Only in a patch where the loot table/contents of a container are altered, or in this case, 2.4.2.

Actually, if it is just the levelling of jewelcrafting you are concerned with (because maybe you want access to some of the new trinkets?), Talasite cutting might just be the way to go. Sure, the cut gems sell for hardly anything - but the raw gems hardly cost you anything either. :P If you buy the Steady talasite recipe off the Halaa vendor, I'm sure you can lots of cheap levelups that way. Steady talasite occasionally sells too.

As for the popular cuts (the ones I get asked to do): Runed living ruby, Delicate living ruby, (Teardrop living ruby), Glowing nightseye, Royal nightseye, Shifting nightseye, Solid star of Elune, Great Dawnstone, Rigid Dawnstone, Veiled noble topaz, Glinting noble topaz, really none of the Talasites, and Relentless Earthstorm diamond.

Oddly, I've been able to sell [Cobra Scales] recently for close to 50g each. During the last predicted boom time (SSO badge vendor), scales were selling in the 20g range.

My only explanation is a shortage of skinners farming the scales, dropping the supply well below the baseline demand of alts, twinks, and slow levelers. When Arena S4 comes out, the skinners might come out in full force again, flooding the market and dropping the average price. Or perhaps there are far more honor-point hoarders who will buy epic leg armors for their S2 legs, in comparison to the number of skinners. Though it's hard to imagine that the price could go well above 50g, since that would motivate people to dust off their skinning alts.

On the subject of alts, does anyone have an estimate of how many L70 alts each endgame player has? From my experience in casual raiding guilds, it seems like:

30%: just their main, 0 additional L70's
50%: 1 L70 alt
10%: 2 L70 alts
10%: 3+ L70 alts

On average that works out to more L70 alts than mains. Many of those alts are probably used for gathering and crafting, providing a buffer against price spikes.

I must say... loving the fact that that epic gem market is still flourishing on my server.

I don't do any dailies/farming/AH re listing at all anymore.... I just take my badges from weekly raiding and trade them in for epic gems and sell those.

Its still 300g for a Crimson Spinel... so with a kara run + regular MH/BT I can get 2 or 3 epic gems a week.... or 600-900g a week by doing absolutely nothing.

Thats enough for me to pay for raid consumables AND save up for my epic flyer (yes, no epic flyer yet).

So far I've gone from ~200g to 2400g since the epic gem vendor has been released

Yeah, I don't get this at all. And yet it's true. We're about 3+ weeks in and the epic gems are 300+. They were 400+ (still might be in some cases?) until just days ago. We did Gruul/Mag and two heroics the other night and I cleared something like 650g, including the daily quest reward, the gem, the shards and the boss gold. It's completely insane.

Even at 200g, this gravy train should be worth another 15000g before Wrath, assuming the ability to sell about 75 more gems. I am doing ridiculous things like giving my warlock alt +30 spell damage staff/+20 spell damage gloves/+35 spell damage pants at lvl 1.

I've made tons of gold simply buying BOE blues (which sometimes sell for 15g) and sharding them. Shards are around 20g on my server, so it's an easy way to make cash from the AH.

Buying blues and selling the shards is a new and exciting way of making gold in World of Warcraft, and it most definitely should be discussed at length in this thread. Of particular interest is how much can be made on each individual server using this truly original and creative means of profiteering.

Can people please only post if the suggestion hasn't already been made in the previous 20 pages. This thread has gone from quite interesting to a dozen different ways of saying "me too" and comparing prices for <item> in between moaning about the apparent uselessness of Talasite. I'm willing to bet that few people want to know how much a Spinel will go for on 150 different servers, one more discussion on the cost effectiveness of farming kara for badges to sell a lousy gem may irreparably damage my already fragile mind.

Comparing actual original* ideas = good.

Comparing actual prices = not good.








*By original I mean not already posted about 5 times. Or even alluded to**

**This also means that saying "buying ITEM A cheaply and sharding it" and "making ITEM X and sharding it" are the SAME thing.

Well, it's certainly not new, I even did it pre TBC. But it's good, sure is
Before the LPS market crashed on most servers, it was awesome. I haven't tried it since.

Proof that sarcasm does not translate well over the internet.

One thing I do is Stealth Heroic MgT. In all, it takes us about 30 minutes and it yields us 4-6 badges (if daily) each, 5-10 Void Crystals, a primal nether and the possible Epic Mount/Phoenix. I'm thinking that it may be possible to 4 man the PvP group and then we could try and sell the trinket to possible buyers (would be a gamble but who knows, someone might pay).

Not a huge money maker, but something stealthers can do when bored. 3 rogue, 2 druid works best. 4 rogues could work if you had a rogue with high avoidance and high arcane resist.

I can't wait until we get some more information on inscription. I wasn't fully prepared for for JC come expansion, and ended up spending too much to hit the 300 mark. However, it proved to be an insanely profitable investment, even though I was so far behind.

Going into the expansion with 10k gold and enough materials to powerlevel inscription to 375+ immediately should prove extremely profitable, since you'll be able to buy up any and all recipes available. Being the first person on the server to 375+ inscription, especially if you are the only one with best-in-slot patterns, means you can make enormous profit margins. Jewelcrafting was extremely lucrative in the first two months of TBC release (you could literally buy raw gems off the AH for 20-30g, cut and mark them up 300%). I would be extremely surprised if inscription does not have the same or an even better ROI.

If you are a hardcore instance runner and pick up any new BOP or rep-based inscription patterns as well, you'll have even more of a stranglehold on the market. Of course, there may be no BOP inscription patterns from 80 instances meaning you could just put the profession on an alt. JC took this route until bt/hyjal recipes and some rep-based metas.

I think the problem with inscription is, that once you have a best-on-spell inscriptions at level 80, you'll never have to replace it ever again. Gear is being replaced all the time and the demand on gems is alot bigger because of that.

Excepted if they decide to give inscriptions a Time to Live (like the seasonal rewards, for example), or something like that. It might not be the case, but if they dont I expect the profession to either die quite fast; Or be picked up by raiders only, like Leatherworking, if it offers some insane BoP stuff. If the second option is the one they use, you would make more benefit by selling the stuff to level the profession instead of leveling it yourself.

They could just make more incriptions drop than JC patterns if they want to increase its lifespan. In that regard it could be treated as a new "item" from the dungeon rather than an enchant.

I can't get over how profitable Legion Hold warlocks have become again. SSO dailies have made Scryer rep drops bottom out, and Aldor rep drops skyrocket. On Elune, Marks are selling for 1.5-3g per, depending, and Fel Armaments are selling for 30 gold. Even blowing 100g to respec for a few hours of farming (from restoration to enhancement) nets me thousands of gold. I'm easily making 400g+ per hour, even with one or two other people there. These prices have held for WEEKS.

The problem with an online auction site is the same reason why very few people actually use the "bid" feature on the AH...everybody wants instant gratification. Very few people are going to have the patience to actually bother going onto a separate website, coordinating a sale, waiting for the seller's bank alt to log on and CoD an item, etc.

I would think that such a system could possibly work for rare and high-priced goods (over 1k range), but for the vast majority of auctions, this would be impractical.

Why use online auction sites when you could code a mod that would essentially do the same ?
Imagine a mod thats split 2 ways - you're either an auctioneer or a buyer. Try to picture here a glorified list of 'heres what I want and how much I'm willing to pay for' and a list of 'heres what I have and my sell price'. Then the mod would just link you to the proper player, so you can open trade/COD and whatnot.

I suppose what you're advocating is the use of a Trade channel that doesn't allow anyone to actually speak. (the main problem with that barrens-esque pile of garbage that I'm forced to /leave on every new character) Just a mod that does the back and forth. Which is quite a brilliant idea, really. This isn't done already?!

Well yeah, you make a dedicated channel, something like, for example, the channel 'auctioning', all the data sent to that channel is basically automated stuff. Try and view it a bit like an IRC chat, with bot commands (as in: the underlying work done behind the hood). You need an item ? '!search "item name" 2g3c1s', then everyone in the channel that runs the mod and has the item you search will reply to you. You could probably also support a simple syntax to list all items available from one seller, so that if you want the extensive list of everything you would simply message individually everyone in the channel '!listitems'.

You need a gui for it. I've used irc fserv and ctcp a lot in the past (still use it to download ebooks) but as simple as it is, because it's all sort of command-line, I could get anyone I know to use it no matter how much I explained. But what you could do is code a GUI that will look much like the AH window that performs the functions you mentioned in the background. Get it to mimic the AH as much as possible (with the exception of point of sale of course) and you can get wide adoption.

And then there's the question of if you want wide adoption. The items aren't physically up there like the blizzard AH. Nothing's to stop the kiddies from scamming or spoofing in some way. But limiting users would also limit your marketplace. If only smart people use this system then they won't be paying the prices you can get by playing the AH and you might just make more money on the old AH even accounting for the 10% tax.

Which is to say, it sounds like it would create more problems than it solves.

Awesome idea - except for the 'channel.' It would have to be something a user couldn't /join and poison with crap typed in.

It almost sounds like what people are asking for is the old marketplace/bazaar designs of previous MMO's where you park your character, idle, in some area and people can wander through and browse/purchase as they want.