I actually lucked out today too and made 600g reselling a cheaply bought BoE epic. Yay for AH scanning - made about 1.3k over the past week, and I haven't done dailies since SSO exalted.

But for some actual content to this post, one thing that the badge gear appears to have done is driven the prices of [Heavy Knothide Armor Kit] through the roof on Stonemaul. Up from the usual 8g to 12-15g now, and the mat cost is under 5g. I had some stashed that I picked up cheap a while back, so I made some decent cash, but any LW who's caught on to the demand must be laughing. Also, cut gems have gone up slightly, and Large Prismatics have jumped 5g or so, but overall the Badge vendor impact has been fairly small. Interestingly enough, Void Crystals have gone up to about 50g from 25g pre-2.4, with Large Prismatics going for 30 or so, so it looks like those speculating on buying up cheap Voids lucked out.

Picked up some void crystals for 23g each a few days ago, and LPS are now selling for 33g and rising. Heh.

I cannot even imagine 15 badges translating into 200g worth of anything. Most of us on Stormrage already have the badge gear we want. Sure, some people have wish lists a mile long, but no one who's raiding. And yet, we get 30-40 badges a week (Hyjal, BT, ZA, insert-instance-name here).

What, exactly, are we going to do with those badges? Buy gems and vortexes is what I'll be doing. And popping them on the AH probably the moment the week's raid cycle is done.

Looking at 40ish badges per week, that's 4 epic gems on the AH. There are about 8 guilds progressed as deeply as mine. That's 800 epic gems per week (8 guilds x 25 people = 200 people x 4 gems). And, really, what else are we doing with those badges? The prices of epic gems are going to crater. Ditto vortexes. Ditto nethers. How can they not? I can't move Mideci's badges to another toon. But I can liquidate them weekly and turn them into gold.

In fact, if 10 badges per epic gem is true -- and I can't see why it wouldn't be as epic gems are hardly upgrades over rare gems despite people's obsession around them -- it's hard to imagine epic gems selling for much above 100g. Perhaps that's too high. What that does to rare pricing -- and adamantite -- should be obvious.

I'd love to believe that raid is going to make me 400g per week, but boy that feels too good to be true.

I second that from Stormrage. The only people that will be buying the epic gems from the AH are the alts or terrible players that can't get the gems from raiding. I know I don't need to buy a single epic gem, since our guild supplies them all for any piece obtained in a raid. Even guilds less progressed will have an easy time obtaining the gems without buying them off the AH. My stash of 350 badges has to go somewhere, and liquidating it into cash via gems and vortexes is really the only reasonable solution. Perhaps send some to an alt or two, but that is still less of a benefit to me than selling them. Even if the prices drop to 50g per gem / vortex, it is still more worth it to sell.

Until we can repair or buy consumables with badges, this conversion will be the standard for many with a minimum of 52 badges per week. Those with enough time on their hands can now obtain 405 badges per week outside of 25-man raids. Throw those (other than Sunwell, that isn't on farm for anyone yet) in and 453 is possible. Not the most efficient form of farming, but it does show the massive influx of badges available. Gem and vortex prices will plummet, but they will still be the only reasonable method of use for a large population of end-game raiders.

"terrible players", huh? Well I suppose full-time raiders need to call us casuals something.
The hard thing about being casual and at the same time concerned about your DPS output is how much gold you have to put in to increase it, and as we all know... time is gold. But I digress.

I for one hope the prices of epic gems will fall. Well, I think we can all foresee that change with the gem vendor. The cuts, however, will still need all those full-time raiders who happens to be JCs. Profits, then, should rise at least a bit for Org (and SW/IF I guess) idlers.

My apologies if that was perceived as a slight against those of you here. I mean to refer to those individuals who have yet to grasp the basics of the game enough to function properly in any of the game's environments, and thus have no chance at obtaining enough badges or gems through normal means. Those of you here play a different game within the world that is Warcraft than most, and indeed, are probably some of the best players there are.

The cuts is a good point, it will indeed serve to help keep prices from tanking to far, as the selection of gem cutters that can cut a portion of the gems will remain a small segment of the population.

I want your Crimson Spinel droprates.

If you allow everyone that wants red gems to get them, you'll have to be pretty lucky not to run into a shortage. If you have a shortage, there's incentive to buy. If you don't allow everyone to get red gems, you're not optimizing your gear, and again there's incentive to buy.

I know I'll be turning in badges for personal gems once the vendor turns up.

Badge vendor opened on AP last night. I was primarily playing the leg enchant market and have had modest success so far. Golden Spellthread seems to have been the big winner - sold all I had at 450g. I've had a couple Nethercleft/Nethercobra sales, but not as many as I had thought. Runic spellthread is barely up (was 135g, now is 150g). What I have made the most money on is primals and other mats for the leg enchants. Selling those probably didn't help my finished product market, but I saw it as much less risky and it kind of goes both ways as my high priced leg enchants probably served to encourage people to pay more for the mats than they otherwise might. If you are going to play a market - might as well try to play the entire vertical supply chain as well. One very successful method for moving primals was to sell them in stacks needed for the enchants (ie. 8 airs, 8 earths, 10 lifes, 10 manas).

Probably the most surprising thing for me was that primal nethers have not moved in price at all. The past week the market on them was very tight, often only one or two in the AH for 90-100g (and me being the jackass with one listed at 200g). To me it seemed like it was primed to get a big spike on vendor day, but today there is a full page of them with many still at the 90-100g price. Without a spike in nether prices, people will continue to just make their own leg enchants I imagine.

We'll see how things go this weekend when all the casuals flood in. Not sure if the primal nether market will dry up yet or if even more people will be dumping their stockpiles.

Still, between the rep requirements (which are minimal for those with time enough to do the dailies) and the gold requirements (50g a pattern? Ouch. I certainly wouldn't be picking up the more unusual cuts.) along with needing a 375 JC- I think the cuts will be rare *enough* to manage to keep a basic cutting fee. Jewelcrafters seem to be thinning out a bit among the main raiders as well. It came as a complete surprise when a BoP JC pattern dropped in our sunwell raid last week and we realized that our last regular jewelcrafter was out of town (All the others had dropped it for leatherworking or alchemy and thus I became a 375 JC overnight =/). It's not that it's a bad profession, more that it tends to get shuffled off on alts when min maxing since the raiding advantage of the bop gems isn't quite as strong as other options.

The number of cutters will rise but, frankly, there's room for more cutters and it won't get too out of hand, imo.

I think it may very well depend on the server - 8 guilds with BT on farm does not seem like the norm. My server is highly populated and 70% alliance. Despite that, we only have one guild with BT on farm. We have 5 other guilds mid way through BT and a couple others just getting in with the attunement requirements lifted but none of those will be sellers of high demand gems for a while yet. Spinels are simply not available on our server's AH and when someone does manage to ninja one or something, it gets listed at ridiculous prices. The badge gear is still in high demand for a huge number of people and the people with extra badges will be fairly limited. True, spinels will flood onto the market the second that vendor goes live, but I do not forsee 100g spinels for months yet.

Vortexes are going for 250g a 300g on my server. And why would I not pay that? A belt of blasting sells for 1350g a 1500g. Crafting a belt by buying two vortexes and the other materials is still giving me a 300g a 400g profit.

Most people will save the badges for badge loot and most of them will never have enough badges to buy all the badge gear they want. So you can choose between either getting a bit of gold or getting some of the best loot you can get. Shouldn't be a surprise that most people take the loot.

You just seem to forget that players who get 40 badges that they can only use for gold are a small minority. Or of course, I'm just on the wrong server.

More on topic, large prismatic shards on my server are still close to 30g. Makes crafting and disenchanting [Pattern: Arcanoweave Bracers] into a profitable business again as the prices of arcane dust have hardly risen. I have also been making a small profit bycrafting [Khorium Power Core] for a while now. It's an item needed for a quest and noone seems to craft them.

Someone just mentioned Khorium Power Core, one of my favorite little items.

I think we can define a class of items where a) the mats exist in great quantity, b) people use 1 every once in a while, c) the recipe to combine the mats is pretty common among that profression. I'd say (depending on the size of your server) this includes: Khorium Power Core,
Felsteel Stabilizer
Adamantite Tube
All spellthreads and leg armors
Meta-gems and their cuts
Rods for enchanting

Depending on the size of your server, your AH could often simply have none of these items up. So obviously all these items can make you some profit.

I think it is very important to note (and key to making 100% to 200% profit) to post all of these one at a time, and preferably when no other ones are up.

Every once in a while I see someone post 3 or 4 items of these at once, at a much lower price than mine, and then they never post again. What's happening of course is that these items are very price-inelastic. People don't need them frequently, but when they do they need them a LOT. So you're unlikely to sell 4 Khorium Power Cores in a week even at 40g, but it's pretty easy to sell 1 at 75g. Unfortunately people who post a lot at the same time end up eating some bad AH-fees, and are convinced that no one must buy this item. The key is patience, and checking frequently to see if it is a good time to put another one up.

On Ursin, LPS via [Pattern: Arcanoweave Bracers] becomes more and more of a gold mine every day. At 2.4, I could buy a stack of arcane dust for 21-22g buyout. A week after 2.4, it was down floating near 18-19g, and a couple days ago I checked and there were at least 7 or 8 stacks at 14g buyout. Doing most of the dailies on 3 characters can provide enough cloth and dust for 1 or 2 shards a day, plus 2 shards from the void shatter, I'm steadily building up my supply. In the event that my supply runs out faster than I expect (we're closing in on the Anvil... hurray low population!), current reports have shown not a drastic increase in dust costs (and I would assume cloth too), so I can always churn out more.

I make a killing with these amazing little bracers. I buy up any stacks of dust under 15g and the needed amount of netherweave cloth for <3g a stack. I can usually find enough to make 15-20 bracers a day. With shard prices running 23-28g you can net about 10g profit per shard. Nearly 200g a day for 20 minutes worth of buying mats, crafting, and DEing before raids is a pretty good deal.

I keep waiting for this shard bubble to burst, but it hasn't come yet. It has been a very reliable source of gold for a long time and it has become even better with 2.4.

Has anybody had any experience selling loot from Doomwalker and Kazzak now that it is BOE? Price points, etc?

I saw [Ripfiend Shoulderplates] on the AH last week for 2.4k on Kalecgos. I can imagine that we will be seeing a bit more of this loot, but wow, people are trying to price gouge for those items for sure.

We killed Doomwalker with 12 people (t6-geared tank, a couple t6-geared healers, some t6 DPS and some hangers-on) and the Talon of the Tempest sold for 2.1k. (Simple gold from the boss was 40g per person too.)

We had a [Ring of Flowing Light] from Doom Lord Kazzak that sold for 750g in trade chat. Seems ok for a 20man kill with an alliance druid cycloning our MT so we resorted to a 2 tank tactics... fun

To be clear, we have 2 guilds done with BT essentially, 3 guilds fully on farm, 2 guilds more or less mashing through on the way to Illidan, and 2 more guilds not far behind. I'd call us middle of the pack.

If the post below yours is true and spinels really somehow stay above 200g, well, then the inflation on Stormrage promises to be ungodly. Because those of us in raiding guilds are going to make literally thousands of gold for showing up. And if we want, say, a stack of ragveil and it's 60g or not, we're going to pay it.

We've been almost monopolising Kazzak and Doomwalker since 2.4.

You can easily 15 man or less them in T6. We've got a very very large queue for some of the items and the prices we get for the drops are very worthwhile. The caster dagger goes for 2k+ as well as several other choice options. The 20 minutes effort it takes to get a group together and kill them both results in 200-500g each depending on what drops.

Well there's a lot of factors that are going to go into why epic gem prices won't bottom out.

1. While high end raiding guilds that are progressing through BT don't really need much badge gear. . .everyone else does. Thus, if you're in a rinky dink guild just doing Kara and half of ZA every week, you're going to have a HUGE list for what you want to get from the badge vendor. It's going to take you months just to get what you need for your main spec, and if you want to gear some off-specs, even longer.

2. People that are progressing through high end content don't necessarily have all the gems they need anyway. Yeah, if you've had Illidan on farm since summer of last year, sure. On Stormrage only 2 guilds finished Illidan anytime other than recently in the past few months. That means people are still looking at gear upgrades from BT and thus, they'll need their own spinels, etc. that they might not be getting from their guild.

3. People have TONS of ways to make EASY money nowadays in WOW. I can spend 1 1/2 hours doing easy dailies that will net me around 200g, plus greens to DE, etc. On the other hand, a full ZA run would take, what. . .anywhere from 3-4 hours and I'd net 12 badges, why waste those badges on gems to sell when I could save them or set myself up to change specs depending on what my guild needed? Even at 200g a gem it just won't be profitable enough and people won't see the need.

Unlike the people in this thread, most folks don't care about making a crap ton of gold. I talked to a buddy the other day and he asked me how much gold I had. I said, on this toon I have about 20k gold and all my stuff I prepared for the badge vendor opening hasn't even sold yet. He was flabbergasted. He couldn't understand why I'd bother wasting any time at all making gold when I had that much. He told me he was sitting at around 1500 and that as long as he had enough for consumables and repair bills and the random enchant on his upgrades he was fine.

That's the reason we won't see epic gem prices bottom out. They have easy ways to make money everyday and wasting badges to make money when they can go to moar phat lewts! will keep people from tossing up loads of them on the AH. Will the gem prices drop? Sure. You aren't going to see anything going for 400g+ anymore. People just won't pay that price when they can go get the gems themselves. However, enough people aren't going to be keeping the market flooded for them to hit like 50g apiece or whatever.

The huge tell for this is how the nethers and vortexes worked once 2.4 came out. At the first the market got flooded. Nethers were down to like 20-30g or something ridiculous. People bought them up, used them, and folks ran out of badges. Now on my realm there's always less than 10 on the market and they're anywhere from 100-150g. Similar story with the Vortexes. My guess is that the same thing happens with gems. A bunch will get dumped early and they'll get ridiculously cheap. Then the supply will dry up a bit, prices will go up, and you'll have a few top level guilds trying to provide all the epic gems for people that have more money than time. Prices will level out anywhere from 100-200g and stay there.

However, you are right on one point, rare gems are gonna tank. Being a JC is absolutely worthless now. Prospecting ore? Have fun with that when someone can spend an hour doing all their dailies and buy a spinel off the AH or just wait for a Kara run.

Well considering on SR you can still turn a vortex into 300-400g gold (200 if you're really lazy), I don't see why you have a hard time imagining it. Most people aren't going to be buying vortexes/gems with badges, because most people don't obtain enough badges to even get all the real gear the vendor has for them.