I think I'm going to give your dragon's eye gold maker a try and see if I can make gold faster than cutting a specfic gem for people and listing them on the ah. Short term, instant satisfaction though, because you can always continue to sell the cuts/gems.

Back when the expansion had just come out, some of my guildies told me I was crazy to buy gem cut recipes instead of Dragonseyes for my tokens - at that point in time the Dragonseyes sold for 300 to 350 gold a piece. Fast forward to the present, and I know that in the long run I've made a much larger profit then the 1400 gold I could have made back then.

Buying a recipe when someone in trade is willing to pay 50 gold for that particular cut is probably a good idea - assuming the person in trade isn't a complete idiot for wanting a useless cut no one else would ever buy.

Indeed. Seer's being the best selling overall of my green recipies, still nets well over 200g a gem, and netted around 330g a gem initially. Plus the necessary 50g on trade my cut your mats -deals, the seer's has probably been worth a 1,000-1,600 gold. The idea is to spot the difference between the seer's (which apparently is rather desireable for some priests), and a flashing (which is mostly r-tard-biz).

Dragon's eye idea was a big hit. Last night prices were 100g, today, for some unknown reason they are now 195g+.

Anyone monitor their Glyph market closely and notice it has gone down the tubes in the last month ?

I used to make 1500-2500g/day on glyphs, and am now down to 250-500g/day. I monitor the total value of one each of glyphs where I could make a profit. This used to total to about 5500g on average. Lately, it has been below 3000g. I interpret this to mean the average price is being driven down by relisting due to unsold glyphs. I notice a LOT of glyphs that used to list for 20-80g each are now 5-7g each. In addition, instead of selling 100+glyphs/day, I am now selling 25-50 Glyphs.

Anyone else seeing this on their server ? I am tempted to buy out every glyph available and relist them all for 80g each and see what happens. Thoughts ?

When did the cuts you bought instead become profitable? I spent the first 3 weeks of the expansion selling dragon's eyes for 300-500g, and then began buying cuts. I made retarded profit and in the long run still got all the good recipes.

When i started buying recipes Dragon's eyes were down to like 150g, so for me a gem cut cost about 450g, you paid over 1000g if you bought it when dragon's were worth 300+. Was at least 550g of the profit you've made on that cut earned in those first few weeks? If not you would've been better off buying the cuts later on.

Dragon's eye market has been good since 3.2. Between new +10 to all epic gem, and most JCs turning tokens into cuts the demand has gone up and supply down on the Dragon's eyes. On my server they've shifted back up to 150-175g from ~100g where they've been for quite a while.

Because once in a while you'll actually sell the glyph, and rake in a lot of cash. It's the same for jewelcrafting. If noone has the gem listed, I'm listing with an insane price. Sure you get undercut some times, but overall there's higher profit involved.

This is exactly what I saw, overnight, on my server. Now I can see spending my excess tokens on them, as long as the demand remains high.

I completely understand the rationale for epic desings equating to 450g each, and the profit I've made off of them has more than greatly exceeded that mark, that Now the rise in dragon's eye are beneficial for the use of my tokens.
Holding off on buying all those "may be used once in a while designs", looks like it may have been a good idea.

This post illustrates exactly how NOT to make money in the Glyph market. Things you did wrong:
- make lots of glyphs
- posting them at low prices

There is a very limited supply of customers. Based on this, you want to:
- be the one with the lowest price
- undercut by the minimum so not to drop the price too much
- have a small number (I use 1-2) of each type of Glyph

Lets take a scenario.....
- You post 10 of a glyph @ 50g each as the lowest price
- Next person undercuts you with 1 Glyph @ 5g
- You cancel and repost your 10 glyphs @ 4g
- A customer comes along.... and buys ONE glyph @ 4g
- Another customer comes along.... price is still 4g with your 9 glyphs listed.

Do you see how there is NO WAY to recover higher prices/profit ?

Scenario 2:
- You post 1 of a glyph @ 50g each as the lowest price
- Next person undercuts you with 1 Glyph @ 5g
- You cancel and repost @ 4g99s
- A customer comes along.... and buys ONE glyph @ 4g99s
- Another customer comes along.... price is now 5g
- Another customer comes along.... price is now back above 50g (whatever it was before you posted the 1st time)

Scenario 1 leads to MANY glyphs @ under 5g .... Scenario 2 leads to glyphs posted at above 50g/whatever it was.

What I am trying to illustrate is that there are limited customers. In order for Inscriptionists to all make money, it is in their interest to:
- undercut each other by a minimal amount (like 1 copper)
- cancel and relist when they are undercut (see above.. you could do this 100 times and the price would drop 1 silver!)
- post only a small number of each glyph at a time...
- post unlisted glyphs for a high number (80g for example.. people are used to this value with gems)

It's still a free market... you still get to undercut each other all day long for that one time a customer comes along and gets the cheapest Glyph. BUT... it's stupid to bury each other into the ground with massive undercutting. Because people will undercut you, it forces the general market down and limits your own profit. Remember kids... this is NOT a commodity market like dust or gems.

Actually yes, I made about 25k gold in the first month of WotLK just from cutting rare gems. I still make gold off of those plans. Buying the plans at the beginning of the expansion is one of the best financial decisions I ever made.

Just to touch on the anomolies I mentioned over the last fortnight, I've been analysing potential profit cuts within the Rare (blue quality) Gem market as a means to liquidate and start my own niche. After sorting through each recipe/cut available to me and comparing the price fluctuations over the course of 5 days, I settled upon Steady Forest Emerald (Resi/Stam) and Thick Autumn's Glow (Crit) as a fairly quiet pocket of the market.

I've been keeping 5-10 of each of these in my bags at all times, and at least 50+ of each gem in my mailbox. Thanks to the wonderful introduction of Dalaran Auctioneers in 3.2, I've been paying several visits to the AH daily, monitoring the prices/availability of these cuts. Following a pattern throughout the week, they tend to start out in a large supply, selling at around ~7-12 gold each. I buy these out, and let them sit in my mailbox for a few days. Later in the week, the supply diminishes, and I start putting the price up to 20g. Within ~8 hours, the price crashes back to 12g due to undercutting, and the supply diminishes once more. Repeating this process over the course of a week yields an eventual fire sale of 35g+ each, which has netted me significant profit lately. Each and every time, I manage to sell ~10 or so gems at a 300% mark-up before people catch on and the price crashes again.

I know alot of this information isn't new to most people, and it's ultimately just another obvious case of "buy low and sell high", but I find it fascinating to note the "wave" trends of the market and how patient investments can yield such staggering results.

Is there any incentive to buy saronite while the prices are low? It doesn't seem to be viable to make enchanting mats and attempt to sell rare cuts at the moment. I'm hardly able to sell more than 5-10 rare gems on raid nights.

Also, I thought I'd mention my strategy to making money from glyphs, as it's been discussed here recently. This is something that's worked for me even after 3.2.

1. Make a list of popular glyphs. Easily googleable.
2. Filter the glyphs that only you can make.
3. Scan the AH and filter the glyphs that sell for more than 9g.

List 3-6 of each glyph, undercutting whatever's on AH. If something is not there, list it for a high price such as 50-80g.

This tends to net me about 300g per day on a server with fierce undercutting on certain glyphs. Although, there tends to be a handful that are listed at about 50g and not being undercut much.

I usually leave them on AH until the auction expires. But if you have more time you could cancel/re-list often, and list glyphs that sell for less than 9g as well.

EDIT: Thought I'd mention, track the ones that sell on your server the most on a spreadsheet. If you have less time on your hands you can focus on them or just prioritise your time/materials/effort on them.

I did have a question about this market though - is there any significant weekly pattern to when glyphs are most likely to sell? I list my gems on Wednesday/Thursday night and there is a very strong rise in demand at those times, but I can't think of anything similar for glyphs (apart from patch changes). Perhaps over the weekend, when working people have more time to re-evaluate their glyphing?

The glyph market really pays off the more money and time you invest into it. Posting a few popular glyphs can be good for a quick buck but the best approach is mass production, the problem with that is the sheer amount of glyphs requires setting up a large infrastructure and a pretty hefty initial investment.

Using this approach I post about 300 different types of glyphs at a time (anything that sells over 10-15g) with 3 dedicated auction house alts and I always have a stack of each glyph I can make in stock. This nets me between 1.5k to 3k a day depending on how many times I bother to log on and cancel/re-list my auctions. But before you all rush to do the same keep in mind that there really isn't much room for competition, whoever is online the most will generally cannibalize 75%+ of all the sales and leave everybody else with just scraps.

As for glyph selling patterns, I don't think there are any significant ones. People tend to purchase glyphs whenever they respec or when leveling up, and they do a lot of that any time they are online. People respeccing before/after raids or on the last few days of the arena week can factor into this, but generally sales will surge depending on how many people are logged on.

You're right glyphs aren't worth that much, but getting all books of glyphmastery was a huge investment for scribes, I spend about 20k gold on it and I'm not even remotely close to earning it back because the prices of discovered and trained glyphs are the same.
The other things with glyphs are they are annoying to make for non scribes, getting several different mats for a single items is annoying. Glyphs will sell whether they cost 80g or 5g, the demand is just pretty low since most people don't swap specs that often with dual spec. I've sold a arcane blast glyphs for 160g each just because there weren't any up, when people are willing to pay any price for something it's not smart to undercut by huge amounts.
The reason why glyphs don't sell quickly is not because the price is high but because the demand is low.

Fri/Sat/Sun = double the weekday volume in sales. These are the days people make DK alts or just mess about. Week nights are raiding.

Double the volume = double the server population. There are simply more players on the weekend.

Crusader Orbs becoming purchasable after 3.2.2

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Crusader Orbs Available for Purchase in 3.2.2

Since chests/bracers are very close in stats to BiS items, there will be huge demand for them.

Rare gems are still selling well, and I have finally started to see some very slow movement in the epic gem market. I think one of the core issues with the epic gems is that many servers have what I would refer to as 'not money savvy' jewelers that are cutting for tips. Cutting for tips is basically hurting your sells in the AH.

If you cut for tips first problem - a tip is given as the tipper sees fit. Here's 5g for your time is counterproductive. Time is money. The profit you see from this is low. Now you could do something that I have considered like charging a flat rate for cuts, (50g for example) but I am just willing to bet the general populace is not going to take kindly to that.

With the ability to transmute, and purchase gems many players are just buying/making what they need, then looking in trade for a cut. They don't touch the ah where your gems are selling.

I have decided given the market I refuse to cut for anyone besides my group of friends. Jewelers have to send a strong signal to the market and push the consumers to buy in the ah. More jewelers need to get on board with this or the market is going to drag for quite some time.

Ore on my server is like others have noted way over what would be an acceptable risk. 400g being quite normal. This is to the detriment of many average jewelers and they then go to cutting for tips.

Also we still have speculators in the market moving their inventory out.

We are still several weeks away from what I would deem reasonable profits in the ah. If you want to help the market, don't cut for anyone.

Well, on my server (horde side at least) it seemed like the majority of the jewelcrafters preferred to buy Dragon's eyes instead of recipes when the expansion had just come out. If I recall correctly, my first recipe were the Relentless Earthsiege diamond, and I was the only one with the cut for ages - I could literally sell them faster then I could get my hands on the Eternal fire to transmute. Second recipe I bought was the Rigid Autumns glow - pretty much the same story.

I was really happy most other people went for the instant cash instead of buying recipes!

They don't take kindly to it. I refuse to do business with anyone who demands a significant fixed fee and based on abuse I've seen in trade chat, that's the universal attitude unless someone has cornered a rare, desierable pattern. Fortunately, I like mainline gems and can get three competing offers for my business at most times just by posting my order in trade.

For similar reasons, you have no realistic chance of setting up a cartel at this point. New JC's come on line with patterns daily, assuming the pattern - Bold Cardinal Ruby as an obvious one - isn't already oversaturated. One JC can easily handle all the trade channel business of a faction for a gem that he's got. So you would need *everyone* to cooperate on a cartel and convince them that your sunk costs are their problem.

So you have a classic cooperation/defection scenario and it fails because, as seen in every WoW profession to date, someone is going to defect and viciously undercut the market. And unlike the AH, you can't stop undercutters doing in-person cuts for 10g tips.

While you will not get everyone on board, it generaly is a good idea to not cut for tips less than ~50 G. I have actualy had people on my server (lower pop with a bunch of moronic trade skillers) look at AH, realize I was only one with cut, then ask me to cut a gem for them. The response when I whisper 50 G a cut is not normaly positive, but i dont care. The reason to get a decent cut no one has is both to be able to move off color gems, and to make as much gold as possible from it. I set ~50 G as my minimum cut fee, as currently I am buying gems from the ah or trade, and reselling them at 75G markup if i am patient. One interesting thing is that since Rubies have always sold well, more people are turning in badges/honor for them than anything else. It is actualy better for me to buy these from the ah than anything else, as I was able to get 10 yesterday for 130 G per. Who would have thought that I would be stocking up on rubies, not running out of them.

On a separate note, everyone here talks about math and opportunity cost. I have been buying dragon's eyes from the AH for 2 weeks, as even at 125 I can make a tidy profit 3-4 times a day with just some infinite dust. I can understand most people selling dragon's eyes on ah, but I would assume that most here would be able to see that a few infinite dust+ dragon's eye is much more profitable than just a dragons's eye. (If you cant figure out what was said there keep selling me your dragon's eye).

One question I do have, is has anyone else seen a dramatic drop in shard pricing. I did my normal crafting last night, until I re-checked AH to see if there were dramatic changes. Thank god, as shards were selling for ~8 gold, rather than 15. At those prices i can't afford to be lazy(enchantrix for some reason does not recognize Sun Rock Ring as dis-enchantable), and have to do it manualy and make dusts instead of shards.

I thought this would be the case as well, but Nightmare Tears only go for 10-15g more than Dragon's Eyes on my server, which is at or a bit under the cost of the 5 Infinite Dust. Add to that the fact that it's a very slow-moving cut, since you can only have 1 and it's only good for a few classes.