Strange Events on the AH

There are some standard ways of making money.  They are tried and true.  No matter what is hot and what is not there are always some ways to make cash.

Jewelcrafting is one of those no brainers.  Buy gems, cut them, list them, count gold.

I call jewelcrafting a license to print money. Having a JC is one of those reasons I never got into the making money game as a full time thing.  When I needed money I would pop on my JC and the next day I would have gold overflowing in my mailbox.  It takes no skill to make money, just some time investment and a tiny bit of knowledge.

Making flasks and potions and transmutes where always like that as well.  Not as high of a profit margin as JC but you buy the mats, make, list, collect gold.

There are many things like that.  It basically comes down to you taking 3 seconds out of your life to make something and that is what you are getting paid for.

Something odd has been going on with the auction market lately however on my server and I must say I am a bit baffled as to why it is happening.  Everything is backwards.

I routinely would buy ore on the market for when I needed gems and I would prospect the ore.  I don't really waste time farming unless I am bored or waiting on something on one of my miners.  Whenever I need some gems because I am running low I buy about 4K worth of ore and prospect.

When all is said and done I end up with a ton of uncommons, a whole mess of rares and I head back to the market. 

The gems that are used for a JC daily I never list unless it is that dailies day.  For example, jasper on my server normally sells for 12g.  On the day the JC daily needs it I would get 75g each.  It is just a matter of not being stupid selling it on off days. 

Either way, the point is, I list all the uncommons that are not JC daily required and I do not need for my prisms, uncut of course, they sell for more then cut.  That is normal, those cuts are usually people just leveling so they are dumped really cheap.  I cut some of rares into popular gems and list them and keep the rest of the rares for making gems for myself and my guild and the next morning I come on to roughly 8K in my mailbox and a whole mess a gems still left over for my own personal use.  I get material I need for dailies and gems for my characters and make a little profit along the way.  That has always been what I did.  Can't beat that with a stick. Double your money and get all the gems you will ever need.

I can't seem to do that now.  The price of ore on the market is almost as high as it was the week the game came out when every one was price fixing.

It was timeless nightstone day and I was running a bit low on nightstone so it was time for me to do my little buy, prospect, process, sell routine to restock my gems.  The same thing I always do except I can't do it now, at least not like I had been doing.

The price of ore is 95g-120g per stack.  I was paying 30g-40g a stack last time I did it.  Why the heck has the price gone up?  It does not do that.  This is the first time I have seen this trend on my server.  Sure, I see it go to 50g-60g sometimes, but not this high.  Not triple it's normal price.

The price of common gems on the market, like nightstone for example is up to 120g.
The price of rares is higher for the uncut then for the cuts now too.

While I have seen that before I can't see why it would be like that now at this stage in the game.  Usually that is something you see after every person has every pattern and price cutting is running rampant.

I could easily buy stacks for 95g-120g and still make a hefty profit but I am not taking that risk until I can see if this high price jump is going to stay for a while.  The last thing anyone wants to do it buy a ton and lose money because the price has gone back up.  It has only been like this for about 4 or 5 days.  If it continues I might just go with the flow.

It is not only jewelcrafting.  Making flasks is a loss unless you get lucky enough to proc a flask.  The herbs needed to make a flask cost twice as much as the flask sells for.  I would normally buy tons of herbs, make tons of flasks, come back and collect my gold later and it was always at least double the cash spent.  Now if I make a flask I am losing money and even with a proc I am only breaking even.

For the first time in a very long time I am noticing that farming is actually starting to be a good idea again.  Not to farm to make the items but to farm to sell raws.

Everything on the market does not make sense.  It was fun before the darkmoon fair started you could buy all the cards for 1200-2000 each and assemble the sets yourself. The sets sell for 30K on my server.  You do the math, at most it costs you 16K to buy and assemble to sell for 30K.  Not a bad deal right?  However, things change when the fair is around right.  Always has.  Usually the cards go up and the decks come down.  It changed for sure.  The cards have gone DOWN in price and the assembled decks have gone UP.  Excuse me?  What weird world did I wake up in?

My server has gone insane.  Nothing is making sense any more.  Strange times indeed.  I guess if I want more nightstone I will pay the higher prices or farm it myself.  Might as well farm and sell now while the price is high.  I can't see it staying like this. 

Are there really no farmers out there?

I mentioned this odd occurrence to a guild mate the other day and he decided to take advantage of it.  He was spamming heroics on his new 85 that happened to be a herbalist and decided to put his time to good use.  While waiting in the queue he farmed. 

He told me after doing 5 heroics and farming for the time waiting in between them he made 10K gold.  He had never been over 10K gold before and thanked me for mentioning it to him. 

If you do the math on that, 45 minutes wait time, times 5, that means in 3 hours and 45 minutes he make 10K gold just picking herbs.  That is quite impressive if you ask me.  Gathering has never been at such a large profit per time investment ever that I can recall. Usually if you could make 600g-800g per hour farming it was usually a lot. (with exception of the first week where you could have made 50K per hour farming thanks to broken respawn timers.)

Take advantage of it if you can too.  Who knows, maybe your server has entered the twilight zone too.

I'm going to be keeping a close eye on the market for the next few days.  I might even take a chance and spend a little on 95g-120g stacks just to see what happens.  I'll invest small in case the server go back to normal.  I just do not understand why it is like this.  It makes no sense at all.