Response to Maddy on stocking up for 5.0

Maddy left a question on my last post, the answer started to turn into a post so here it is.

Since I am still in the "PLAY" mode a bit more than the "PLAN" mode I have been pretty slow to make a finished product with the spreadsheet.  But here are the basics and based on MY SERVER info, some recommendations, though I expect many of them to be universal across all realms.

Some of the valuations are GOING TO BE gambles... though historically some things show a lot more promise.  There is more data for a more complete list or finish my spreadsheet, but for an answer now, there are basically 2 MAIN factors that are going into what I am sharing for some specifics. 
Factor #1: valuation of items based on quantity needed to level from wow-professions, recent historical prices from UMJ or AH-spy, amount on the AH at any time compared to amount needed to power level and gold value per bag slot or stack. 
Factor #2: personal experience in some markets...
For any of the items listed, first look up the items for your realm on UMJ or AH-spy. I just started w/ AH spy and like it better, it has a longer historical window for averaging.  Next pick a price threshold relative to average prices you will buy or buy mats to craft at.  I will vary this based on a few things, like how many expected, potential for market to be flooded by others, ease of farming it myself, and the time it would take to do so (more the times, since almost all farming I will suggest is easy, but mindless and boring)

Here are my picks and some notes...
Cloth:
Frostweave and Embersilk - They are both the ONLY cloth from the expansion and will take monster piles to level tailoring and first aid on new toons... like over 1500 frostweave to level first aid and tailoring on one toon.  Consider crafting a bunch of it into bolts to save space.   The idea here with bolts is to give up some flexibility in your market potential, but have much more potential gold value per stack AND cater to the lazy peeps that see it is the same cost or only slightly more expensive to buy bolts than cloth and have to craft all the bolts themselves.. guhhh time is money friend

Leather:
Heavy Hides, Thick/rugged/knothide/heavy borean leathers, Fel Scales - People finally level skinning to  a point where they can get to the next level, and gather very few thick and rugged leathers, ding 58, going to outlands...  Heavy hides are just sort of rare, and in high demand to level LW (personal experience here, 600% flips) though to save some space, craft the hides to Cured Heavy Hides (they stack to 20 cured and only 10 otherwise)  the rest are similar to explanations in tailoring...  Over all I expect LW to be VERY popular due to the Monk class being a leather class.

Ore/stone:
Bronze BAR, Mithril BAR, Thorium BAR, Fel Iron BAR, Adamantite BAR and ore, Cobalt Bar, Saronite BAR, Obsidium BAR - Not including elementium bars since the volume needed is yet unknown, the numbers I have are to get to 525, but if patterns are followed, you will only have to level your profession to 500 to get to the MOP recipes.  BARs...  its about lazy and crafting times, and often, it stacks for more money per stack (i.e. 2 ore to make one bar, etc)  Time is money here.  Adamantite Ore is likely to be very valuable, its rare and lots is required to get the murcurial adamantite needed to level a JC, keep the ore or prospect it to components if you think you can save space and maintain value.

Herbs:
Briarthorn, Stranglekelp, Liferoot, Wild Steelbloom, Goldthorn, Gromsblood, goldclover, icethorn, lichbloom, heartblossom - There may be some more winners, but the idea here is to cater to the leveling alchys, not the scribes, the barriers to entry for a scribe a annoying making it a non popular profession though, for a new toon Scribes may be popular, just to avoid having to get the shoulder chants...   As well as any scribe will just buy the cheapest herbs they can get for the pigments/inks they need and Alchys need specific herbs.... there was a comment on changing up scribe leveling too, so more to come on that.  The items listed are low in supply, high in value and needed in reasonable quantities to level alchy.  stack sizes to support wow-professions quantities less than full stack... good idea, cater to the lazy guys some more and take more of their money.

Gems:
Shadowgem, Moss Agate, Citrine, Star Ruby, Large Opal, Azerothian Diamond, Huge Emerald and ... (working more on spreadsheet here)  -  the recommendations here are driven by volume for leveling JC mainly..

Chant mats:
Vision Dust, Dream Dust, Illusion Dust, Greater Eternal, Large Brilliants, Arcane Dust, Infinte Dust, Greater Celestials,

Chanting rods, elementals, volatiles, eternals, primals and other stuff... Still working this part of the list but here are some unsupported guesses.  At least they are not supported by data on the spreadsheet.

Iridescent Pearls, Black Pearls, Arcane Crystals/Arcanite bars (xmute), eternal waters, volatile/fire/water earth... - Pearls, rare and always in low supply for chanting rods, use em to make your own chanting rods, or just sell em for others...  the others are volume for profession leveling driven...

Meat to level for cooking.. totally have not even started looking at this area...

Okay.. that’s annoying, the above long list and lots of items and thoughts... GRATS if you made it to the end, here is my top 25 items as of now:

 #1 Cured Heavy Hide
#2 Black Pearls
#3 Iridescent Pearls
#4 Fel Scales
#5 Heavy Borean Leather
#6 Netherbloom
#7 Adamantite Bar
#8 Moss Agate
#9 Infinite Dust
#10 Goldthorn
#11 Shadowgem
#12 Huge Emerald
#13 Embersilk cloth or bolts
#14 Obsidium Bar
#15 Rugged Leather
#16 Large Opal
#17 Titanium Bar
#18 Black Diamonds
#19 Cobalt Bar
#20 Frostweave cloth or bolts
#21 Fel Iron Bar
#22 Citrine
#23 Gromsblood
#24 Arcane Crystal/Arcanite
#25 Knothide Leather

Okay, don’t go nuts on this list, its just a list of the spreadsheet resorted to the valuation of material based on above listed criteria... and a few personal considerations... I have not completed the list and I have not gone to great extents to set priorities on my plans... though the list already does reflect much of them...

Later I will re-evaluate and add in more data to the spreadsheet, and then compete a manual review of the list with heavy weights given to LW mats, Chanting Mats, JC mats, and alchemy mats... in that order I think..

- LW - because I will gamble on a lot of monks leveling LW
- Chanting - Don’t you hate to buy expensive chants on the AH? And have dreams of leveling your own Chanter? How reasonable is it to think people will role a new monk and choose LW/enchanter?
- JC - Same as chanting...
-Alchy - flasks and elixirs are going to be expensive as heck out the gate making this a very attractive option...

Chanting, JC, and Alchy are the big consumables that will persist throughout the expansion, they are good moneymakers and will be throughout the expansion... I may rethink LW being first, but for now that is my stance...

More to come I hope on this and I hope it serves you well...

Stockpiles for 5.0 what to and not to pile

A few posts got me thinking of changing how I value some items for Stockpiles Going into MOP...

AOE Looting...

Go to an instance, pull the whole place (or in big batches) and AOE kill, AOE loot, and then have piles of cloth and dead bodies to skin as applicable, run out reset and do it again.. with all the greys and other thing people will be getting by doing this, Many player will devalue the cloth since they have so many other income sources when doing this,  If it is done w/ a chanter at least in group...  boom, chant mats, cloth, greys gold and other stuff.  it will be fun to watch how the economy changes and what limits on drop rates blizzrd put on this if any...  ... I see this having a big impact on some markets like the mid level cloths that are going to be easy to farm...

As of now, more money will be in MoP level herbs and ore... If time is money, mid level skins, ore, herbs and cloth will still be valuable since as of now.  It is my guess that there will be more money in the time it takes farm in MoP, than in the time it takes to post many of the old stuff...

My thoughts, If its not reasonably rare and not going to be in reasonable demand, stockpiling it may not be as profitable as I was hoping, though I will continue to do so... and just plan on 48 hour auctions, and see what happens... What will happen to quest rewards?  will they continue to scale w/ gold income per quest at cap, this is a bigger risk on the inflation/deflation question, and how you approach some things too...

Still more info from the beta that will shed more light on things... and time will tell, so far, it looks good...

Continuing to speculate 5.0

lots of idea are floating around out there on several blogs.

What am I doing to prepare for 5.0…  3 things...

#1 I am leveling a farming toon, a Tauren druid, miner Herber.  That toons level cap like will only be farming, though I may do some gearing just to make those moments when I have to kill something easier.  So far I am holding all the herbs and ore while leveling in storage... expecting that I will be able to sell it for more in the early months of the Panda Patch.

#2Still working on gathering up the motivation to level that warlock.. .the languishing lock, to be a tailor/engineer... That will give me every profession capped, except skinning..

#3 That spreadsheet... it is nearly complete, or at least well on its way to being a finished product for me and my realm.... Using UMJ, for everything so far, I may actually redo it with AHSpy data...  If you have never looked, and compared, the data is similar, but so far, AHSpy is looking to be a better source for my purposes.  It looks to be GEN II UMJ, much like Wowhead was IMO GEN II Thottbot.  I was really slow to change over from Thottbot to Wowhead, but I will not be this time.. a bit more review and looking at AHSpy and it will be a switch...

OOOOPS... #4  I was a Zero Auctions user before 4.3, I had enough manual data on spreadsheets to just offload my inventory clean and fast.. 1,000,000 gold gross sales in 10 days actually, and 1.4 in 14 days... Manually...  That said, I never got into TSM.  SO... learning that one before 5.0, would be one more thing to do...

When I have a finished product on the spreadsheet, I will share it if I can figure out how to post it for all to see.  The premise is listing ALL, mats for all professions. Then figuring out demand for each of the items based on what wow-professions says about quantity to level each profession, mining, cooking, first aid, tailoring, enchanting, BS, LW, JC, scribe... step two is evaluation of the demand, supply, stack size and prices as they currently stand.  A little math makes it easy in a spread sheet to give that valuation a baseline number... that will give me some indication of how valuable one storage spot in a Bank, guild bank or bags is.. Next is where the gambling begins... for example, I feel that Leather will be in HIGH demand.. Monks.. they are leather wearing toons... so go back and look at the valuation, add my own risk reward assessment to it and then begin snatching stuff...  and stockpiling... At present I am continuing to evaluate current materials in storage and eliminate many items that are valuable, now and will also be valuable after the Panda Patch, BUT, I don't think will have an appropriate increase in value for the storage space used.. things like light leather and peacebloom... likely not winners on the list....