If one is to change server, any tips on what goods to do a pricecheck on?

I don't have a good insight in all the professions, and I'm wondering if anyone have tips on "hot" goods that may have a good price difference on two servers.

I have sorted out a few of the cheap goods that I'll buy in some quantity, but I wonder if anyone has tips on the big things, because that's where the real profit lies.

What about BOE crafts, rings, weapons armor?

What about cards, decks, do these move fast enough that its a safe buy?

My priority has always been gear, then gold to spend on mounts and other things.

One way I make gold is mill herbs for the cards on my friend's toon.

However, if I use my own toon which is the usual case, I buy a few stacks of Saronite Ore off the AH for about 17-24G on my server (Wildhammer). Then, I prospect it and sell the gems on the AH. Usually, it is still a profit for me if I only sell the few Scarlet Rubies I receive for about 85-90G each.

To revisit the alchemy transmute thing from a few pages back, transmute spec is certainly far better now than it used to be when every transmute was on cooldown. Multiple times now, i've taken a stack of eternal air, 2 stacks of green gems, and come out with 30-35x Skyflare Diamond. Mail them off to a JC friend to cut into half Chaotic, half Ember, and sell them regularly on the AH for 100g each or more. Pay the friendly JC a couple hundred gold for his time.

Assuming about 20g per Air, and 20g per stack of Bloodstone/Chalcedony, you pay 440g for 3k gold worth of meta gems.

A lot of people have been commenting about excess competition and shrinking profit margins in crafting professions lately.

I remember that BC went through the same cycle a couple of months after release. Everybody has maxed out crafting professions and the demand for goods was limited. The lack of new raid content or new arena seasons has suppressed demand. With an oversupply of crafters the price of raw materials becomes the only constraint on price. Crafting profit margins get squeezed on all but the rarest goods.

Some suggestions for surviving this "WOLK Recession".

- Integrate vertically. Combine complimentary crafting and gathering professions such as mining/blacksmith or herbalism/alchemy. Take full advantage of having multiple alts. This will ensure that you have a profitable profession whenever pricing power shifts between gatherer and crafter.

- Lock in clients and squeeze out the AH. Create supply relationships where you COD goods directly to your clients. Not only does this ensure a steady supply of business, it also eliminates the Auction House cut. This is especially true for raid consumables such as flasks and foods.

- Avoid "Flavor of the Month" professions. Every server is different. On my server, profit margins for JC are razor thin, but Gatherers and Alchemists are making big money. When you decide which professions to level, focus on the needs of your individual server. Remember that whatever you read on the EJ or Maintankadin or official forums does not necessarily apply to you.

- Quests are recession proof. Gold rewards from questing do not fluctuate the way AH prices do. Doing regular and daily quests on your level 80 toon can be very profitable when the AH is hyper-competetive, especially if you mix that with a gathering profession. It also offers reputation benefits.

Love is in the Air has materials that can be put up on the AH. However, the profits are likely only decent today for people that want the achievement now.

Unless you have a very good idea about the speed and price that epic BOE's sell at on your new server I would stick to a more conservative list of goods. Trade goods and materials are in high demand across all servers. I would look for price discrepancies in:

• Frozen Orbs
• Ore - Cobalt and Saronite
• WOTLK Enchanting Materials
• Weapon & Armor Vellums
• Rare Gems (Scarlet Rubies Monarch Topazes and Autumn's Glow)
• Eternals (Fire, Air, and Water)

If you are willing to accept more risk look into the supply of the 3.08 Gem Cuts on your new server. Certain cuts such as Sovereign Twilight Opal and Inscribed Monarch Topaz are still very rare on some servers. With the Darkmoon Faire a month away I, personally, would avoid any cards or decks.

When I transferred servers back in late TBC I investigated the usual suspects - adamantite ore, gems, herbs, flasks, etc. Mainly commodities that paid for themselves in quantity, rather than high price but low quantity items because I didn't know whether the prices in the week that I monitored the new realm's AH were representative or not. In my case Adamantite Ore was about 10g cheaper on my original server and most uncut gems about 20g cheaper, so I filled my inventories with those two and made about 5000 gold on the transfer.

This past week has been the Great GCE Crash of 2009 on my server. They've been declining very slowly through the 20's the past two months but we seem to have hit a tipping point. They are dropping about 1g a day to 13g now. I'm sitting on stacks and stacks of them because I keep hoping it'll rebound. What would cause such a dramatic shift? Dusts have held pretty steady in the 4s - sometimes low 4s and sometimes high 4s depending on time and day.

Since I've gotten so much useful information from this thread I'll share my little tip. I have found stacks of 4 to be the magic number for dust. I can routinely sell for 10-20% above the lowest per unit price this way. Lots of people sell 1, 10, and 20 stacks but a lot of the quantities needed by enchants are divisible by 4 and people eat it up. Or maybe it's because people can easily calculate out how 10 and 20 relate to 1 in terms of unit price but 4x4.61 is a harder calculation.

A server transfer has a lot of things to keep in mind. You have limited gold you can bring, and limited bag space to bring items. When I transferred, I accepted a minor loss on a few things like stacks of Abyss Crystals and eternals to get around the gold cap. You'll also want to bring the highest gold profit (not percentage) per bag slot.

The nobles cards are worthwhile to transfer with, but I found all other cards are difficult to sell at any price. Stacks of Winter Orbs and Scarlet Ruby can provide a healthy profit if there is a difference. The rare pets (whelplings, black tabby, etc.) are also likely to have varied prices from server to server. If you're transferring from a server with raids on farm to a server struggling with the content, you can make quite a bit from BoE items from those raids. The example from Sunwell was Sunmotes and epic BoE patterns.

The Greater Cosmic Essence price drop is because the changes Blizzard made in 3.0.8 decreased GCE requirements far more than they did for Infinite Dust requirements, so GCE demand has gone down more than Infinite Dust.

One Scroll that also sells extremely well on my server currently is: [Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Crusader].
It's on quite high request, since its one of the best enchantments for heirloom melee weapons.
You can buy the mats for about 20g and sell the scroll for 80-100g.

The children week achievement will require you eating a chocolate cake which requires 8 small eggs to bake. I already started stacking cheap eggs from the AH. They aren't used for anything now and go cheap.

The Christmas event used 6 eggs, if I remember correctly, and lasted way longer than the children week. I think it can safely be assumed that the price will climb higher than during children week.

If it holds true what is reported here with increasing frequency, that margins are falling across the board on all servers:

- increase volume to keep profits steady.

- wait for the "desperate" random sellers.

Especially the second strategy has helped me a lot of times. When all materials are rare and expensive, the "random seller" who just happens to have a stack of saronite ore and sees that there are just five stacks of it on the AH for high prices will list his as rather expensive as well as he expects to be able to sell it.

These days he finds 30 stacks at much lower prices, but wants to sell it nevertheless and undercuts often by a massive amount. It often makes sense to buy these up and relist them.

I don't have a high enough LW, but I'm curious if anyone has had any luck selling armor kits? The last time I had checked, Frozen Orbs were selling for ~100-110g, and the armor kits were selling for close to 200g. I'd imagine the kit prices have dropped, but I think they are still worth more than their mats.

Might be your server, but on mine the orb prices are way lower than that and leg armors are selling around 200g as well. It's interesting indeed that prizes haven't risen while mats have increased, but this could also have to do with people stockpiling leg armors pre-patch (I sure did) which makes the mats only 2 furs and 2 worthless scales at around 120g mat cost.

Also keep in mind that those armors are still a nice "free leveling" recipe for LW, selling them at mats-price is not a problem for people that are just leveling. The recipe is trainer-based, unlike in BC where it was fairly rare to find an exalted HH leatherworker.

Depends on the realm. On mine, they are still profitable, and fewer leatherworkers make them now that the mats cost more. The profit margin isn't high though, so one can't expect to make a lot of gold per day on just these items. I think most of us have diverse lists of items we sell though, so it's nothing new.

But the decline didn't happen for 2 weeks after 3.08 on my server and it was dramatic plunge.

I'd imagine that with Love Is In The Air, prices will either stay normal or skyrocket on the last day of the event. It could be worth it to bite the bullet and save the items until the last day.... but others could also do this, and the prices could bomb.

I absolutely agree that vertical integration is the way to remain profitable in the current low profit environment. It's what is still working for me, anyhow. Meta gems were one of the last profitable jewelcrafting items, and even now still have a small margin over the uncut meta. I also have a transmute specialist alchemist, which is how I make it all work.

Eternal air and 2 gems makes a meta for say 20gp. the uncut sells for like 35, which with listing costs and fees and low volume is barely worth the trouble. I get extra gems as a specialist, though, so my 20gp in mats makes more like 42 gold worth, which i starting to look decent. Then i cut it into metagems, which are going for like 55 each, so I'm getting about 65 gold out of 20. I can manage to get 10 a day sold in most cases I'm still netting several hundred gold a day for not much work. it's not "great", but it pays my expenses and more, which is pretty good in this climate. Without vertical integration, my margins would be too small to bother with, and I'd switch over to gathering ( which I'd rather avoid as long as possible.)

Yup I can personally attest that I got my enchanting to low 420's (i think 423 to be exact) very early on in the expansion and stopped leveling it.

The material costs were absurd and DE'ing to sell off the GCE's was much more profitable. I finally hit 450 last weekend, worked to level it once 3.0.8 hit. I highly doubt I'm alone in this regard, and that renewed demand for leveling after 3.0.8 is what delayed the plunge of GCE value, they're down to 15g now, and I'm being forced to re-evalute the profit potential of selling scrolls over the raw enchanting materials.

We can expect an hotfix for the "Be Mine!" Achievement soon , either the drop rate will increase a lot (which won't help us here). But they may as well make the Candies Bags tradable (as all the other items currently) which would make those go for an insane price.

Also some achievements can still be done after the last day which mean that the people may pay even more after the end of the event.

Yep, that's what I decided to do last night. I converted my mats into scrolls that I thought would sell and I could offer at lower than historical market prices. A couple sold overnight but the scroll market is probably too slow to consume all of the DE mats I produce. I really wish Blizz would improve the AH interface for Item Enhancements.

As with a lot of consumable items, keep in mind that the day of the week has an enormous impact on demand. Raids reset on Tuesday, meaning Tuesday evening is when the most people are buying new gems and enchants for the gear that they just picked up. Similarly, Tuesday afternoon has been the best in my experience for glyphs, since that's when people are respeccing and reglyphing for PvE.