip the pattern I won't feel so bad if I end up learning it. All else my hunter will have the enchantyist bracers in town.

    Who knows. Maybe soneone with dreams of making a killing off my pattern will snatch it up.

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  2. Funny story. I just checked and one of my Enchant Bracer - Major Strength scrolls finally sold for 4082 (after ah cut). This is below current mat cost but at least I got my gold back out of it.

    At least one player on my server thinks it's worth it. One.

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  3. I'm not trying to sounded elitist or anything but did you guys try the maelstrom enchants everyone gets first? It took me 2 months to move a lavawalker and assassin's step. Even then I'm pretty sure after the AH cut I lost money. After that I swore off anything maelstrom for a long time. My logic is that anyone that needs it is going to have access to their own maelstroms and thus not be looking to buy an made enchant but rather pay a tip to a chanter to do it for them. So yeah I dropped good money on the metas but I laughed at anyone buying the bracer enchants. I'll wait till they are down to around 1000 for the plans then I'll invest. That will be right around the time they are starting to become in demand for premade scrolls anyway.

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  4. I bought all three scrolls. Will I make gold from them...who knows but my intent was more for personal access than anything else. The gold made from these is a sideline for me. The scrolls were 3-5k each. Spent 12k on them. I am waiting for cheaper maelstorms before making them.

    The same applies to the meta. I have 2 of the three new metas. Cost was 12k for the two of them. The third one is just too pricey as metas now sell for 200-300 regardless of cut.

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  5. @ Dale
    I didn't try the vendor recipes first because everyone technically had access to them. My thinking was people would be crazy over the uber rare stuff, but apparently they just didn't have the funds for them.

    @ Brent
    I did the same thing as well. I bought all the vendor recipes and recipes just so that I know I'll have them when prices come down. That's when profits will really be rolling on in.

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  6. Timely and informative as always. Thanks Stock.

    I very much agree that that 4.1 will increase demand for enchants that uses maelstorm crystals, for the reasons you mentioned. The next month or so would be an ideal time to stalk the AH for those formulas especially if you have an enchanting toon, since their price will likely go up in 4.1.

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  7. I bought all three bracer enchants for about 14k. I think of them as loooong term investments. I bought them knowing it would be weeks to months before they were profitable.

    I have had the maelstrom enchants up in the AH since I could. The advertisement value alone is worth it. I have made about 10k in tips, whispered to my bank toon. Maelstrom crystal prices are wild on my server ranging from 2k-4k through the week. Grabbing them up cheap and pricing accordingly has sold a few of these from the AH when the crystal prices are up. Sold a Landslide (26k) & an Assassin's Step (5k) on the weekend for 12k profit. These enchants sell slow, but I have made good profits from them.

    Patience is a virtue after all.

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  8. Two things to consider...

    One is that many buyers will compare the difference between the best and second-best bracer enchant, and discover that the cost difference doesn't justify that tiny dps increase they'd get from the new enchants.

    Second, already mentioned above, when it comes to something this expensive, most buyers will find an enchanter in chat with their own materials.

    In short, the profit is there for the taking, but not through the AH. This is my opinion, of course, but it's based on personal experience.

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  9. @ Anon & Michael
    You're both completely right in your comments, but let me simplify it all even further. Know your server.

    For anon, they know that there's a lot of people willign to tip a few hundred for an enchant. On my server if you even think about wanting more than 20g you're just some loser asshole dipshit that wants a million gold for clicking one button. Will never work on my server. I do like the point you added about the advertisement of it, I've had a bunch of tells during wrath for my agility twink enchants. I may consider doing this actually now that I'm thinking about it more.

    For Michael. You know what people on your server want; efficiency. They don't want to be the best or merely appear to be the best, which is the case for my server. They want to get by and not pay through the nose for it.

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