Making Plans...

Making Plans for... well... Its new years gotta  get some new direction on things.  In game and IRL.

Since this blog is not about me IRL, I will continue to try not to let to much of RL spill into here, thought it has in the past and will I am sure in the future

Plans actively in progress:

1. Leveling another toon to 85... I have leveled from 76 to 84 in the last couple weeks.  I like the gear chase so will be actively engaged in gearing him out.  He is a bank alt and a passing fancy... but for now... mehh... it amuses me
2. cleaning out the bank and stocks I had for 4.3... this is going more slowly... its more of a sporadic effort and completely half hearted.  I did say I was taking a break from the AH game.  It would be a lot easier if ZA still worked...
3. Raiding... Still doing that, religiously on the druid tank, and regularly though half heartedly on the priest and hunter...  I will not make it a priority of any sort to keep up with the priest and the hunter on gear... they are fun toons to goof off with...  If and when I can want and choose.... the warrior will get priority, since I am to the point now where I WANT to play him more than the others....

Thats about it on what I am REALLY DOING...

PIPE DREAMS and LOL plans (in a close order of most likely to happen to least likely to happen...):

1. Level the tailor, warlock or the... I dont like either of the classes greatly so its a mixed bag.  The warlock is a horde toon and the mage is and ally toon.  Who cares really though... I can get stuff moved one side to the other easy enough.  This is all about having my own tailor
2. Delete one of the rogue twinkers, they are both about 30-40ish
3. Load up and play with
4. Level the shaman on up... I love this toon, the last shaman I leveld was resto ele for gearing reasons... this one.. ENHANCEMENT/ resto for faster ques.. if  I am in that sort of mood... it is level 68 atm
5. Level a herber/miner druid, just purely a farm cow... not that I do much intentional farming, but I might when 5.0 comes out... That is one of the times when farming is mad profits... for the time invested... but so is everything else...
6. Start up the gold making process again...
7. Finish leveling the twink priest, because, I still like twinking... and I am thinking about putting the toon in a twinker guild... ehh.. hmmm.. who knows... the priest is now at level 16 i think?
8. Level a toon and start buying another set of  BOAs on the second account.  ATM, I already have nealy all of them... well over half to be certain...
9. Merge my "wifes" account to my battle.net acount, to transfer the BOAs...
10. Decide on a main, and go be an achievement monster, get loremaster and the insane on that one toon, and make it my raiding main forever, collecty all the pets and all the mounts on that one toon... YAHHH... GREAT IDEA>>>  nowwhich toon.. prolly the pandaren monk.. yeah the pandaren monk... (snicker, its never gonna happen)

A G factor on Christmas, and Happy new year...

Over a year ago... I pretty much got tired of chasing the dreams of archeology... it was not updated and I was completely busted about the whole vial of sands.  I had gotten 4 canopic jars and no receipe.  I had not managed to get any of the epics I really wanted, in fact the only one that was useful at the time was the ring of the boy emperor. 

So for nearly a year, I did nothing with it.  Then on Christmas day, as the family events were winding down, the kids wer playing with their new toy, I went to play with mine... My Christmas present is the computer I built about 3 weeks ago.  I bought the parts over the cyber thanksgiving weekend, and compartivly, its a monster.  I had a single core 2 gig procesor on a 32 bit OS...  now 8 gigs of ram 3.4 Ghz quad core and a new video card and lastly the solid state HD...

Anyway, I decided to go Achy hunting again for the "Receipie: Vial of the Sands"  and I think they changed the way it drops, or at least the canopic jar, but I was in a daze of tunnel vision... All the same, MERRY CHRRISTMAS... I got the receipie.

Now then there is the G factor... I HAD.. nearly over 1.4 mil   now I am short of 1.1M... I made 10 of them and gave away 7 so far... talk about a Merry Christmas... I gave 3 each to a pair of guildees that have helped me a lot and one to a good friend on our raid team... I have 3 more, and think I will give them to raid team members too.. but totally not sure.

Just to put it in perspective... the vendor mats for one Sandstone drake.. are 29K...  so 290K on vendor mats, plus the flasks, truegold and the rest of stuff... much of whick I had, the truegold, and I snatched the flasks from the G bank... Still...  Its a lot of fun to be able to go spend 300K on others and still be well over a mill. 

We often can forget this is a social game... a game of people and taking care of them is important and a worthwile enterprise...

Happy new years to all

P.S.
Short term plans:  I have leveled the BS/Miner who happens to be a tanking warrior to level 84.  Its a fun secondary enterprise, and a great change up to just run a random dungeon, or go questing and no pressure.

I would still like to get the warlock tailor up and the shammy, and thats where I will likely quit...

I need to save on spot to delete one of my low level toons for a Monk... or 2....

Lastly, I think I will likely get into using TSM  its seems that is the current monster and being familiar with the ins and outs of that addon will be important for future gold making enterprises...

Pushing to 2 Mill and beyond

Alto dropped a nice comment on my last post.  It points out some observations, and quantifys them with numbers and evidence to the "gut feeling" of what I felt about the same.  Anyway, it gave me seed to some thoughts and plans and I guess writing out a plan of how and what to do as far as long range goals to hit the 2 million marker.

First off, I am now continuing to unload the piles of mats I had stacked up.  The only thing I am disappointed in myself in is that I did not keep enough greeny gems for my daily JC stuf... oh well... and that I have completely lost a ton of value on the decline of prices on volatiles...  Still not sure I understand how the lost so much value???

On the 700K... thats what I have yet to get... to hit 2 Million liquid.. right now, I will likely make a plan to only increase stockpiles on things up to about 50K max... no more piles worth HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS in the banks... 50K invested seems a good mark to not have a giant loss.  The market is going to change and the chance to make the big, short term turn over that I did was just that, A well thought out, long term investment based on evidence and experience for 4.3 on the order of 600K or more in mats stocked up in the banks.. I made a post on that before, but forget what the bottom line was...

For now the game will be slow.  I will continue to push up to an easy 1.5Mill or better just on the piles of stuff I will continue to unload... still turning over the PVP LW and BS crafted gear to get rid of some, still offloading the few scrolls I have, emptying out everything else in the banks that was planned for 4.3  the next big money maker will be 5.0... there will be a lot of bored players over the next several months that will continue to farm and do dailys and have piles of gold to spend when 5.0 hits... early to level, and early to max out professions can be very profitable... WHICH professions... THAT is the question... and with out more info, that will remain a question for a long time... JC will likely be very profitable... early on it is since it has been limited by the token system for cuts... in wrath it was also rep grinds, and some drops of varying rarity... But, JC is early on very profitable if well played, it takes a lot more work... BS, Tailor, LW... YMMV... but there are a lot w/ those professions on their "main" and it can get competitive... I had great success early on w/ inscription... the relics were very high volume sales.. and the trinkets were a gold mine... Enchanting will also be a big one... DE'ing all the mats as you quest up... big pay outs... Greatly profitable, least work profession to run with IMO.. Enchanting... just DE quest rewards while leveling... I imagine alchy will be quickly saturated... and engineering will be the same... a rough market... for early in a patch anyway... there will still likely be ranged weapon enhancements for the hunters... but, Honestly.. the big payday... and easiest money is going to be farming... I know farming was easily 3-4K an hour in early cata... thats a pretty good number... compared to straight AH crafting...  and since it can fuel your gold piles, you get XP leveling with it, and it can provide the mats you need to level your own professions... What you do miss with farming for XP is the rep from quest w/ the factions... I guess at this point the goal will be to offload and largely empty out most of the good in my banks, and leave it that way till 5.1 really...  The prices will only decline after 5.0, MOP, and planning ahead for 5.1 will be the next big AH crafting boom for mass gold.  There will be oportunities to be a pure AH goblin in the release of 5.0.  but, its a risky market and I learned you can not hold your stuff...  It will likely drop in value as the market get saturated... that was the 300K mistake I made not selling DMC trinkets... I would estimate about a week to 10 days worth of mats max in 5.0, and currently.  I guess the plans will be to get my first raiding toon up and rolling, then get the crafting toons up and moving too...  how much that will all be possible, I am not sure, in the past some of my markets have had the "orbs" required for the leg armors, so that is tough one, especially if they are BOP...

One of the potentially biggest money makers, though competition will dictate, is Pets.. 5.0 and pet battles... That will be a new market to feed.  there are a lot of pet collectors now, but that will be something else... it will take pet sales to a whole new level, that is one thing I may stock up on is pets for 5.0  to reutilize the storage for pets and mats to craft them.  I imagine getting the recipies that are world drops now and mats now will be a lot cheaper than later.. there will be a lot of new monks and pandarens leveling.. but they will be eating up the AH mats to powerlevel professions... Engineered pets if you have all the paterns to make em, could be a huge profit.... time will tell... Of all the things announced this is the one piece of information we have that could be a huge gold making tip now.. that would be huge for long range profits.. but it is a long range profit plan...

So...  68 shammy, alchy/chanter
bank alt 85 hunter, LW/chanter
bank alt 79 warrior, miner BS
raiding main druid, JC/chanter
raiding toy toon, scribe/alchy (xmute)
thirty somehting miner/engy rougue alt
thirty something miner skiner rogue alt...
fortysomething low level warlock tailor/???
other faction thirtysomething tailor/chanter mage
twink priest..
thats my 10... I think I would like to get an herbalist/miner to be a farmer

i guess my plans revolve around getting one of the rogues, the warrior and shammy up.. prolly delete one of the rogues and make a druid farmer miner/alchy.... or scrap that and leave the spot for my pandaren monk..

Ugh... still a lot of plans to solidify, but for now just chill on the AH game, not playing at the markets atm,  I have almost completely quit selling scrolls, just a few left, and I no longer buy and craft scrolls to sell... the market looks like it could still be profitable.. but... ehh.. I am on a break...   the short term goals are whimiscal, fly by the seat of my pants, and my long term goals are still varyable... and nothing solid...

Bahh... wall of text... if you made it to the bottom, go buy a lottery ticket...

Merry Christmas to all... happy gaming over the holidays...

1.3 MIL ... liquid

The title is all.. 1.3Mil liquid.

and I deposited 50K into my raiding toon's g bank... (not one of my holdings)

Alto asked in comments if I was going to or had done the wowecon thing... Looked and think I will do it once...  when I hit trade prince... :-) why not... its a shorter list.... 

A trek 1m, over one year, as I remember it...

I was playing a social and  casual game, I had little NEED for gold, though many wants.  I managed in my own mind feel okay with normal flying speed on my toons.  Food, flask, pots and stuff that was important, I love the epic ventures with group and the personality dynamics of groups.  Some MUCH more than OTHERS...  Another long story, I was GM and raid lead of a guild.

Part of this was the fact that the guild disintegrated when military duties called me out of town for several months, and some how I found a reason to server transfer several toons, then sort of had a drama thing bring those relationships to an end, and server transfered multiple toons again.  This time I found a great group of people with a lot of nice things to say, but I was as you always are the new guy, and did not really have a place in what was quite admitedly marginal and average raiding.  Too much tollerance for average in progression. And that led to wipes.  Too many people that are too nice and will not put the rubber down on the road when the engines are reving and the light turns green... "I was making a samich.... what?"  or "Oh, okay I get it this time... "(you have heard that before, like the last 4 wipes)... nice people, fun game, bad raiding structure. 

The systems were primed, the events were about to begin.  Durring my military deployments, I had few oportunities to play, but I did have internet and was able to do a lot of reading.  Following links, I was orriginally turned on to Gevlon, back when he used to do the funny posts of reader submited idiots in chat and such.  Some how got connected to Stokpile, and it just got busy from there.  Old buddies from the orriginal guild mentioned were on a new server and had a good track record.  I also was never broke, since I had 6 max level toons, and every profession but tailoring.  I did a lot of farming, and often spent my gold on mounts and things too.  My buddies still hung out and used my vent regularly, so we still stayed in touch that way as we were scattered on servers.  So I was all about a serious raiding group, but not all about failed wanna bes in a good group people.  I can tollerate mistakes, but not being able to self identify and asses your own problems and fix em...  So this is where it started... A HARD RESET... changing everything from the very first character selection screen.

Now... a new chapter begins and birth of the gold enterprises.  I was not ready to transfer all the toons again, I made a choice to roll fresh.  They (my buddies from the past) wanted a disco priest, so a level one toon was born, with plans already in place to go, herbalism inscription and later drop inscription.  Early on the only addons I used were Lil Sparky's Workshop, Auctioneer, and Arkinventory.  (those were the gold making ones anyway)  that was all I needed to make the manual decisions on herbs... sell them? mill them? what glyphs to craft?  and then spend weeks selling off the piles of glyphs and things I made when leveling.  I would sell the highest value herbs raw to presumably alchemists leveling, and mill the low value ones to keep leveling inscription.  Auctioneer and LSW was all the info I needed to manualy do these things.  The plan was never to go into the glyph business, making gold, or minimizing losses while leveling inscription was always the plan.  I had it in my head at the time that inscription was the ONLY profession that could resonably make gold at low levels.  I have since proven my own theory's on that wrong, but, the idea was that at low level, I would be able to make glyphes that high level toons were going to want and were going to buy.  Part of that is true, about the high level characters buying your glyphs... Anyway it worked.  The long term plan was to get into the DMC business...

I did very well with that till I made a huge and bad bet on the market.  about 4 months after creating the toon I had over 400K then... ... ...  I went from 400K to 100K trying to wait out the market.  I got a new addon in this process too.  Open office and spreadsheets...   I had everything on that sheet, cost, value milled, value of cards, value of trinkets, value of decks, and my inventory.  The plan was to wait 2 weeks to sell of the 40 DMC trinkets I had. I figured if I waited out the market, the supply would dry up and I would step in and make the killing... I watched 300K worth of DMCs and trinkets drop in valuen by about 50% and more from my cost to make them. And I was not alone in the market... and the other seller never ran out of material to post... The guild I was going to raid with also fell apart and I got jaded with raiding and tried at PVP for a couple months, but in the end, I spent a lot of time playing at the AH game.  and leveling some alts...

I made bank alts and continued to read and learn from the blogger community,  I had a pile of mats (herbs) and droped herbing to pick up alchemy. transmute spec.  I used a bank alt to buy and sell, and was posting and making piles of gold on vendor pet flips, and primal might. And still playing at the DMC game.  About this point I ventured into the land of Zero Auctions.  I was also leveling another bank alt, my current gold capped toon, and he was an enchanter LW.  As I leveled I did the rep grind for old chants and for a long time was selling them at decent profits. So, 3 toons posting, the enchanter w/ twink chants, the scribe and DMCs, decks and trinkets... and then the bank alt with vendor pets and a multitude of small things and leg armor.  Zero Acutions made it pretty simple and very fast for the higher volume of items I was posting.

Then another big shift, 100K was good enough and the DMC game was kinda over, at least in the way I wanted to play it.  Boredom and looking to go raiding again.  Chased down and old contact and got in decent guild and got back to it...  more trials and roller coaster rides in the raid groups... there were 3 raiding groups, then there was ONE... and I was not a part of it.  frustration and back at the casual game of fail raiding... I started my own group... and have gone through the ropes getting the consistent roster with the right players... and I made the next big gold making step...

I had played around at the enchants markets and had about 400K again from enchants and getting what I could out of the DMCs I had.  This is the point when 4.3 started to LOOM.. and the guesses were when is it comming out?? most guesses were 2-3 months... I then decided I had the experience, I had the gold, and I had the systems to get back into the AH game for 4.3.  Initially the plan started out to just buy about 400K in mats and sit on them till the patch... I set some rough goal w/ no quantified evidence really of what I wanted... Just gut feeling and experience.  I also focused on ONLY Cata level enchants and leg armors (with a little tinkering in gems and miscelaneous), just because inventory management for all the others is a pain in the rear, and VOLUME.. volume of sales on patch days for twink gear... bad idea IMO. 400K was not enough...  Since it was not enough, I had to make more gold to make bigger stockpiles.. This was the grind, stage, and I watched many piles and piles of mats grow in my 2 guild banks and in my own toon banks and bags...  I was also watching sales volume to make sure I was posting appropriate volume for my posting paterns.  That data was alos good for determining the amount of precrafted scrolls to make.   I made a new enchanting spread sheet... and abused addons and for the best level of data analysis to prepare for 4.3... (refer back to old posts)  then 4.3 and then 10 more days.. and it all came together... ding.. 1M...

Lessons from this you may take away:

1. Data: gotta have it, knowledge is power, if its addons or spreadsheets, does not matter, you need lots of it..
2. Data Analysis:  You have to be able to look at the data and make educated decisions, you will make some bad calls and mistakes... if you cant learn from them get out or change something big...
3. Patch info:  There are tidbits of info that can help influence your decisions...
4. Selling consumables/enhancements: always in demand, always great markets to play with.  IMO, enchanting is a much harder market to run and manage than gems.  So, I imagine there is a little less competition, and the profit margins per sale are potentially greater... Profit per transaction... and the old post I made about GPH is a lie.
5. If you want to get rich quick: forget it.. its lots of time and work.  the best you can hope for is a plan comming together to make a lot more in a much shorter period of time based on previous plans, habits and the ability to PAY IT FORWARD... 3 months of stock, an estimated 700K, lead to my 1,000,000 gold haul in 10 days.. I had 10K the monday before 4.3 dropped... but piles of mats and scrolls and armor and leather and volatiles and STUFF...
6. My mistakes:

• thinking truegold would go up in value.. the demand did not go up really so neither did the value, if anything it continues to drop and I have few hopes of recovering the investment
• thinking volatiles would go up.. still hopefull on this one, but not holding my breath
• thinking I could flip 140 tankards of terror sooner than I have been able to for a lot higher profits than what I have realized so far (maelstrom crystal values continue to rise... :-) I can shard em all... )

Servers are all different and YMMV... I have a few unique things on my server.. there is little alliance... there is MASSIVE horde pop, and large tendancy to raiding...  those factors and the base of my potential buyer is part of what allowed me to push over the top in the way that I did

Merry Christmas, and Happy hollidays

1.2M and still growing

I feel like I now have nothing to write about, or new to do in game.. getting to a million with out an exit strategy has left a void to some degree, not that it pains me... Its just a wierd place to be... I guess I am experimenting with new things to get a new direction... For now, with out the drive to make a million, it has left the possible choices and directions to go a lot more open. 

I am still off loading the piles of stuff I have, just am no longer making a point of loggin daily to post and repost and stuff on the multiple toons.

I guess there are some more things to see and do in the game... One is go see the old raids I have never done..  I have never been in AQ  either verision... and Level a worgen... at least the starter quest experience.. I could go mount and or pet collection crazy... I could lever a tailor or the warrior that is at 75...   Oh the choices...

I could also go find new ways to make gold... nevermind there are no NEW ways to make gold only different ways from what I have been doing.... Prolly back to leveling alts.. I like leveling... sometimes... sorta... And I am probably crazy for it too...

happy holidays

Moving forward, And Happy Hollidays

As the patch wears on, and the next ex pac is expected, many play styles and paterns will change.  IMO there is not longer any point now in stockpiling the way I did for 4.3.  If I do any stock piling it will be for one week max at a reducued production level and it will only be on consumables.  Leg armors, belt buckles and enchants.  Doing the JC market is more work than I want to do, and doing the ore suffle is even more.

I will not be making the stocks I had Pre 4.3, I really did not expect to clean out my chanting mats and scrolls in less than 2 weeks.  More like 10 days.  I thought it would last me for about 3+ weeks.  OH well less work for more profits as prices are starting to come down.  Or at least profit margins are.

I think for my massive pile of volatiles I will hold out for a bit longer on trying to offload them.  My reasoning behind this is a guess and prediction of demand will go back up once the newness of the 4.3 wears off.  I suspect that leveling crafters will get back to leveling professions and other big volume users will re emerge.  If not, I dont expect prices to drop too much more, but then I did not expect them to drop the way they  did either.  Who knows.  I guess now I will have time to play at some other things like the new darkmoon fair next month, and alts and other things... I have never had a maxed out tailor... or mage or warlock or DK... might work at all 3 of those... (not the DK)

And of course I will continue to find new ways to make gold while doing it.

Happy Hollidays to all

OH no.. my bags are full.. or just one is

could not open my mail... grrr
so I transferred enough to make this visual...

One toon, I made 1 Million gross in less than 2 weeks...

I did not transfer gold from my other guys to do this... this was that bubba's solo enterprise...

mostly enchants, but belt buckles and leg armors were a lot of it.. this week I added in the LW PVP crafted gear.

My BS has made a bit on the BS crafted PVP gear (10K) and my JC has made about 160K on gems...

Yep... still making the good stuff, or at least taking it from others

Hindsight... you can always say, I shoulda seen THAT comming

So I hit a million, and the one thing I was completely wrong about and seems I may have to soak the loss is volatiles (another is truegold)... I guess I could have seen this one coming but never looked for it.

We know or assume that most player that feed our goblin banks are casual... at least in their gold making enterprises... Okay, next we also know that prices for good goes way up... Okay, now as the first days of raiding and the new PVP season go.. prices and such start to fall...  Most of those Casuals are BROKE... they can not afford to buy the stuff at the increased prices...  Okay, so now they do what they know, dailies and farm... Okay... now, sales volume drops and surplus' of material start to come into the market, and price start to settle out... Okay, as a result of all the new farming, all the dailies for gold to give me for my consumables they produce a lot of volatiles... and in this new patch, there were no HIGH demand patterns for those volatiles... yeah there are plenty out there, but by and large, there were probably other like me that had stocks of volatiles, but now the supply is going up too...  The inferno ruby prices went for 90 to 250-500 gold... that will dry up a lot of banks quick.. w/ the new 5 mans, alts, LFR, and normal raid locks... there is a lot of gear UGs going on... good for us, but I think it has driven a lot of players bank accounts to really low places and driven them to farming...

What is all this about.. I still have 4-10K each of volatiles, and though I would be able to flip them with the patch... yeah, I can flip them like a coin into a wishing well... for a massive loss.. prices have dropped 50-70% from my buying thesholds...   and truegold seems to have fallen too... lots of piles and an insignificant demand of the mats... prolly gonna lose my tail on that too..

On a side note, I still have mats for leg armors and belt buckles... crushing that up to sell off... I will have to start an ore shuffle for some GCEs and just buy out the expensive MCs at the new higher prices.. easy enough... As of now I am going to a bit more of an on demand buying pattern for mats for enchanting... totally out of GCEs and MCs.

After a 2 day break from the AH, I crafted my last bits of scrolls with the mats I had, the only thing I still have is HDs.  Will be more cautious now, and the market will be volatile and start to crash... sell off the rest of my leg armors, and grind some mats I have into PVP gear, that will eat into some of the volatiles I have.  I am selling a few LW ones and about to go buy all the BS ones and do what I can.

Still fun and I still have an increasing bottom line...

Now what... 1 million passed...

No real info on how to make gold, just ramblings on the question:
What to do when you meet a long term goal?

I will continue to make gold I am sure, how hard I push will likely decline.  After the patch hype slows down, the potential will decline too.  and then its a totally different game when the MOP hits... sorta totally different... and that statement make totally perfect un-common sense.

I have always enjoyed not having to worry about gold, ever since I actually had some, it makes the rest of the game much more relaxing.  You get new gear and you can enhance it and still have gold for repairs, consumables (food/flasks etc). 

I guess I am thinking long range again.  For short term, emptying the piles of thing in the banks that I still have and continuing to monitor and watch the markets.  For long term, I think my plan is to play a MONK... I may even want to make 2 of them. leveling from 1-90 will be a serious grind, so how and when I actually realize that goal is yet unknown, but its back to the unsettled nature of the way I play.  My main is the toon I am currently most vested into raiding with.  That has changes so many many times over and over.  So chasing achieves, pets and mounts is not really all that satisfying since I know I will be moving on to another toon sometime in the next several months to a year. 

I have enjoyed a couple nights off more or less.  Last night, I did not have time and did not make time to play at the AH, I just prepared for raid, and then after the raid I logged.  Thats refreshing, maybe now I can/will actually level a couple more alts and play at some other aspect of the game... I really dont know...

Derpa Derp!!! 1 Million derp derp...

So, yeah, then I crossed that line.  Collected mail from a single posting cycle on 2 toons last night.

What else is there to say...

Best wishes to all as you continue to pursue your goals...

Okay, of couse I have more to say.

This has been a one year journey.  A fair amount of roller coaster ups and downs, and starts and stops.  Varying levels of intensity...  the last 3ish months have been fairly focused.  I started with about 400K, buying up and stocking up tons of chant mats and doing the work to have even more invested in mats.  I still have piles of other mats to get rid of too. LW stuff, and volatiles and many more... but the 400k was spent and piled up in the Guild banks in stacks of mats and stacks of scrolls.  It gave me the number to post and the numbers to stock.. but, in the end, I was not prepared...  On the enchanting market at least.  I thought I had about 2-3 weeks of scrolls and mats, more like 8-9 days.  I have sold out of almost all my stocked scrolls, and completely out of Maelstrom crystals and GCEs.  Of that million in the last week 130K has been gem sales, and over 800K is on the chant leg armor belt buckle guy... I started selling Vicious LW gear last night too...   now that line is crossed, not sure what I will do, but the intensity will be diminshed....

Simple still works, 1Mill sooo close

Dollar cost averaging... It is a term I learned when learning about investments... basially keep on buying stocks/funds etc. as the price goes up and down...  You end up with and average cost... Its easier to maintain than alwayst trying to play in markets and always catch the buy low sell high waves... Simple, long term investment strategy.

The WOW AH... Especially now as markets are seeing a high volume, simple works.  Later as volume drops, it works less effectivly, because you will get undercut and not sell if you are not activly doing the same.  Effectivly walls and you have to get under em to sell.  But now with the extreme volume of sales those walls are crushed.. at least in the consumables markets on my server.  Gems/leg armor/enchant scrolls is what I play with.  Yesterday, was my first "raid" in DS with the normal group. last week due to too many schedule problems, it was an off week.. we cleared 3 on the first night with connection and pug issues cuttin into raid time.  More later this week.  But with the drive home, and then having a lot of parts for a new PC sitting ther I started to build.  Then had to start aucitons, and then dinner, then raid... So, I posted my normal numbers of auctions and let it go.  One posting before raid time on Tues.  After raid, I normally log and cancel post, but with addons still not working and my stock of precrafted scroll largely depleted, I did not relish the idea of 20-30 minutes crafting so went to bed.  I log this a.m. and on the enchant/leg armor/belt buckle poster... 97K.. One posting was 97K gross...  I made a bit more as I also posted some gems and sold several of them to..

Simple still works, post once and thats it... 97K gross from over 100 sold auctions 

So, the Million Gold mark is clearly in sight.  I am now scrambling for mats and such, almost out, and having to buy at the newer prices.  Pretty easy, the new thresholds go into the spreadsheet, new prices are there and as I post, I make sure I am always posting over the "new cost" to craft using old mats..

Still, the slow sellers are undercut, and below mats cost, just waiting it out for now and not listing or even trying to sell them at a loss.

Also baffled at the volatiles... they are still below the prepatch prices... that is surprising, I thought they would have gone up by now.  Still waiting out that storm, and going to start putting lots of them into the PVP gear.

All in all... it is almost without a doubt this patch will see me crack the Million marker, the question is by how much.  One Point Five Million or better is my guess, depending on how active I continue with buying mats to continue production and sales.

Woot.. its gonna keep going an being fun.. wish you the best in your endeavors...

After 4.3, I will probably go into a maintenance mode, and quit trying to push the huge numbers, and just play around with stuff a bit...  I am ready to take a break from it again, but not yet.. no definately not yet.

3 Months planning + 1 week > 800K in sales

FROM A HOTEL ROOM... while preparing for a Non-invasive, with only very mild associated joint pain and other side affects, but I was able to give the gift of life for someone with acute lymphoblastic leukemia....   If  you want to be a part of the registry to become a match or want to know more... Check out Be The Match DOT Org The donation process was fully expenses paid, meals, travel and hotel.  You can register by mail at be the match dot org, or a local drive.   It is a worldwide registry...

Life and someone else life is greater than WOW.  My PSA is over and done.... Now on to WOW....

800K gross sales in one week...  THAT is pretty sexy... and since all my gold was previously tied up in stockpiles, I had less than 10K on my account (horde side of that server at least)...

Things that work:
The same things that worked last week and the week before and the week before... ... ...
Having a spreadsheet with all my baseline costs.  Since ZA seems to still and as addons go, maybe forever be on the fritz.  Auctionator keeps on workinging, and I just refer to that spreadsheet.  That way I still don't sell anything at a loss by blindly undercutting the other dumby.  As the week wore on, there were several voracious undercutters on a couple scrolls that it was not worth my time and gold to prospect most of them and buy them out to reset the market.  There was one... its cheap, and it has not seen its day yet.... Resilience to to chest.  I was able to buy out the market, most  below costs, I know this one is a seller, and I will be waiting for the new PVP season to unload if I have to.  I did reset the market and continue to try getting a few sales. Time will tell

THats all... Auctionator and spreadsheets thats how I have run all sales in the last week.. about 120K in gems, and another 700+ in scrolls... Its good to see a plan come together... I will probably hit the million marker this week... and when I get home, I should have all the parts to build a new bomb PC... SSD, and more than one core on the processor... NIOCE!!!!1

700K and rising

thats all... read back if you missed the last one

Baffling and Befudling... but it moves on

well.. hmm... half mill in less than 3 days... okay its gross and I had piles of scrolls and mats ready to go... but its good to see a plan come together...

things that are surprising:
Volatiles.. they have not gone up in price, and to some extent even have dropped, except V Earth...
Overall, there are a lot of players  with stocks that are undercutting current and previous mats costs on scrolls...
Inferno rubies going up from ~100G, to  200-300G, a bit more than i would have guessed
GCEs going up from ~ 50G to over 100, again a bit more than I would have guessed
overall the volume of apparent posters/undercutters in the scrolls market
the sillyness of undercutters, cutting below mats prices from LAST week when they were still lower

Things NOT surprising
GCEs and infernos and Carnelians values went way up, just more than I expected/would have guessed
Massive volume, I was not prepared as well as i could have been
Massive profits, selling for a lot more per scroll on many items...
The plane to sell consumables is working well
Addons are not working, and Having all my baseline data up to date prior to patch with posting volume, mats costs and such has allowed me to continue manually posting, just undercut w/ auctionator, and before I post I refer to my spreadsheet that the price I am listing at is still profitable to my mats costs, the cost I got mats prior to the patch...

Lessons learned...
MORE GCEs.. 2 full guild bank tabs would have been batter.. along with the precrafted scrolls and other stuff
Not sure why, but volatiles seem to not really be going up in value, waiting it out for another week or 2 to see what happens, I still suspect that storages will dry up and then I will see the price increases...

Current status:
Scrolls market, over 500K in sales in 3 days, this is the big one and my primary market
Gems, has seen about 80K in sales in the same 3 days.. this is a play and dabble market, so I do not push the volume I could... After I am good on the enchants/leg armors/EBBs I am posting on the main toon, I review markets and cut and post accordingly.

Still working on valor capping all 3 toons to buy BOE valor gear for my raiding main... the bank alt is good, and got 2 pieces of LFR T13.. heh... and some other nice goodies in the new 5 mans...
the raiding main, is up to 800 and deciding how to get that last bit... would prefer to do it in a raid and get some experience
the priest is barely started, at 200 valor and still has the LFR to run and some gear that would be nice in the 5 mans..

Due to many schedules, particularly mine, I did not run a raid this week... I had a conflict of schedules, and am now in a Hotel, and will donate bone marrow tomorrow for someone..... To me that is way more important than WOW and raiding.. the peeps on the raid team all agreed.

I may end up going with TSM... still using ZA, and it has not been updated to functional yet....

Now is when your perception of your markets gets dicey IMO... the first week rush is coming to a close, but the second week will be busy too.  Depending on when the PVP season starts... other big impacts will be the BOE valor pieces and the regular BOP valor gear will start to become available and cause a huge flux in demand... I have not tried to sell any of the PVP blue crafted gear.. but may go for that too soon... been busy keeping up with just the scrolls...

GL to you and wish you the best in your enterprises

It has been more of the same, but close to ready

No idea what the near future holds, with 4.3 hitting the servers tomorrow most likely... I have a raiding main toon, and I have 2 alts to get out and valor cap with for the next 2 weeks at least.  2 weeks of valor capping with 3 toons means that I will get 3 pieces of valor gear on my raiding main in that week.. I think.. in may take 3 weeks since I dont fully understand the changes to valor.. If the cap drops, it will be 3+ weeks...

All the same it will be exciting, new content and piles of gold to take from all the people who have been saving over the recent months for what is coming.

Couple observations:  My review of the loot tables for FL show NO BOEs.. their may be some from trash drops, but not sure... we will know shortly after release, there were just none shown on the Boss drops tables posted on MMO-champion.  That could mean lots of people with no where to spend the gold they have been saving.  Depending on exactly how the new valor points work... and what the weekly cap is, in 2-3 weeks, their will be BOE bracers and boots galore that want chants and gems.  Many people will covert valor to gold at 20K per BOE, maybe 15K for the boots and bracer.  I think the bracers were 1250, and the boots were 1650 Valor... Watch this on the servers and be ready for that 2nd and 3rd week for them to be selling.  Be ready to get that gear chanted and gemmed... Also it appears that the crafting mats only drop in the LFR version of Dragon soul.. did not see them on the loot tables for the normal or heroic... interersting...  Live will tell us more...

Current status:  As of my last look this a.m. the last week (since tues) has shown over 350K in gross sales... a bit of that was BOE drops from FL (15-20K).. but some updates...  I think initially there will be a lot more UGs and a much higher frequency for enhancements as the current gear and the new gear from the new 5 mans, is upgraded to the gear from the LFR and then upgraded again to the gear from the actual normal raids.  This could spell for a much steeper and faster increase in inflation after realease.  Or.. since the LFR and LFD do not care about gems and chants, many will not spend the gold on the, "It's getting replaced soon, and not worth it players."

Precrafted scrolls: over 1,000, based on recent sales volume this will be about 1-2 weeks supply. If that in some cases, and a little more in other cases.  I will need to plan ahead for the massive bracer/boots chants in the 2-3rd weeks following release.

Current market value of mats in those scrolls: over 300K (the cost invested in those scrolls)

Expected sales value of those scrolls: 400K or more (this is bases on recent sales prices, and I expect prices to go up and this to be a good bit more)

Current market price of stocked chant mats: over 300K (last look at the enchant mats, and volatiles in my bags, the volatiles inflate this number as many of them will not be used for enchanting,  Many will be going into belt buckles, and just flipped as the prices go up.)

I imagine, without any concrete numbers to back it up, other than my recent post, that the LW mats, gems and other stuff I have piled up, is worth about 4-500K...

The trick is now to sell it and actually get the gold in my bags... This is going to be fun.



No idea without doing a detailed analysis of all my mats and other things I have what I will really be able to sell for, but if my preparation and guesswork of how to prepare was anything close to accurate...

GOLD CAP is about 2-3 weeks away...

It has been just over one year since i really started at this game and really took a break from it for a couple months in the middle.  Durring that time, I shifted my market from inscription to enchanting and LW consumables.  I do have a significant pile of LW mats and may venture into the Crafted PVP gear scene just to off-load those.

Good luck if it is tomorrow... and have fun in dragon soul or your favorite city, or....

Are your ready? Almost? Is your server ready? Talk to your competition..

Jafo over at Auction house grind posted on 4.3 stocks and plans and oops... To him and all players in the game its another great post on 4.3 preparation plans, YMMV based on server and markets and stuff... its always a gamble and its always fun...

First off, I disagree on 2 points.  FL will be "easy mode" and the legendary will still be sought, so regular groups will run I think.  It will be quick easy valor for casuals, 7 bosses in around 2 hours... and often prefered to LFD and LFR runs fo many mains and alts.  Look at how many still run BWD and BOT and TO4W... there are not as many T11 raids as T12 raids, but there are pretty regular /2 trade spams to get the T11 raids going, look at what to BOEs are selling for to get a pulse on your server and watch trade for current trends and such about the raiders and RBGs and BOEs.  The volume of BOEs and prices is IMO a good temperature gague on what you may expect..

Second on his post he suggests don't stockpile on precrafted enchant scrolls, pile on mats and stay flexible... Ehhh, great advice depending on your position and your market analysis and research... YMMV... and I opt for another option... BOTH, stock mats and scrolls.  I have been for months, and continue building stocks and doing market anaylysis of sales volume and potential for posting paterns and precrafting volume.  Auctioneer I think is the addon that tells me 3day/7day/total sales on items.. so a mouse over the scroll and I know what volume I ran for the last 3 and 7 days.  I started all scrolls in stacks of 2... if I sold out I moved it to 3>4>5>6 or 7 if I sold out, 7 is my current max per post, this is in part driven by undercutters and market volume and potential.  2 things here, one, moving up per post volume is to cover market "POTENTIAL" and the sales numbers show market "ACTIVITY"  some are steady and some are spikey.  You will be undercut and it seems a good place to start.. some things I sell little, but very spikey volume. Ex. sell 4 one day and none for another week.  Others, I sell steady at ~50/week  Over a couple months, I have a good set of data to base having 40+ precrafted scrolls of some types (or 80 each) AND...  I did the same thing as Jafo... I guessed.. and continue to guess, so I will realize many mistakes as I go forward.  Goal is 2-3K GCEs and I am close, and 4-5K HDs, dont care about HSs so much... (markets are hard to guess in the early weeks on what HSs will do.)  MCs, I am close to 1,000...  so, I have goals, guesses and market trends from personal observation to base things on, and I suspect some areas, as usual I will be wrong... but I will be smarter...

Another reason to precraft... I raid.. and dont want to invest the time crafting when i want to be raiding and valor capping my valor slaves for my mains BOE valor gear...  So... I will have regretable mistakes, My volume estimates are based on current situations of players, buyers and competition.  The patch will hit, players will return volume estimates based on the preceding weeks/months will be wrong.. ehh, its something to start with and it will be easily adjusted up.

On 4.3 stockpiles and competiton,  I talked to a guy in a pug raid say he had 6 guild bank tabs of pyrite... it got me thinking... patch day is a money maker.. trends are trends.. but at some point people start to jump on the band wagon and it waters down the value as more try to capitalize on it... are patches far enough apart to reset the trends of trying to make the gold, are players busy enough w/ new content to change the markets, and will this be the patch where...
"There were just too many stockpiles that were just too big, on too many goblins for the high profits previously realized on patch cycles." 
I worry about that.. okay, its a game and pixels, so not really, but its a point of thought and curiosity. 
One thing I do get and people I do talk to is the suppliers... I buy monster volumes of "stuff" and frequently will get a seller to /w "you want more?"  My reaction is always the same, "? more what?" since I am buying chant mats, leather, ore and other stuff.. no idea who that random guy is, but the oportunity may be there to find out what that "supplier" is planning for 4.3? continue farming? go raiding? one player over and over will start to also give you a good picture of what you may see in your server.

Honestly, I dont think people will be ready, and the markets will crash and climb.  Mats prices will go up, and so will finished goods... if you have piles of cheap mats, you will have a chance to capitalize massivly... 

People/players are inherintly lazy and continually looking for the quick gold play.  the lottery if you will.  The get bored and play other games, they do not plan ahead and instead scream and whine about the new "high" prices and then pay since that is the only option we give them.. they may go farm for mats, but, back to the first point, inherintly lazy, and the time to farm will be often skipped to get the quick UG enhanced... Really, who wants to show off their new 391 tier 13 gear or the next PVP season gear, with no gems or enhancements... they will get laughed at and you know they want to show it off...  If they got it week one or 2 and such.. they won the lottery, they will want to tell everyone that they are better than you since they "earned" and got that gear and you did not.. lol at the luck #s from a Baradin Hold Drop...  but they, in their mind, for a time get to be better than you...  And a few of them, quite possibly are better than you...

BUT I WILL HAVE MORE GOLD!!!

Enchanter Tip for 4.3

So read on a bit for stupid comentary and the tip.

For now the markets continue in many areas show decline in costs for mats.  This is having far reaching impacts into my current situation.  I dumped a bunch of gold, most of my liquid into some markets to prospect and potentially profit.  time will tell if that works.  The impact is I am regularly running a low (sub 10K gold) balance.  The second thing is waiting out the storm.  Do I change my thresholds to sell?  As material cost go down, I am getting undercut more frequently, and finding a lot of auctions are posting back to the fallback.  I may go try to push some prices down a bit, just to get some higher turn over, and more liquid gold to invest in markets.. I continue to push some stocks up, mainly been hugely successful getting a lot more Maelstroms crystals.  Up to nearly 1,000 in stock...  still running high sales volume, but its all getting reinvested into my bags and banks as much as possible.  No real changes in what I have been doing, Just being more selective in my purchases and not buying everything in sight below my threshold, mostly since I am out of gold, and also I am nearly full on the bags and banks.

So what is this tip for enchanters... HRmmmm.. Can not take credit for it myself, I got it from a guildee, but it was a great tip and good point.  In the early weeks following 4.3 release there is going to be a HUGE demand and after that a continuing large demand for the rogue dreamers... I really mean rogue... There is going to be a LOT of rogue going out and working to get their pair of shiny new legendary daggers... That is going to create a pretty large spike in demand for "Enchant Weapon: Landslide."  Further guess work is up to you as YMMV, many of these players are going to be guilded w/ G banks full of mats and just get em hooked up for free, many will know its comming and will have scrolls in their bag for the moment they get the Daggers.  So there is the tip.. Enchant Weapon: Landslide... Evaluate how well this sells now and be ready for a pretty big spike in volume in the early weeks, it may be a great plan to sell in stacks of 2 also.  Good luck with your 4.3 gold rush enterprises.  I will likely pre-craft upwards of 100 of these things... :-) I may sell out in a week to 10 days, or I could continue to unload for many of the following months.  Eh.. its all for fun, and its all for gold...

Thanks for dropping in

How I got started? 1Mil in sight! How did I get here?

I was once that guy that was "okay" w/ normal speed flight because 5K was so far out of reach.  Then wrath hit and my first maxed toon was a BS/Engi... what a horible combo to try to level up professions early in an expansion.  I remember... So, I found a way to make a good amount of gold on my time investment.  Zap clouds for crystalized fire in sholozar.. it got me over 5K and got me the first epic flight toon..

Some where along the way, I shifted away from farming/dailies for gold... Fast forward to the end of Wrath.  I still have those 6 level 80 ally toons on another server and have not touched them in a long time.  A complete hard reset on my part occured and I started from scratch on a new server, with a new faction and a new toon and NO assist.. that first toon did not even have heirlooms.  I leveled up w/ herbalism/inscription because I wanted to play at the DMC game.. and what a game, less than 6 months to 400K and less than one month back to only 100... leveled a second toon enchanting/LW droped herbalism and went alchy on the first. Got out of the scribe market (did very little with glyphs)  I caught the 'wave' in those 346 relics and the 359 DMCs... and made piles and piles... That was the first really addon use and learning experience.  I now still focus on enchanting and LW leg armors, and a few other easy markets.  Its coming on a year of learning and study to be able to look potentially at 1M + gold.

In some ways because it was raiding ambition to get back with some old friend on a new server, that I did a hard reset to the way I play.  I quit chasing mounts, I quit chasing pets and achieves... but in the end and looking back I had little choice but to "BREAK the CYCLE"

"If you always do what you always did... You will always get what you always got!!!" 

That cliche sums it up... It was a Hard reset, it was starting over and looking at things in a new way.  As I leveled I was seeing information in addons in a new way and was making limited entry into markets based on what I could obtain at the level of the toon and professions.  Having done a little PVP, and a fair bit of raiding, as well as twinking lowbies and pimping out bank alts, chasing achieves and playing tanks, healers DPS, I knew a lot about the potential influences in markets.  I would regularly scan the AH and evaluate things like the price of herbs that would mill for the same result, but put em on the AH and the results were NOT going to be the same.  So as I was herbing for a lot of xp and gold and inscription leveling mats, I was also watching for what to sell and what to mill, what to buy w/ the gold and what glyphs were potential money makers and what ones were solid losses and which were break even types...  That was the only glyphs I really played with.  The ones I used to level inscription, but it taught me my first lessons in patience to offload slowly the piles of glyphs I crafted to level over weeks.  I also learned the value of "Lil Sparky's Workshop" (LSW) and market evaluation, and learning it will LIE to you, or at least miss lead you...  The same with LW, and enchanting.  LW does have modestly to low profits in the lower end, the level 10-15 gear can be turned over for profit.  But not it its in an heirloom slot, and not if it does not have Str/Int/Agi and stam... go for the twiker leveling guys or the twinker PVP crowds... start as soon as possible crafting only for profitable sales, and if you can not level profitably, start crafting for minimum loss.  This was easily done w/ LSW.  As I started into this I played w/ vendor pet flips, and niche markets like Primal Might xmutes, and low level twinker items... as I focused my eforts on enchanting... In the end it has become a process of guessing markets and never selling at loss...  If it does not sell, Prolly not going to play at it.  My focus now has moved away from most non-raid low volume itmes to Higher volume and low deposit cost items. 

Belt buckles is the one item I am playing with that does have a deposit cost, but volume and profit margins make it negligable.  Posting 5 at a time and no canceling when reposting on them I think i sold over 70 in 3 days...  I made a guess here on the market, as with every item, but its a good example of the process in a "case study" of how I evalute each item for sales.  1.  Suspect it will sell  2. Prove it will sell 3. Identify time invested per sale 4. evalutate potential for sales volume 5. calculate deposit costs into profit margins 6. Start snatching mats at low prices 7. Work precrafting goods into routines 8. Re-evaluate sales and posting schedules, volume and markets for current turnover.  

Overall on Ebonsteel Belt Buckles (EBBs) I found I regularly and quickly was undercut.  The server pop is large and trying to wall in the competition was not under consideration.  Deposit cost are more than negligible, but not opressive.  I found posting 5 would often sell 2-3 quickly before getting undercut, but leaving the other 2-3 on the Ah would lead to eventual sales.  So they go up for 48 hours and I dont draw massive attention to my posting paterns at 5/posting.  I may end up with 20+ on the AH, but I have already commited the deposit cost, and when the other guys sell out that undercut me, mine will sell.  This is also influenced but the auctionator dispay to manually post item.  I noticed few regular posters posting over 10 per posting... I am also posting 5/ on my main posting toon and then manually posting 5 at a time on the crafting toon...  Posting paterns for me now are most mornings, early evening (after work), later evening (before raid) and and late night (after raid).  The later ones are often done multiple times too, since I will cancel post, snatch mats, craft piles of stuff, and then cancel post again right after work before dinner.  So, in a day I can easily end up posting 30 EBBs/day.  Another thing I will often do is just Post.  I have items to post in piles in my bags, of the higher volume items, and I will skip the cancel -> collect mail -> restock -> post and just post again from what is in my bags.  This slows down the next cancel/post routine since I will be canceling much higher volume of items with the undercuts, but ehh its a quick way to get more sales.

If your new the markets, I hope this help, but at the end of the day, patience and persistencs proves that time is money. 

Updated numbers on 4.3 prep, 1million gold in sight???

As I go over, the list to evaluate where I am and where I was, its a good thing to identify where I want to focus the next couple weeks for stock piles.  I have less gold atm, and the only down side to that is that I no longer have a chance of influencing the market as I was and maintaining prices near my thresholds.  Recent significant declines in prices I am seeing have been HSs, GCEs, HDs, Blackened dragonscales continue to trend down.  And even with 2, 6 tab guild banks for storage, I still lack the potential to grow the pile to the levels I wish. One thing I will start doing more is likely increasing the Mailbox shuffle for storage.  Previously, I could clean out the AH to, and sometimes above my threshold and I would "reset" the market for a couple days at most, before I came back and cleaned it out again.. Now.. I have to just look at those cheep mats I would have been buying and know my competition is stocking up... GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

I would like to Increase the MCs stock, and the GCEs stock.  As sales increase durring this raid reset, this will be an area of focus.  Volatile Earth and Volatile fire are both going to also get a greater focus to pile up in prep for 4.3

I do have a MUCH better Pile of precrafted scrolls... The current market value on those is HUGE, with great potential to increase a bit too.  I have full stacks or 20 each of almost all the enchants including ones like power torent and landslide, bracers etc..   Some or the higher volume sellers I have 3 to 4 stacks of 20.  Right now scrolls have been set into various posting volume groups, and I post 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, or 2 each time I cancel post.  If I sell out, at any time it goes to the next higher number to post.  I have only sold out 7 scrolls before another round of posting a couple times.  Due to undercuts, and campers, posting more than I am now, just seems less productive, for now,  but with higher volume I will be watching closely in early 4.3 to increase volume.

 EST: PREVIOUS GROSS WORTH... .8 MIL (liquid gold and mats, precrafted items)
 EST: CURRENT GROSS WORTH 1.2 MIL (liquid gold and mats, precrafed items)
all the numbers are estimates and memory of current market values.  the two biggest fudge estimates are the tankards...est at 500 ea.. (they could be 1500+ and they could be 100G MC, ehh), and also the scrolls.

300K is probably a low estimate for current value, and 150, may be a high estimate, no way to check the previous value, but that will be my next project.. evaluating the current value of precrafted scrolls.  I just picked 300G/scroll to figure value, and that is just a rough guess...

So... At this point, I have learned and now I would estimate that I have increased my gross worth significantly in about the last  2-3 weeks.. rough estimates is about 300K or more... seems like a lot, and I will be looking to better justify that number.  But value increases are not just in sales... all the ore converted to profitable numbers in EBBs and HSs.  Lots of leather converted to pristine hides and leg armors is an increase in value. Chant mats purchased converted to scrolls, increase in value...

All of these values are based on CURRENT MARKET.. and not post 4.3 markets, which will likely show some increase in prices and volume... It will be a busy couple weeks.  I have 2 Valor Point slaves, one is a 372 ilvl priest and the other is a 350 ilvl hunter.  working on gearing the hunter, and the goal will be to valor cap both of these toons weekly for the BOEs, to give to my main, and also valor cap the main for more gear.  All this while whatching markets, and cancel posting and unloading this Monster pile... If any of my predictions are decent, I will hit a million within a month following 4.3 release.  To see that potential... that is nice... And I may completely fail, as I use the piles of gold to buy BOEs to raid.. :-)



The Piles as they stand now... [estimated market value in gold brackets]
(there are a few other mats I am hanging on to atm... like cloth that I have no real current marketability for so are not included in my gross worth... )

• [11.5K] 11,500 was [109K] 109K -Liquid Gold (ouch that is a small number)
• [45K] 481 was [43K] 460 -Maelstrom Crystals (hard to keep in stock and build up piles crafting and selling scrolls)
• [32K] 512 was [10K] 160 -Heaveanly Shards (Got a BS to do the shoulder shuffle... woot)
• [80K] 1630 was [65K] 1300 -Greater Celestial Essences (still want more, need more gold)
• [2.8K] same was [2.8K] 4700 -Hypnotic Dust (always cheap, will get more when I get more gold)
• [37K] 75 was [32K] 65 -Dragonscale Leg Armor
• [42K] 84 was [16.5] 33  -Drakehide Leg Armor (selling decent so stocking up)
• [24K] 48 was [18K] 36 -Charscale Leg Armor
• [3.6K] 45 was [3K] Scorched Leg Armor
• [4K] 51 was [4K] ilight Leg Armor
• [55K] 220 was [2.K]10 -Pristine Hides
• [47K] 4700 was [12K] 1200 -Blackened Dragon Scales (prices fell, and I have more than I want, its a gamble now)
• [26K] 1200 was [20K] 900 -Heavy Savage leather (in case i want to craft next seasons starter PVP gear)
• [12.5K] 2500 was [10K] 2000 -Pyrite Ore (for buckles or to prospect)
• [0.8K] 81 was [.3K] 34 -Pyrium Bar (making buckles now)
• [0.3K] 98 was [8K]3200 -Obsidium Ore (all got crushed into heavenly shards)
• [0.3K] 59 was [5.5K] 1100 -Obsidium Bar (all got crushed into heavenly shards, and also buckles)
• [null] 1 was [10.5K] 2100 -Elementium Ore (all got crushed into heavenly shards, and buckles)
• [4.1K] 830 was [4K] 800 -Elementium Bar
• [0.6K] NEW 61 Folded Obsidium (for crafting to make the HSs)
• [29K] 957 was [15K] 502 -Carnellians (ooo... I like it... make GCEs or Inferno rubies...)
• [3K] NEW 1250 Heartblossom (to transmute rubies)
• [65K] 130 was [62K] 124 -Tremendous Tankard O' Terror (still waiting on prices to go up)
• [est. 300K] over 1,000 was [est. 150K] ~500-Cata Scrolls (lots of chant mats here)
• [17K] 176 was [17K]178 -Inferno Rubies ( have not been prospecting lately)
• [3K] same was [3K]160 -Demonseyes
• [1K] same was [1K] 106 -Ocean Saphire
• [1K] same was [1K] 140 -Dream Emerald
• [1K] same was [1K] 102 -Amberjewel
• [1K] same was [1K] 119 -Ember Topaz
• [10K] same was [10K] 100 -Shadowspirit Diamond
• [10K] 3100 was [19K] 6600 -Volatile Earth (using a lot on leg armors, enchants and on belt buckles)
• [60K] 10,000+ was [48K] 8000 -Volatile Life
• [67K]4500 was [42K] 2800 -Volatile Air
• [35K] 3500 was [38K] 3800 -Volatle Fire (need MORE!!!)
• [66K] 4400 was [40K] 2700- Volatile Water
• [19K] NEW 172 Ebonsteel Belt Buckles (selling well,  but not at massive profits)
• [90K] NEW 193 Truegold (see last post for comments on this)

Pixels.. and Fun...

Taking other peoples gold via the AH is fun and easy.

However getting more return on the time and gold investment make for risks...

As always, time is money.. you spend time and often some amount of gold to get a return on your invetment.  The GPH evaluation works in simplicity, but in the end, the goal is less time and more gold. because when you have 5 and 6 figure or higher liquid goald the cost does not matter the GPH calculation on it does.

So, things that have me muttering about my own plans stockpiles and status of affairs in prep for 4.3.

Epic Gems?  Will they be from any source other than Raiding???   Will there be xmutes available?  Some info is out, but I think they are keeping some details in the bag on this one.  The preparation w/ monster piles of pyrite people had... would have destroyed the market and devalued the Epic-ness of Epic gems... Overall, Epic is more firmly and better back in epic gear, than it was in wrath... IMHO...  Xmutes could be on a 1, 3, or 7 day CD, and could or not share a CD w/ living elements and Truegold.  Eitherway... spending aroung 100K in couple hours stockpilin left me temporarily broke... Like, under 10K on the account... EEEYIKES!!!  have not been that low in a LONG time.. still it comes back fast since I have revolving sales and run about 200K/week or more in gross sales from auctions... So I bought over 100 bars of trugold to add to my piles...

Things about Trugold and other itmes... they will retain value.. they will almost certainly go up in value, and stand the potential of going up GREATLY in value... but the losses are likely to be minimal... if at all..

The trend with this patch in the AH... IMO and by my evaluation, MANY of the farmers are just average Joe Casual Player... maybe a raider bored w/ content or more play time than scheduled raid time etc...  Farming is still a great way to make gold.. just there are IMO better ways for me...

4.3 will hit, New 5 mans will be out, new raid zones will be out, new LFR will be out, a changed LFD tool, A new PVP season will be starting and then a new BH boss, alts will need more gear, as it becomes more obtainable, more alts are at level cap now than before, more time will be spent gearing up toons and the AH market place will dry up for mats at current prices, since a lot of "casual farmers" will be raiding, valor capping in dungeons, gearing up in new and "HARD" content etc...  Cardinal mats, leather, ore and chant mats are just going to start going up in price... for the month following release.  If epic gems are xmutable, and share a CD w/ truegold.. it will go up in price dramatically, but I suspect that it will go up in value anyway, and the majority of the player base goes from their present "farming/dailies" routine w/ a one night clear in FL... to multiple full evening sessions commited and dedicated to the new raid content in dragon soul on their main, and then the LFR and other ventures on the alts...   less questing, dailies, loremaster and such for the "drops" of voalites... In the last month as the molten front dailies were completed the price of volatile fire has gon up almost 100%... there were a lot of drops of volatile fire in those dailies.. now, less people doing them and less fire on the AH...

In the end, its $12.99/mo (6mo at a time) and the rest is pixels and fun...

The plan tonight is to compare and contrast my last stockpile status in this post to my current pile.  should be some interesting numbers I hope... I may even get bored and spread sheet it to estimate my current gross worth in stocks.. but, since I manged Rag in a Pug this weekend first time on 2 toons, tank and healer, I have some prep work to do for this comming weeks raid and going into heroics....

Either way, The next post when I get it done should be a good one.  Recent posting, has slowed down, since I am not doing anything new really.. the big investment into truegold is the only thing really that I am doing new...  Just more piles and piles.. well, I have also started into Belt buckles and the shoulder shuffle for HSs... though this weekend there seems to have been a couple people doing that too, and crashed the market... raid times are coming back and so will prices and sales... bought a bunch, just to flip durring raid times Tues-Thurs...

Enjoy your PIXELS... Enjoy the game...

Shifting markets, I wants their gold...

The biggest pain of running the business... well there are 2...

The time it takes to push all the buttons for DEing, Milling, canceling auctions, posting auctions etc.. its a lot of time to maintain the "Status Quo"

That was the second...

The main thing is the thresholds are like gas prices at the pump.. rarely are they the same week to week... Some things are like loaves of bread the price is pretty darn predictable, week in and week out.. Vendor Pets for example...

Enchanting... mmmm... not so much... There are daily shifts of 20-30%, and there are weekly cylces for volume more than price.. and then the game of guessing... how long will prices to buy and sell hold.. and when do you go reset those buy thresholds up and down and your sell prices up and down too...   Then going into the snatch list, adjusting, and then going to the spread sheets as I am continually overstocked and getting more at lower cost... time to send that price down in the snatch list, then the spreadsheet and then transfer that new lower price to a new threshold to sell at in ZA...  Why cant I be lazy like everyone else...

CAUSE I WANTS THEIR GOLD....   thats all... muahhh hhhaaaa haaa hhhhhhaaaaaahahahahahaha

Just do what works, and keep on doing it...

Sometimes just doing what you always do works better than your historical track record...

Sunday... I did a cancel post in the morning and let it go for the day... WOW... log in in the evening and 26K gross sales... Normally, my big sales are Tues-Thurs, from a cancel post durring preraid times, and another post raid times.  Those frequently pull 15-18Kish gross sales... So, I was surprised to see 26K for a Sunday.

Just continuing to do normal things, and keep doing it.  There will be surprises you could not predict.

Update... Finally got the impatient people holding on to Tankards of terror... there are a few more hold outs that are trying to reset the market to extremely high numbers, about 3-5 times what I would hope to get.  They keep going for about 10-12K listing on them... Anyway, I bought out a few sellers and the volume on the market seems to be less now... and I bought those out at less than my average purchase price for all the others...   Should be good times now... I still need to wait it out and be patient with listings.. this market could get to cutting into profits greatly at more than 20G AH deposit costs.. But the patience seems to be getting primed to pay off...

New things...  I have finally got the warrior bank alt to 75... that means he got to grind a lot of ore and bars into stuff to power level it up and also Make PILES AND PILES of stormforged legs... Not sure just how many, but my costs are about 60G per set and the HSs that will be DE'd out of them are going for 85ish...  Decent profits, and should do well having my own stocks.. its nice to see my enchant scrolls competition buying my HSs... HARRR!!! that is great... The down side is the time to make the shards is a bit much...  If I get into the time investment...
Obsidium Ore > Obsidium Bar (1.5 seconds) > Folded Obsidium (1.5 seconds)
Elementium Ore > Elementium Bar (1.5 seconds)
Stormforged legs or shoulders (1.5 seconds)
SO.... 4 Obsidium bars to make 2 Folded obsidium and 8 elementium bars for the Armor to DE.
15 X 1.5 seconds is 22.5 seconds minimum crafting time... Plus mail box running for mats and to offload the crafted goods sending them to the DE'er and then DEing em (my estimation is 10% gain for using the Guild perk for DEing, and that guy does all my DE work)... round it out to 30 seconds estimated.... per 20-30 gold profits.. so 50G per minute roughly...  that is 3K per hour to use that standard that I do not like but it works if not abused....   However it also gets me mats at low cost for my enchanting market, that will let me under cut others and get more sales... so its worth it.. and I will not sit on the AH constantly cancel/post undercutting.... So, I have pleanty of time to do it... and the profits are not terri-bad... The main motivation to do this was to get to where I could not be stuck with the market prices of HSs... they get silly from time to time and are hard to get at the volume I need, at or below my threshold.  So, create my own source... and sell excess...

Not much else going on... still raiding, and still have not killed Rag... GRRR.. I quit on rag early the other night and went for the our legendary questor to the boss for him to progress.. Took a couple pulls to get some details straight, then it was pretty easy all considered...  The first time we went in there we were doing it? wrong? the harder way?  anyway...  quick adjustment, and success in short order... IMO it was a better end to the night, rather than one more wipe on Rag... especially when the best attempt the group made was the first one, and it never did get better... so after the first pull it was zero "progress" and piles of frustration and disappointment... So, we ended the night with a kill instead...

Market notes... I buy a lot of mats... leather/scales, Ore, and chanting mats... I have started to notice a pretty steady decline in some prices.  Leather and scales.. there is often so much below my threshold that I do not buy it all, I am running out of room store a lot of mats... (and I mad about that like its a bad thing...  wierd thought)  and I am buying mats hand over fist for 4.3, the new 5 mans, the new raid, and the new PVP season... Next market to get ready in is belt buckles...

Sales focus... I continue to list things that STACK... in PILES.. like leg armors and scrolls.. I also like these items since they have such a low AH deposit cost... to me its negligible... 1S... PVP armor, does not stack, takes a lot of space to craft and store, and since I have yet to start using TSM, easy, but time consuming, to manage crafting.  Or at least thats my excuse, and they often have High Deposit costs... making it sorta dangerous in my mind.  Or at least another step to figuring out thresholds...

So... I continue to craft piles of scrolls, sell piles of scrolls, stock up on chant mats, Leather and Ore/Bars... sell piles of HSs, and piles of leg armors... Next up.. Belt buckles...

Well, I hope you get out of this reading it some of what I got out of it writing it.   What did I get?  GPH estimation and time investment for the HS, BS crafting numbers... and a reminder to myself to get busy with the Belt buckle crafting market..

Happy farming your AH...

P.S. hmmmm... farming the AH... new blog title... "Goblin Farmer's Almanac for the AH" or just "Goblin Farmer's Almanac"  random passing thoughts...

Current standing 4.3 preparation stockpile

Though I do not run extensive analysis, or evaluation of why I am piling to my current and future levels, I think I have enough gold to show that my experience and gut feel is going to be pretty decent, and the risk of huge loss is minimal.  For instance my plan to stock and sell the tankards of terror is still not working out.. the big loss on this one.. ~50K turns into about 15K if I DE them all to maelstorms at current market prices.  Silly.. sure, its a game...

A Picture? not on my blog... Oh wait...

The Piles as they stand now...

• 109K -Liquid Gold
• 460 -Maelstrom Crystals
• 160 -Heaveanly Shards
• 1300 -Greater Celestial Essences
• 4700 -Hypnotic Dust
• 65 -Dragonscale Leg Armor
• 33  -Drakehide Leg Armor
• 36 -Charscale Leg Armor
• 61 -Scorched Leg Armor
• 50 -Twilight Leg Armor
• 210 -Pristine Hides
• 1200 -Blackened Dragon Scales
• 900 -Heavy Savage leather
• 2000 -Pyrite Ore
• 34 -Pyrium Bar
• 3200 -Obsidium Ore
• 1100 -Obsidium Bar
• 2100 -Elementium Ore
• 800 -Elementium Bar
• 502 -Carnellians
• 124 -Tremendous Tankard O' Terror
• ~500-Cata Scrolls
• 178 -Inferno Rubies
• 160 -Demonseyes
• 106 -Ocean Saphire
• 140 -Dream Emerald
• 102 -Amberjewel
• 119 -Ember Topaz
• 100 -Shadowspirit Diamond
• 6600 -Volatile Earth
• 8000 -Volatile Life
• 2800 -Volatile Air
• 3800 -Volatle Fire
• 2700- Volatile Water

Other items w/o current market

• 1300 -Embersilk Cloth
• 2400 -Nethrweave Cloth
• 700 -Runecloth
• 430 -Frostweave Cloth

I have a few other "toy" markets, but this is the big stuff atm.... Untill I get another crafter or two leveled up...  The warrior Miner/BS is now 64...  And has a large pile of ore and bars I have been gathering...

What are you stockpile goals?

Updates...

I am running into trouble maintaining my desired inventory of heavenly shards, and Greater Celestial Essences.

I keep my enchants on a new spread sheet, where I change the "cost" of mats and all derived enchants cost changes.  bouncing those numbers off of my prices in ZA takes about 20 min.

Since I am rotating scrolls at full speed, I have a large turnover of mats and keeping stock on them at prices has led to more research.  I knew there was a BS crafted item that could produce HSs and possibly lower costs.. I found that to be Stormforged shoulders or legs...  I also new that carnelian spikes for GCEs could be a good exchange.  I added to my spreadsheet a few new boxes to play with to determine return on DEing Carnelian Spikes and stuff to play with and evaluate my threshold for buying Carnelians.  I have not really seen a lot of procs on the guild perk DEing them, not in a noticable way.  But I make sure to always DE with the guild perks guy.

I have finally come back into a large amount of liquid gold to play with and buy out the cheap mats when they come up for sale.. I know i was short on gold when a couple opportunities to buy a lot of GCEs below my threshold passed by.  I added carnellians to my snatch list.

I have also started pushing up my threshold for Blackened dragonscales... and cleared out one bank tab and begun to stock  Heavy savage leather, I have around 200 Pristine hides and more than that I am not sure it will sell in the planned window.. always easy to conver the Heavy to pristine... just the Heavy takes a LOT more bank space... as well as the Blackened Dragonscales...

The Warrior... going to be BS Miner/smelter has gone from level 30-520 in the last 10 days...  Going to finish off the candy buckets in Kalimdor for another level and I will likely get into the outlands buckets for a good bit of xp that way...   If circumstances present themselves, I will also get a load of xp with a couple more toons that way.. IF.. IF you are level 50+ its really easy there was only one flight path on E. Kingdoms that I had to run and get.. ALL the others were Flight pathed into.  That is a new thing with leveling toon.. you dont have to go find the FPs.. you just know them for your appropriate level to get to the zones applicable to you...  No mor long runs for quest, just long flights, which comparatively are not so long... In essence if you never quested E. Kingdoms.. and hit level 60 all on Kalimdor.. you could go to EK and fly ANYWHERE there is an FP... good stuff.

The tankards of terror still seem to be lingering in the market, there are a fair number for sale all the time still.. the median price is around 7/800g, so even selling what I can now, I am making aroun 50-100% profits... and I have enough that I suspect I will see the price go up more...
\
I have successfully moved over 100K of mats purchased mostly on my snatch list from alliance AH and put them to use or storage on Horde.  I also moved a few pets and made money on them, and I am about to stop with all that for now.  Just scans for rediculous good deals... I will need to have some reasonable capitol on ally to do any future business, and thing on the AH sell slow.  I think it is a friends/guild/alts farm culture.. just very very little I have seen seems to move... Even what I would expect to be high volume items like HD.. just does not seem to sell. 

good fun still, though I am back into the grind and balance and stocking and crafting game so much that my alts get less attention.  Raid, AH PVP, craft, when all that is done for that session and crafted mats are back to an acceptable stock, then I go level the alts... Hmmm.. choices choices.. More alts or MOAR GOLD???

gold

Thanks for stopping in...

Another post same day... What is the right way, what is wrong...

I read a lot of blogs, more often than not, I find the info mehh, as I have sorta come close to "done it all."  Though it amuses me, it keeps me shard, and occasionally I get some little bits that make things moar gudar... (yeah, thats a word)

Let me qualify that with this statement, I have probably done it, and I may have or may not have been good at it, but I had fun, and when it quit being fun I quit doing it... or something like that..

Havin beein in blogs of one sort or another on the game of wow for about 2 years? moar? Most have centered around gold making... I have seen trends of some to attack others and say "This is best" or "That is fail" "Or... fill in the blank with an over reaching declaration of fact that is often so squewed by perspective that its value is diminished since it is as I simplify it, an, "I did this, you can too" or "You're more effective to do this than that"   I hope I have not done those things, though I may have... My intent with the blog is just an extention of the game, and enjoying it in another way.  The rich community of bloggers is vast and I am sure I will not read a lot of them... 

My point is this... though most I continue to read, many have started to turn me off with their content or the stylization of the delivery or something else...  My imagination tells me this is driven by numbers and/or goals to monetize the blog.  Generate trafic etc etc etc... And I blog for fun, and game for fun.. I wonder where those guys started, and how close to the grounding philosophy they started on they currently are now.  Of the blogs I have read, though it seems to have gone silent, was Stokpile... if you don't know him, look him up...

In closing the biggest comment I will say is YMMV (Your Milage May Vary).  Server economics, Server size, cometitive PVP/Raiding tendancies of the players, your faction, access to multiple toons and professions and multiple accounts, or friends to maximize your game time and gold making...   I am placing a new focus to continue what I believe I have kept fairly well to with my blog...  Its for me, about me and if you get a take away all the moar gudar... (yeah, thats a word)  Back to old posts and concepts.. The post on P a while back... AH PVP, and Goblin crafting to coordinate with the AH PVP seems to becoming a competitve e-sport... but how serious to you get about YOUR PIXELS... And do you like who your became when the reaction you had to an event got the better of your character?  Certainly, I have given little pieces of myself to the game, swearing at the screen for one (quadruple ambushed by rogues in WSG at level 18) .. mad at other players and thier idea of fun being destructive to mine (camping their mamoth on the auctioneer/banker/NPC of choice...

I laugh at myself later and frequently at past transgressions and how serious I can get about a bunch of pixels... Play for fun, raid for fun, PVP for fun, AH/goblin for fun... just remember to have fun..

more next time.. write at you then

Taking a guess at the Pyrite not being Epic gems source.

I have been seriously in some markets recently and am noticing a trend.  Particularly with Pyrite and Volatile Earth... Neither are falling into my threshold much any more and both have the ability to spike.  To me this is an indicator that the Pyrite in banks has largely been sold off of prospected.  Just my guess, but when prices of Volatile earthe were consistently running 3-8G/ea and the AH is emptied out to 18G/ea price...  To me that is a key indicator that supplies have run out and leaves the question: "Is it temporary, or long term?"

Volatile earth will continue to be in high demand for the multitude of uses in multiple crafting professions, smelting hardened ele, crafting leg armor, enchanting something (I just know I use a lot of it for those 2)... etc... you can do you own wowhead search and see what applies to your markets... but if the price is jumpin now in your market, expect it to jump a lot more in 4.3.  Attention to these Cardinal crafting mats and the trends they have in the market.. make a guess, watch some more, and confirm or strengthen the evidence to the hypothesis and quantify the previous information to a valuable morsel of gold making data.. OR, in some cases the a morsel of date to not LOSE gold... heh... the sword does swing both ways.


Trends and threshold shifts:
- GCEs: not sure yet, but looking like I may need to go up on this one soon
- MCs: holding out and steady for the most part  Weekly cycles show big ups and downs, but stocking cheap and not when the prices cycle up
- HSs: also a big cyclying, on these, Still buying cheap, but maintaining stock w/ a BS friend to craft stormfoges sholders/legs for DE
- HDs: seems to keep spiking low in high volume.  Enough to keep my stocks up.
- Savage Leather: (scraps, and heavy too): I am getting alot off the Ally side, and horde, no problems here, about 200 pristine hides in stock
-  Blackend Dragon Scales: Already moved up a bit here... and prolly going to keep moving up,  I am just not able to get any significant stockpile... PVP gear and leg armor will demand a lot of these things...
-Volatile fire and life: Stock piles reached and threshold lowered... still picking up what I can dirt cheap
- Volatile water and air: slow and steady.. these are doing fine, though they go throgh pretty big swings in the market
-  Volatile Earth: mentioned already, but likely going to need to move the buy price up to meet goals for 4.3 prep.

just starting to get into obsidium and elementium ore and bars for the BS crafted stuff to DE for HSs...

some more inventory management (unload junk to make space for piles of more usefull junk) and I will pile up a few more things...  Namely Heavy savage leather, (currently converting all to pristine hides) hardened elementium bars,  truegold (still xmuting daily, almost)  Herbs for xmutes of epics... MOAR CHANT MATS..

Other news.. Magic lamps from the ally side are selling for a steady 2500 at a cost of about 1K to craft, a couple a week.. easy money IMO since I am moving so much between factions anyway... will likely move some BOEs or such in early 4.3 to play with the BIG number.. the amount of Tankards in the market seem to be dwindling... good news they may sell out soon, and then my market influence will be massive... Will prolly set up a 2K wall maybe 1500 or 2500 to see how it goes... or all 3... and let the others flounder.. its really hard to imagine that the other guys w/ tankards have anywhere near 100, much less the 130 I still have.. its gettin interesting and its going to be FUN!!!!  Need to look over the craftables for 4.3 and look for equivalent weapons... if there are not but from raid boss drops... I can see a lot of rogues using these... rogues will become popular again with the dream of getting legendary...

As always coments and feedback welcome.

and thanks for stopping in...

Stuff..

GCEs, tough to get to where I want to be with them for overall number in stock... Since am now running a low ballance on gold as most of it is tied up in marketable goods, I have missed some oportunities to buy at some prices that are better than going rates a day or two later.

Over 100 Pristine Hides and over 2K volatile earth, life and fire.  Working to get the air and water up too.  I am now maintaining stacks of 2 each of many scrolls but there are some I will be build bigger stocks of.  Some I have bumped up to 7/cancel post and still sold out overnight.  Stuff like that is going to take 3 plus stacks to be semi ready for 4.3.  When 4.3 hits, the more I have pre crafted the more sales I will be able to make since I fully plan on, and intend to be raiding too...   Back to the weekly grind for valor caps etc, into the new five mans for fun and that one or 2 pieces of gear.  So less time crafting is a good thing IMO.. big stocks of pre crafted items for sale, a very good thing

The other thing I am finding a hard time getting enough of is blackened dragonscales.  I was doing okay, but I am not building ahead now and getting larger stocks of them or the dragonscaled leg armor.  Which is the best selling leg armor for me ATM.  Overall, still lots of fun, but a lot of time and work too.  Precrafting though allows me to craft when I want to, not reactivly so that is nice...

UPDATES: The warrior went from level 30 to level 48 this weekend, and so far I have sold about a dozen tankards of terror... they are not yet selling as well as I would have hoped they would by now, but there is pleanty of time yet. for prices to baloon. Its fun to watch the markets and see if your guesses are accurate...  

The more I think about it.. One month after (give or take YMMV etc... ) 4.3 hits... heavenly shards will be nearly crashed.. Maelstroms will be on the rise...   Since, as I have read the current heroics... all of them and the new ones will give the same amount of valor.. I for one hated gettting groups of baddies w/ no idea about the content in ZA/ZG about a month to 6 weeks after they released it seemed to just get worse.    But it was a real toss up rather to do one of them for 140 valor or 2 old heroics for same amount of valor and different valor caps per...   Given the choice, for valor grinding... Old heroics will be speed runs for points.. and a by product will be a lot of heavenlys and a lot less maelstroms....  then, atm the market for HSs seems to be getting carried by the DEing of BS crafted gear... so maybe it will only fill the gap, but I really tend to think not... I am guessing now that the end price for MCs will be 50% - 100% higher than it is now.  This will hugely affect markets.  Since the LFR will be looking at ILVL and enchants will not be accounted for so cheap will do... as prices for MC chants go up the markets will follow and the use will be less.. Gahh... I have completely talked myself out of all the convictions I had in my mind...  I am convince of very little now...

What I do know:
4.3 will be a gold mine
HS prices will drop, or MC prices will go up...
Stocking MCs is probably a really safe gamble
All other chant mats, though less so the HSs is a good bet
Leg armors are a great gamble

Reasons to have all professions/alts

Well, as I run high volume enchants markets/scroll, I find frequently that in the current market ther is a lack of heavenly shards... With the new Maelstrom shatter, I will not stockpile them for 4.3, since I can stock "more" via MCs, less bag/bank space.  However, as I am purchasing more and more, I notices piles of 20 to 30 on the AH both horde and ally side for the same price, presumably the same seller.  That led me to go looking for a lower cost option for them.. Nothing w/ tailoring or LW, not with the mats and prices I see normally, however, Stormforged shoulders and legss both look to be what "those" sellers have been using.. Based on wowhead searches.  Basically, in the last 2 weeks since playing seriously in the Cata chant markets, I have raised my purchase threshold from 80G/HS to 100G/HS...   And I knew I was feeding someone elses gold bank buying their HSs...  Not that I mind TOO much.. but I would rather A: have a steady supply, I clean out the AH regularly and B: not pay so much for them.  I have a friend who owes me favors.. and I will slave into BSing a ton of them for DE..  If my calculations are good, I can get mats for either for 8 x ele ore and 16 x obsid ore.  Or 4x ele bar and 8 x obsid bar.  OR 2 x folded ele and 8 x obsid bar... bars are about 5 gold each for either, so my cost are going to be around 60 gold... much better than the 100 gold I am paying and the EASY gold someone else is making off me because I have not maxed out a BS on this server in Cata...

Time to take time payments from my BS friend.. Send them mats for 20 per mailing... 8 stacks of ele bars and 4 stacks of obsid bars... about 1200ish, and get 1600-1800+ gold in mats back...  even at 6 gold per bar it would be 14.4k invested to make the HSs... still much better then the average 90-95G/HS (18-1900g) I am paying... more gold means more stockpiles.. Also need to DE them with my main Enchanter who is in the raiding guild.. more mats... from the guild perk... not sure what that works out to, but its MORE GOLD FOR ME.... :-)

and I guess its time to get busy with that bank alt BS/Enchanter.  Its a warrior tank, and has full looms.. so it should be pretty doable to get to 75 soon... then back to the tailor... level one of them... A tailor would be better able to use the cheap HD I get.. that is the only reason for that... I guess part of me WANTS a miner, not to farm, but to AFK smelt piles of cheap ore into bars... but which toon to do that with..

The crafting army (some are still in boot camp)(I mention raiding guilded because of the perks not available to "banking/crafting toons"
1.  Raiding guilded lvl 85 Druid: (raiding tank main): Enchanter/JC Not heavily used as a crafter, but he is my DEer since he is in the lvl 25 raiding guild w/ the PERKS!!!
2.  Raiding guilded lvl 85 Priest: (sorta shelved atm): Scribe/Xmut Alchy, great to have the xmute when I spread out in markets and do some shuffling of ore, or I want some glyphs for an alt.. but not heavily used, Darkmoon Card/trinkets was my first big market that I sold relics and OHs early in Cata to suplement income.. that is an old game, and I no longer play at it.
4.  Bank Alt Guilded lvl 85 hunter: (the toon that started this blog actually): LW/Enchanter, this toon is my current POWERHOUSE gold maker crafter, poster, I have a 6 tab GB to play with, I have his bank loaded with 7 (i think) 36 slot chanting bags, piles of mats in the banks, the piles of scrolls and STUFF to be ready for 4.3 or stuff I am still hanging on to... for whatever silly reason...
5.  Raiding guilded lvl 65 Shammy: (fun toon wanted to play enhance, last was resto ele) Alchy/Enchanter  I have been leveling the profs as I go so not interested in dropping one profession to get mining or BS though this si the closest toon to 75 I have. 
6.  Bank Alt Guilded lvl 30 Warrior: (Was always just a bank alt) BS/Enchanter, This is the first toon to get busy with I think, full (purchaseable) heirlooms and I can tank through dungeons, and he is a BS...  Making him a Miner and dropping Enchating... hmmmm... not like I will use his enchanting to DE the BS crafted stuf anyway... he is in a bank alt guild... so, I would craft stuff and send it off to the druid to DE anyway... Mining is not for ore gathering, so the guild perk would not matter, mining is a crafting profession via smelting... think thats what I need to do
7.  Raid guilded level 45ish Warlock: (leveling for the guild classy achieve) Tailor/None:  still lower level, I think this is my lowest interest/priority of the 3 I am leveling atm...
I have more, like my 8. ally mage, tailor/chanter, 9. PVP twinkish rogue, 10. a low level priest twinker... 11. warrior on second account, 12. warlock Neutral AH trader on second account

So.. that all writen out and worked out in my head now... I need to get busy with that bank alt warrior and boost mining up... Now I have a plan, I hope you got some insight to the value of and Army of Alts... There is a large time investment to leveing alts, but, there is a finite amount of time I can valuably spend cancel/posting Auctions...  I try for 4 rounds/ per day to cancel post normally, A.M befor work 7-8, early evening when I get home 5ish, and mid evening before raid 7:30ish, lasly late evening after raid 11ish.  I think the majority of sales is from the last 2, but the crafting and stocks evaluation happens through the day so the later ones can happen quickly, with a quick grab of stock from the bank and trip to the AH to post.  Alts and plans... I think the warrior bank alt will get pushed, then the shammy for utility and fun.. I could see myself playing the shammy to a raid level... :-) should be fun all around...