JC: Rare vs Epics

Jewelcrafting is all about volume like anything else. The AH for epic gems usually looks like this:

Uncut:
1 @ 180
1 @ 190
2 @ 200
10 @ >200


Cut:

1 @ 190
10 @ >190

So you can see there is exactly one gem you can cut and make 10g which probably does not even cover the AH fee. This is again a typical setup. Now, you may have every pattern known to man and be able to cut than one or two gems and sell for 250, but those gems move poorly. Since these gems sell for alot the AH cut is high, and margins are razor thin. I still move a few epics but generally they aren't worth your time.

The serious money is in rare gems. Shh. Don't tell anyone I said that.

Rare gems typically look like this.

Uncut: 40 @ 8g
Cut: lowest is 30g.

So post 5-10 at 29g, and reap that 20g profit (1g AH fee, approx). That's each. I typically move 50 gems every day, about 20g profit each, and buy full stacks when I see them cheap. Since I buy in volume I typically can wait until I get a good deal, unlike epics, whose volume is very low. I'm pretty small time, I only have maybe a dozen rare and epic cuts, the more common/popular ones. I would rather have stuff that sells well than stuff that never sells but may give a nice profit for that one that does sell.

Going for the gold cap

Decided I would try to push for gold cap. Inscription still sells, now on both alliance and horde servers, in around the same quantity and average price. On a good day its 1000g gross. I anticipate things will die down now that the holidays are over. Jewelcrafting is still huge, and the ilvl 245 bracers sell (4 on alliance server (higher pop), 1 on horde server). That's 1000g profit each (but keep in mind the cost of buying the pattern - 1-2k).

Its somewhat amazing the difference that JC brings. My set ups are otherwise identical on both servers, 3 bankers for inscription, some other random junk like patterns. On horde side a month ago I had 20k or 10k or something. I now have 60k. On alliance side I had 10k and now have 25k or something close to that. Epic gems are again mostly a waste of time; they are nice for your personal/guild use, but very little profit due to small volume of affordable cut gems.

Post 3.3

Just a short update.

I didn't really stockpile much in the way of mats pre 3.3; I have some enchanting mats that are still sitting there, and I have some small amounts of other things. I did unleash all the epic gems i was saving (those I didn't put in the guild bank), and made some nice change on those. I'll try to keep that up, and maybe even start doing the JC daily again.

Inscription. Inscription is huge right now on one server and completely dead on the other. On one I make 1k a day right now, and on the other maybe 100g. Same methods, same posting schedule, just that one server has the idea that 5g for each glyph is cool. Well yeah that's sorta profitable, but not really. I decided to get out of that market, I am not going to waste hours of my day for 100g. So i'll sell off my stock, and turn to other areas which will be more profitable.

Enchanting scrolls. Yeah, they are selling, not in huge numbers but definately 1-2 a day. I'll have to make more. This is probably the best source for revenue right now, that and enchanting mats themselves.

Overall there hasn't been huge movements on the market like i'd expect. For one, as my wife noted, its going to take a while to get upgrades. I ran 3 heroics of the new instances, no drops yet, and 3 normal modes, ditto with lack of drops. So its just going to take time. I know there are great things in those loot tables that my toons need, but just haven't seen it yet.

Update:
A week later and epic gems are getting expensive, but not much profit for most cuts. So the raw materials keep going up in price while the cuts remain just above that. So not a ton of money in that market right now. I think the smart JC would have every pattern and only cut what both is moving and is expensive. Hard to do. I only sell the stuff that moves because I don't have many patterns. Inscription is on fire, I am having a hard time finding enough materials to keep in stock. There aren't alot of farmers on this server, or they dont post on the AH. So supply is a constant problem. If i am not buying every day I would run out of glyphs.

So far I'm only up to 20k after buying a bunch of epic patterns and some orbs. I'm starting to get into selling ulduar and TOC craftables for alts, I think there is a strong market but only if the orbs are cheap. People aren't going to spend 5k per item on alts, but 2k? I would gladly spend that much for a 245 level item which is better than what I can get with any sort of PUGing.

Update 2:

Up to 30k now, I'm not entirely sure how much of that is profit. Epic gems are not really moving fast, but rare gems are with a very nice profit margin. However getting low-cost rare gems is a challenge, with saronite being so high. Those prices will drop though. I justt need to find shufflers who are willing to get rid of their rares for cheap. Epic gems are sky high, but just not moving that quickly. Maybe too rich for most people. I'm sure if I had more cuts I could move them faster. Inscription still doing great, still supply issues. Made 10k from inscription alone so far in about two weeks. Nice steady profit.

Enchanting

I think enchanting is going to be big for 3.3, so I am doing an experiment into the profession as a serious scroll provider. I put 3k in mats into it, so we'll see what happens. More later.

Tips for a happy goblin

Okay, i suppose I should actually offer some useful advice. Well, nobody can really know your market.

So with that in mind.

1) Know what professions you have, get them to max level. For example inscription can make glyphs, cards, vellum, and has two cooldowns. All three areas can be profitable, and make sure to burn your CDs every day.

2) Know your market. I finally figured out what works best for time vs money in my market, which was completely different from my previous market. Every market has a profit for you somewhere.

3) Use tools like QA2, KTQ, etc. QA2 saves me TONS of time when its probably configed, much better than auctioneer for some purposes (but auc does so many things QA2 cant touch).

4) Keep probing! Look for new markets. The tried and true (ie saronite shuffle, glyphs), may or may not work on your server.

5) Know your mat prices! For example. For the longest time I thought, well the heck with snowfall, i'll just buy the stuff like goldclover and tandera's rose. But they dont give many snowfalls, and are about 80% of the cost of lichbloom/icethorn. Now that I actually use the snowfalls I can't keep them in stock long enough to make useful stuff. So icethorn/lichbloom is actually cheaper than the rest of the herbs. But not as plentiful, right. So guess what. Farm the other stuff from scholozar if you want to farm, and sell it on the AH. That's right, sell it. You can get the same amount of money (or very similiar) as the higher herbs, which are actually much more useful to you.

6) Undercutting. Do you need to be the lowest guy? Sometimes yes, but in hot markets you can go a few above, unless the guy at the bottom has 28 stacks.

7) Know your timing of market. Every market is cyclic. I looked at arctic fur prices saturday, they were 120g each. I looked at them again sunday morning, a few at 80g. Enough to make a leg armor and get 80g profit off it. Dont look once and see the market isn't profitable, this is a rookie mistake. Look for a few weeks. Know whos selling.

8) Is it a monopolized market? If so its not as profitable as other markets. You may have your work cut out for you if you want to enter that market. If it's a monopolier, friends that guy on each of your toons. As soon as he logs out, repost all your stuff.

9) Post often. For tight markets you are undercut within the hour. So don't bother listing for more than 12 hours, have a nice stack, just login, post using QA2, log out. It's just a few minutes. I estimate for every time I login and repost I make 100g. It has nothing to do with the length of posting merely the timing. Also definately post before, during, and after the busy period (6pm, 9pm, 12pm)

10) Look in trade, have deep pockets. This is something I learn every day. There is always a soruce of revenue in trade.

a) For example, the same guy who sold me furs for half the going rate is the same guy selling ilvl 200 epics at inflated prices. One is a good deal, the other not so much.

b) Some people sell epic gems by the bulk, or ti ore. I once spent 3000g on ti ore before 3.2 hit, in one blow (or was it less, i can't recall). Make sure you have enough space and deep enough pockets you that you can buy these opportunities. Last night someone was selling red epic gems for 125g x 7. I bought all 7, thats about 1000g. Alot of dough, but you make 50g per cut or so.

c) Mr Enchant leveler. I gave him 10g + vellum per enchant. He gets 15 skill points, I get 20g each in profit. We're both making out on the deal.

There is *always* someone in trade who just wants to get rid of stuff and wants cold hard cash right now. That's your sucker.

11) Speculation/Gambling (don't touch your seed corn). Now alot of goblins do speculating on the next patch,and that's what makes the real PVP game fun (which is the economics). But most of us have no clue what's really going to happen because we dont think like a herd. Somethings are really obvious, for example Ti ore in 3.2. But how many foresaw the glyph explosion in 3.1? And what about 3.3? The saronite - Ti bar CD is being removed. What will that do? This is gambling, folks. Don't spend all your money gambling then bitch that you have no capital. ALWAYS HAVE SEED CAPITAL. Without this, you can't do anything. You cant buy those great deals in trade. You can't buy your mats. For me this level is at least 5k.

12) Farmers. Great goblins have deals with farmers, to get lower prices than AH, and a reliable income stream.

Life on a new server

So after many many tactics, I decided on the best one for my situation. 4g minimum, 20g max, if anything is below 4g, don't post. Sure enough 2/3 of the glyphs are below my minimum profit. I decided I just can't be bothered with the small time. Not when my glyph costs are 3g up to 5g. (excluding snowfall sales). It's much more profit/hour this way, no more making two zillion glyphs and getting no profit for them. There are still a handful of glyphs that sell which allow me a nice market.

Also diversity is really the key. The glyph golbin wasn't everywhere. In fact armor vellum sells just as well as all glyphs and has a good profit margin to boot. Darkmoon cards are a good bet, I've already made my investment back and then some. When DMF comes I'll have a few decks.

What else? Heavy borean armor kits sell like hot cakes, with 5-10g profit from each. I can't keep them in stock enough. Random enchants do well. Some guy was giving away nice enchants for free so I gave him 10g and armor vellum, he made 10 random upper-vanilla enchants for me. Not huge profits but say 20g each. Of course there's the tradition pets and old world recipes. All in all my main banker has 4.5 k and the glyph toons have 1000g total (the one w/ DK, hunter, paly, druid has 900g and the other has 100g). That says that a) Glpyhs are still a huge investment for not much reward, and b) some glyphs with popular classes sell much better than other classes, like 10-fold better.

At this point I'm mostly out of stock so I'll have to take a look to see where I can find a new market. Most people have some profitable way to make DE mats via JC or tailoring. Or have a alchemist for better gold making. I may level a DK to 65 and start grinding out alchemy, which is a huge profit (and I was an idiot to drop I think, but a) its easy as hell to level and b) I was bored with it).

I read all these posts about inscriptionists making 10k gold per week on glyphs, that may be true if a) you have deep pockets, b) you have a means of getting inks (no milling) very cheap, c) if you have all the glyphs, d) most important, you are willing to SIT THERE and camp the AH every single night. For the rest of us, in tight servers, it's not happening. Even Markco is saying that he doesn't make glyphs any more, there isn't a point. The new market for my money has to be flasks, it's a guaranteed profit and you can really do well.

Coexisting in the inscription market

Lets face it, you probably aren't the only person in the market trying to make a living selling glyphs. From what I learned, there are several groups of people in this market.

1) Is the AH stalker. You can't get rid of him. he's been there forever, and camps the AH 5 hours a day. Do your best to undercut whatever he is selling, by using auctioneer - search - general - and type in his bank toons name. This is the worst guy to get rid of. The worst part about this guy is the constant undercutting. You can either crash the market or just go about your business as normal, and look for other avenues of profit. You can crash the market and he'll happily stay there, losing money on every glyph, to try and get rid of you.

2) The casual seller. This guy may post a few times a day for selected markets. Probably doesn't have everything. Not a real threat to your business

3) The QA market dominator. Makes every glyph possible, and blasts out several or dozens of each glyph. The best thing to do is is to undercut with one or two glyphs. Then he'll have to repost hundreds of glyphs, which takes a very long time. Buy up those glyphs that he sells at a loss. Know what glyphs this guy doesnt have and charge 30-50g for them.