Tel

On a unrelated note, my server is now starting to make a recovery from the hideous price slump. We're quite an advanced server in terms of numbers of raiding guilds, and we probably have 20 raids or so in Ulduar25 at any given time.

The prices dropped off dramatically after the patch hit, as panic sellers dumped their raw mats on the AH, trying to shift them to pay for the consumable cost of raiding. Now that the initial burst has been soaked up by people gemming and enchanting their new gear, I'm actually starting to see a rise in the price of items again. Bold rubies were up to 90g (from 60g), Infinite dust was back to 4.5g, Saronite ore back to 18g and other items were also on the rise as of last night.

I feel we'll probably start to see this trend reflected across other servers as people lose time to raiding (so less days for farming), and we statr to see more bosses down and more gear coming in. Has this trend been seen elsewhere or is it just my server at the moment?

A good place for investment atm is the lower stocked food buffs. Particularly items like 40 hit rating food, and Expertise food. Almost no one makes these at the moment, and due to people gearing up erratically, there are a large number of raiders with holes in their gear (ie below expertise/hit caps) who are willing to pay a premium to use these foods in raids.

Food for thought for other servers?

 

Mega Man 306

Dragonfin. Uncooked or cook. =) While I was leveling my cooking up, I was selling Dragonfin Filet (40 STR, 40 STAM) which was selling for almost 70g a stack. Then just the other day, I was seeing raw Dragonfin selling out for almost 100g a stack. =D Other fishes / foods, I haven't had the chance to look yet.

 

Ambika

The economy on Earthen Ring went into the toilet and is finally creeping back out. Essences are still hovering around 8G and dust was for a time at 3G each. Last night I was finally (FINALLY) able to unload 80% of my mats for 3.98 each for dust and 9G for essences. It's a far cry from the 4.75G and 11G i was getting prior but the market hasn't come around 100% and I was happy to take my leave for a bit and recoup my funds.

More bosses are dying and more loot is coming, not fast enough yet. Let's see what the weekend holds. Inscription books are at 700G easily on my server after trying out for 2k and failing.

Gems are destroyed, noone is buying them. I have stacks of them lying around and no takers. I've decided to just sell them slowly instead of dumping them. As I rotate through ore I just bank everything under the sun and then make things here and there. Gone are the hey day of taking 1000G in ore and turning it into 2k in cash within 24hrs.

 

Nilaus

with the economy in a general downturn after 3.1 there are great opportunities forbuying mats (as a lot of people have suggested).
Personally I've bought a lot of very cheap herbs and made Darkmoon Cards of them. Broke even after selling 4 cards, and I now have ~25 cards worth of pure earnings to throw on AH when we get a bit closer to the Darkmoon Faire time.

Real men have infractions on their EJ account!

 

ozweepay

A few people expressed an interest in how I fared after moving mats from one server to another and waiting for 3.1.

(See The icy art of making gold if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Consistent with the experiences of others, anything that was for item enhancement (gems, enchant mats, buckles, leg kits) went down with 3.1. I still managed to make a small profit, but nothing like what I was hoping for. The one investment that did really well was Frost Lotuses, which I bought for 9g-12g and sold for 20g+ after 3.1 landed. Arctic Fur has tanked (no patterns from Ulduar yet discovered) and Rubies have dropped horribly (people have cashed in all valor and hero badges as well as honor points to get Rubies for cash; this killed the market). I managed to make money on Cosmic Essences only by splitting to Lessers and selling slowly.

I still managed to average 6.2k per day for the month so far, and I finally capped on Apr 21st after 2 months of focusing on this goal (because raiding has been pretty boring).

Quitting the AH game now and going back to raiding 5 days/week. Have fun folks!

 

Everlight

Something suspicious is happening on Spirestone - US. My druid is a player in the leatherworking market, which is limited to 9 or 10 main suppliers and buyers (total). Twice in the past 10 days, the AH was bought dry of arctic fur and epic leg armor. At any given time there are 2 pages of arctic fur (average 65g), usually a full page of icescale and frosthide, less for earthen.

The strange thing is that none of the arctic fur is appearing on the AH in another form, and the raiding guilds have been having trouble in Ulduar-25 so there isn't enough new gear to demand all that leg armor. I assumed someone was trying to drive the price up, but within hours the AH is full of these items again, and after the second buy up the price of arctic fur actually declined. Thoughts?

 

Nilaus

If you look one post up then you can see someone moving a lot of raw materials between servers, so that is an option. Alternatively it is a long term investment for someone, where they believe that it will be worth more in the future maybe due to more loot dropping from Ulduar or from the new Arena season.

I've noticed that crafting materials are available for a real bargain Adder's Tongue for 14g fro example. I buy as much as I can, but every day there are even more new ones and they are even cheaper than the previous day. The AH is starting to get flooded with Darkmoon decks as a result, which I was hoping to make a bit of cash from. Any other ideas on how to generate profit from Inscription (too late to enter the market for the new glyph books, the price is inflated but the glyphs prices have come down)

Real men have infractions on their EJ account!

 

Ambika

What was your starting total of funds vs ending total. I'm curious to see how much you made.

On an upscale Dust has come back in price after hovering around 3.8, it's now around 4.2 and going a bit higher. I think the recent nerf's to Ulduar have helped people in 10mans clear it a bit better as well as folks running Naxx/25 as they can't do Ulduar..YET.


On a separate note Alliance on Korgath ore is selling for ridiculously high amounts. Mithril for 60G/stack. Thorium for 80-100G/stack. Copper is 10+. I made a steal on Iron buying it cheap and relisting it. There's a metric TON of money to be made on ore on this server as most of it is not being camped at this time as everyone is off chasing stupid lil bunny eggs. It's costing me an arm and a leg to quickly level mining but I have an investor who is helping fund my lil project.

 

Tel

Have to say now isn't a great time to be making the DMF cards. With the release of Ulduar, you're not finding many people levelling their alts. Most people are either progression raiding, or gearing up in Naxx to get into a Ulduar guild (at least on our server).

I've found (and I made a fair few decks recently) that they just aren't selling. Most people who wanted them already have them on mains, and as the focus is off Alts for the next few weeks at least, the prices are lower than ever.

Personally what I'll be doing is holding onto them. Making a few of the Strength Greatness Trinkets when the faire comes around, then putting those on AH. To a casual player (who is realistically your target market with this now) a trinket he can see the stats of is far more appealing than a Quest item that he isn't entirely sure on the function of.

To reiterate my point previously, prices are still now coming back up. I predict this trend continuing over the next few weeks as the stockpiled resources start to dry up, and Ulduar gear starts flooding in, and expect to see those that were clever enough to hold off when others were panic selling REALLY cashing in.

 

Ezarg

Someone's probably is stockpiling arctic furs in anticipation of people wanting them to craft epics with Ulduar recipes which require 8 furs a piece.

 

Mugsley

I'm noticiing the same thing. Rubies are currently barely more than Twilight Opals, which is simply amazing. I'm hoping this will correct itself in the near future.

For some reason, I've been able to sell cut metas more than previously. There are also still a select few gem cuts that are doing well, but nothing at near the level people were seeing pre-3.1 (and I missed out on). Is it worth looking into what the rings are selling for? I have about 8 tokens to use up (and Dragon's Eyes are selling for only ~85g).

I still need to get off my ass and pick an alt to level as an enchanter so I'm not relying on a friend to do it for me.


I've been poking into other markets just to watch prices, but nothing has materialized yet. Runic Mana is still almost twice the price of Runic Health, which I feel is weird since I feel the difficulty of Ulduar would put Runic Health in higher demand. Even Runic Mana, though, is selling just under the cost of mats if you're not pot-specced.

A good friend is a Scribe and managed to get lucky enough to get a few very valuable glyphs early; and he's said he's basically printing money.

Stoneblood has some life, but I need to find Icethorn at a good price to make it worthwhile. The cost of both Lichbloom and Icethorn is keeping that market from showing its true potential (Lichbloom is flirting with 60g per stack; Icethorn is flirting with 50g per stack). However, if you're a farmer and you know an alchemist (or have one yourself), you could stand to make some decent money. What I don't understand is which Scribes are buying Lichbloom and Icethorn, when Adder's Tongue has the same "ink stats" as both and is almost half the price?

 

thefatman999

One thing that I have noticed on Sargeras is that prices on gems/enchanting mats have fluctuated extreme amounts in the last week. I have purchased Runed scarlet rubies for as low as 40g each, and yet have sold them within a day later for 110g+. I have seen similar changes in other gems. Infinite dust has been as low as 70g a stack, and as high as 6g 50s for individuals and 110g for stacks. It seems that with the new content and the amount of ppl on my fairly large server that can clear it, that when a few guilds/pugs happen to make some nice progress there is a big rush on items and prices skyrocket. I have also found that it is quite common for various gem cuts to be completely out of stock, and thus can make said cuts and list at a much higher than normal price, and still have them sold. I've even sold jagged forest emeralds (normally 10-15g) for as high as 60g each. My advice in this time is to watch the ah as much as possible and if anything seems abnormally low, buy it.

 

Kageyama

I expected the new argent tournament pets to make some sort of profit, especially cross faction but so far I haven't seen any sell on my server. Has anyone had any luck with these?

 

Talq

Even with 100% quest completion they have only barely become available, and most people with that level of dedication would have bought something else or are saving for a mount. I would regard it as a market that will develop in the future.

 

Ranjurm

One way to turn a profit that I haven't seen mentioned is to offer your prospecting services as a JC. Offer to prospect ore with your fee being the uncommon gems, you'll be surprised how many people want to play the JC market and are not willing level JC themselves. This is especially advantageous if you have someone to DE jewelry crafted from the gems as you will not drive the market price on uncommon gems up by buying them up in mass.

 

Ambika

They are selling for 2k Alliance>Horde on ER and Korgath

This happens quite frequently to me as well. Etched Monarch Topaz will go from 19G to 60G in a day. Rubies will plummet to 60G then shootup to 80G. It's really about how much is on the AH at the time of posting as most people if they don't see any competition post for obscene prices. Infinite dust is still hard to pull out from the 4G each to 6G (I'd kill to have that margin).

 

thefatman999

There is one strategy which I haven't tried myself but I did take advantage of when someone else did it on my server. I would presume he bought all the individual dust (either that or it was just a low amount on there) then proceeded to list 20 pages (not even sure how much dust that is...) worth of individual dust at 7g 50s each. Stacks were still selling for only 70g, but I managed to sell ~80 dust just undercutting him slightly in individuals because almost noone has the patience to flip through 20 pages of auctions to get to the stacks. Its kind of a mean method, but it was effective as prices remained over 6g for around 12 hours.

 

Duilliath

Sort by price. Sort by price again. Hey presto, stacks are now listed first, as those are generally the ones with the highest price. Rather useful as well, for catching those 25g/125g flasks or whatever else with equally silly pricing.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

thefatman999

Yes I know how to do that, but my point is that the average customer either doesn't know or else is just too lazy and just buys the individual ones. Hence the fact that I was able to sell ~80 dust at 7g each even though stacks were listed at 70g each.

 

Ambika

Well I'd get ready for a new round of enchantment mat pushes as the Blizzard has just "retuned" the first 6 bosses in Ulduar. This will help those casual players get that better gear that they've been smashing their head to get so hopefully we will finally see an upsurge in demand for materials.

I'd start stocking up mats or if you see a good deal snag it while you can. I expect this weekend to be a profitable one as the casuals will clear upto Freyja easily now.

 

ozweepay

I came to US-Archimonde with 20K (the xfer limit) in late January 2009. I left 55K behind, that I could not transfer. I casually parlayed the 20K into 44K by March, then got aggressive and moved the 55K to US-Archimonde (via item purchases, as I've already described) along with heavy trading. On April 1st I had 110K and on April 21st I gold-capped at 214K. This was an average income of 6.2K per day, but much of that was liquidation, not pure profit.

Anyway, I've already given away 25K to guildies, and I'll probably do a bit more of this to fund progression. We have Ulduar cleared and are working on hard modes now... should be expensive.

 

phlaree

I do believe that food (raw and cooked) will always be something that sells. How much you can earn off it will ofcourse depend on realm population and amount of raiding guilds/players, but in the end there is always "lazy" players around that can't be bothered to get their own food.

If you do plan on giving it a try I'd recommend checking out the auction house first, fishes especially are usually flooded as a result of alot of people looking for the new turtle mount.

Another underestimated way of earning gold is simply offering what services your professions have. The trade chat is there for a reason, don't be afraid of using it. As I am an enchanter myself I can vouch that there is always players around who aquire new gear every day and need new enchants. A small fee and polite conversations can make them return to you when they need more enchants and that way you make a business out of your profession.

 

• Caniki

Not a tip that you'll be able to retire on, but this weekend starts Children's Week, and one of the achievements requires that you eat a [Delicious Chocolate Cake] and a [Tasty Cupcake] while your kid is around. I plan on putting a bunch up on the AH tonight.

 

Nizghalad

For those who weren't aware, you can buy [Tigule and Foror's Strawberry Ice Cream] and resell them in single pieces for example.
Granted, this is not a "reach the gold cap in one month" tip, but it could help those trying to start a business on another server.