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You are most likely here because you enjoy crafting. I have been reading up on some of the WoW issues regarding gold making, which make me realize that WoW is not the game for me.

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02 May 2011

The Dark Moon is ascendant - I hope

A while ago, I tried buying darkmoon decks (i.e. completed trinkets but still needing handing in), and selling the completed cards.  It did not work as well as I wanted.  I failed to buy at the bottom of the market, and missed selling at the top, so only made a small profit.  I did make a profit, but insufficient to make up for the risk and tied up gold.  As such I had decided to abandon the market.  However ...

I was used to selling surplus Inferno ink at 80+ gold, and was making sufficient sales from Glyphs to keep me happy.  All good things come to an end.  Moonvengence appears to be making sufficient glyphs to supply demand, and is keeping prices low to discourage competition.  I previously mentioned bank tabs of blackfallow ink, but ... somehow declined to mention several hundred inferno ink that I could not sell at expected prices, and inferno ink was heading south of 50g (and got as low as mid 40's - with Moonvengence selling at this price).  I have tried selling inferno ink horde side, with mixed results.

With too much inferno ink, I started looking at how to sell it.  I know a previously busy card maker had withdrawn from the market due to previously falling trinket prices.  However those inferno ink's were not going to be worth any more just sitting in my bank, and I was unwilling to sell at or below mid 40's.  Crappy Allance AH ink sales; crappy Horde AH ink sales, runescrolls did not seem to be worth it; leaving inscription offhands and trinkets. 


I had enough gold horde side to take advantage of the (at the time) lower horde volatile life prices, and started buying out cheap alliance volatile life; and made up a truck load of darkmoon cards.

Before I started making up the cards, I made up my own spreadsheet for costs.  This has the advantage that I get to make my own assumptions and mistakes, rather than use other peoples.  For instance I mentally unit price items - price herbs, inks, cards, decks, and trinkets alike;  many other spreadsheets price herbs in either stacks of 5 or stacks of 20.  I have expanded my previous glyph/inks spreadsheet (available on google docs) to include some rough inferno ink -> deck pricing.  From what I see, an earthquake trinkets are a loss (possibly will rise due to call to arms), hurricane trinkets roughly break even, volcano trinkets turn a profit, and tsunami trinkets are the cream on top.

Out of this I got average cost per card, and from a reasonable price per trinket, worked backwards to find a reasonable price per individual card per trinket type (i.e. different average pricing on stones, waves, embers, and wind cards).  Where I get 3 or more of an individual card, and the price is above average (according to auctioneer), I sell a card.  Where I need only one or two individual cards to make a deck, I will buy a card where it is below my 'reasonable price'.  As usual, my trading is done via the AH.

On top of it all, I decided I should be able to do well, turning 45g Inferno inks into darkmoon cards, or at least defer a price crash; so I purchased Moonvengence's inferno inks.

Regardless of whether I end up making a profit on the trinkets, I intend to sell (most of ) them between now and the next darkmoon faire, and I will have released the gold in the inferno inks.


P.S.  The ario* triplets are taking an extended AFK, so I am selling my own glyphs again.  While it will take me a little while to come up to speed again to work out what I can sell profitably at 9-10g; I certainly know I can sell any glyph for 30g at a profit.  So hiya to the competition.

I am also working on something else to fill the coffers, having found a sellers market.  It is definitely worth revisiting markets that you may have previously written off.  (To be continued ...)

4 comments:

  1. "...and hurricane trinkets are the cream on top."

    I think you mean Tsunami :)

    One thing I have been doing with my own Darkmoon Trinkets is forcasting a continued decline of value for each new month. For instance if I know that the last cycle Hurricane trinkets averaged 12k, I will apply a 20% decrease in its future expected value and determine their expected value to be 9.6k. Of course I also try to use other factors, such as the new patch information etc etc. But the point is to not rely on previous pricing information to gauge possible future profits since I believe trinkets have still not reached their lowest point.

    ReplyDelete
  2. @DobuleO. Thanks for the editing of the wall of text. Fixed.

    I expected a decline in cards as well, but the last two cycles of cards seemed to be about the same (at the end of the cycle at least), with earthquake falling, but tsunami posibly even getting more valuable.

    At the end of the day, it was the best way I could think to dispose of surplus inferno inks. Moonvengence (the major glyph sellor on our faction/server) even dumped a fist full of inferno inks - at what I expect to be well below their value in cards.

    Even if trinkets to drop another 20%, I expect to be in front of where I would be just selling the inks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How's the fortune card market on your server?

    I used to just sell the raw burning embers due to laziness and typically either the embers or the fortune cards would cover the cost of the herbs, leaving the other as pure profit. With 4.2 though, the demand for burning embers appears to have halted completely although that may be down to DMF having just ended.

    However DMCs are still profitable, especially as I'm buying whiptail for between 25-35g a stack and selling fortune cards for 6-7g (up to 14g when supply is low), prices seem to range from 1.5k to 6k per deck right now and averageing somewhere around 3.5k or so.
    With volatile life at an all time low of 1g/unit quite often I'm paying no more than 30g+ parchment per card (which may be paid for by fortune card profits).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Volatile life is still 9g ea on our server, so Dark Moon fortune cards are still an investment. I instinctively shy away from darkmoon cards, and really should have a look at my spreadsheet again.

    That said, I did OK with the DMC's that I sold, but often doing just as well selling individual cards as finished trinkets.

    ReplyDelete

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