September 23, 2009

Picking new cuts

Filed under: Jewelcrafting,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 5:53 am

I am fairly new and inexperienced at the JC market. So remember that when you read anything I say about it. These are the things I do with it. They may be a huge mistake or I could be on the right track. One of the first things I had to deal with was picking a new cut.

You first need to know what your goal is. Are these cuts for yourself/friends or to make gold? One does not rule out the other but you usually end up giving on something. If its for you or your friend the choice is easier. Just pick the cuts you use the most and off you go.

If you are looking to make gold, different things need to be looked at. I started by looking at the cut gems that listed for the most. The mark up is higher to the profit is greater. How many sellers are listed? The more sellers, the more competition. So for my first few gems, I also looked at how many sellers and gems each had listed.

Now rule out any that look questionable to you. Is it a gem that someone would want. If you see one Tense Eye of Zul (10 hit/13 spell pen) for 250G its probably not going to sell. Who would buy that? This could turn out to be a very profitable gem. I have no idea. But for my first few gems, I want something that feels a little more useful.

As you start to pick up more and more cuts, try to get a few of the other colors. If you focus in one color of cuts too much its possible you will drive the cost up on them (from buying so many to cut and re-list). You will be set up much better if you give yourself that flexibility. If you end up prospecting later, you will end up with gems of all colors.

September 22, 2009

Reflections: Dream Shards

Filed under: Reflections,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 8:30 am

If you speculate on patch notes you will remember dream shards looked like a good investment. At the time the only thing they were used for were to learn new enchants. The upcoming patch notes said the existing enchants were going to be changed to use more of them. I bought them like mad and I advised my friends do to the same.

8.5-11G is what I paid for each one and I ended up with well over 300 shards. I think lots of people picked up on this and I know several blogs covered the idea. So after a huge spike on patch day the market crashed. The price settled at 13G. Not much of a profit. I decided that everyone had a huge stockpile and was watching the market.

I walked away for a few weeks. The new price was 15-16G each at this time so I would sell a few here and there. for the most part, I held onto my inventory.

The next patch came and it also should have increased shard prices with Ulduar release, Again people were thinking about shards and the prices stayed low. So gain I held onto most of my shards.

By now I was getting a little more aggressive in selling the shards. I would post them in stacks of 3 and 6 a little over market value. I could also catch the market when it would shift up. This didn’t happen often and when it did, the market would crash by the end of the day.

About 3-4 weeks after the patch, the value of shards started to clime. Once they got up to 25-30G I started to liquidate what I had left. I still had 200 shards at this point and they ended up creating that huge profit I was looking for. It was just a few months later than I expected.

September 21, 2009

Thunderdome: 2 scribes enter, only one will leave

Filed under: Inscription,Thoughts,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 5:55 am

One common tactic in working the auction house is to drive your competition out. If they leave, you have it all to your self. The rewards can be huge if you do that and eventually become the major player. Sometime you have to drive off a major player and it could be more work than you think. People try to move into my glyphs all the time. It is a big market and no way can I control it all. Sometimes the market will crash and I wonder if someone is trying to drive me out or not.

So would it take to drive a player like me out of glyphs?

This can be harder than you think. Not all people play the glyph market like I do. When I moved in to the market someone was top dog and I don’t see them any more. I see people that could have the potential to take the market, but I am already established. They would have made a lot of gold with out me here.

I have a stack of every glyph. That is a ton of inventory. If for some reason my competition won and I decided to leave the market, I am not going to let that inventory sit. All that would have to be sold. If I am exiting the market, the threshold is no longer an issue and the market could easily fall. My competition would have to wait that out.

I run the lowest threshold. well, almost. I see leveling glyphs way below cost and flooded all the time. In general my threshold is lower then everyone else’s. It is still above what I think they pay for mats. Lats thing I want to do is post for less than it takes for them to make the glyphs. They would just crash the market and buy up my glyphs. It is still a profit for me but it adds time to myself and gives them a break.

I have the largest market coverage. I use 3 alts to post with and while I still need about 10-12 research glyphs, most people posting have not been doing it as long. Not many people track every glyph. If you were looking to drive me out, you need to cover all the glyphs I sell. Also be careful that I don’t cover all the glyphs they sell.

I drive the prices down constantly. If you think driving the prices down is going to tick me off, think again. I run a 20-60 silver undercut. That pushes glyphs down fairly fast. The harder my competition works to undercut me, the faster the prices fall. The result is usually some part time players leave the market opening up the research glyphs to just me. Fewer people means more sales for me.

The thing with the lowest threshold is that my mats are cheaper. Sometime I have a farmer that sells to me direct. When I tell them I will take all you have, they are happy to give it to me. I can often get all 3 of the high yield herbs for the same price. I love buying lichbloom for the farmer price of adder’s tongue. It is not very often that I resell it, but its extra profit when I do. I also check the AH several times a day for herb markets to crash or other farmers unloading under market price. I am probably a major factor keeping our herb prices stable.

I have a large stock of reserve herbs and ink. I have a 5 tab bank to hold my reserves when needed. It isn’t full all the time but it is not uncommon for me to fill it with herbs when I catch 2-3 farmer dumps within a few days. I try hard to mill/ink it as quick as I can, but a few 120 stack purchases can take a while to melt. I also have a 2nd guild bank that holds reserve ink of the sea. On any given day I have 3000-6000 ink of the sea in the bank. This helps when herb prices are high or glyph demand spikes.

I have gold in reserve and fingers in other markets. If I ran out of all my inventory of glyphs and herbs and ink, and if my farmers disappeared, and if the herbs on the ah were way over priced, I would still have the gold to go toe to toe with anyone in the market. I have a 3 months head start on any new player to the market. Look at the advantage that gives me.

I am not saying that I cannot be beaten or that it is impossible. The odds are just in my favor. I have the time and the patience to go along with it. I read all the same sites and have access to all the same mods. I have access to all the same tricks. Its possible they learned everything from me. I am just saying that I will not be an easy target so they need to be prepared.

Welcome to the Thunderdome.

September 19, 2009

A day of Silence

Filed under: Uncategorized,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 11:01 pm

Please take a moment to think about the people that are important to you and remember those that have passed away.

I will be out of town for several days. I do have posts in the queue, but I will not be around for comments.

KTQ: on the fly flexibility

Filed under: KTQ,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 5:37 am

One thing I like my KTQ script for is the ability to make adjustments to what I need. If I build a queue and for whatever reason its not what I want, I can clear it and start over.

what if you only have 30 min of crafting time but enough items in your queue to last an hour. You could easily just make the the first 1/2 of the list and do the other 1/2 next time. There is nothing wrong with that. I just do it a little different.

I usually craft either the top valued glyphs or the ones that sold the most. With KTQ I can set a threshold high and do a crafting pass. This catches the ones with the highest profit. Then I drop the threshold and try to craft a half stack. This will pick up any that almost sold out. When I run each one, I can play with the threshold and stack size to get the queue size that I want.

No need to only craft 10 glyphs if that’s all it adds to the queue. Just clear it, adjust the numbers, and do it again. I still do a full crafting session when I have time. This will catch anything else.

This helps me keep the ones in stock that matter most.

September 18, 2009

KTQ: Thank you to my users

Filed under: KTQ,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 4:05 pm

I do want to thank everyone for the thanks I have received for my KTQ mod. I know if it saved you as much work as it saved me then its a godsend. I wrote it because I saw one area of the system that took way too much manual work.

Many people are getting it to work with out any issues. But there are a good number of people that are having problems. My goal is to get it working with the common version of skillet that people already have (if that’s possible). In the short term I will upload the exact version that I used to develop it for people that are dying to try it out.

With that said, I have not gotten much time to get back to this mod to work out the issues. Between work, the family, the dog, the raids, the guild drama, and camping the AH it is hard to find time to work on it. I have some real world issues that I am dealing with on top of it all.

This was a tool I could have kept to myself. But it has been very rewarding to see all the thank yous and stories about how it (and my blog) has helped you.

Update: Thanks Carbon. Yes I do have a copy of old versions of those mods that work http://badanatomy.wowstead.com/files/mods/othermods.zip

Keyword: Bulk2Mail

Filed under: Keywords,Mods,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 5:44 am

Bulk2Mail is actualy BulkMail2. I was just calling it the wrong thing for about a month. I don’t know why I thought that was the name. That is an interesting way to mess it up. I knew I gave some details on this before but I’ll take a moment to give the hilights.

The main reason I use this mod is that it allows me to auto mail stuff to alts. It lets you configure types of items to send to a character. You can either do item types like cloth/ore/enchant mats or set items like netherweave cloth. When you visit the mailbox, it will check your bags for stuff to send. One button allows you to just send it all. No mater how many items you have or how many targets you have, it is very quick.

This is great if you use one character to buy or snatch everything and send it off to various alts to craft it. You can even put the finished items into it so it gets sent to your main AH character.

So Bulk2Mail is the wrong name for it. Here is a link to get it downloaded: BulkMail2

September 17, 2009

Wait, don’t mill that yet!

Filed under: Thoughts,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 6:18 am

I unloaded 20 stacks of lichbloom today. I buy adder/lich/icethorn when it dips under 20g a stack. Because lichbloom is normaly priced higher then that I try to save 1/2 a bank tab of it. I mill enough other herbs that I can let a little lichbloom collect dust. When the market price spikes I unload a little bit. I saw someone in trade dying to get some. I offered to sell at 35G a stack. He was shocked I had so much and asked how long it took me to farm it. I gladly told him I got it from a farmer.

So I made 300G profit on the deal by paying attention to trade. I also knew when the mats I had often jump in value. Most of the time I store my mats in either the most compact or final form as possible. Herbs get milled, leather gets made into heavy leather, and netherweave gets made into bolts. I also leave a little bit in raw form for situations like this. If I need them I will use them but most of the time you can only convert stuff one way.

If I do the math then 20 stacks of lichbloom will prabably make me over 800G as glyphs and snowfalls. But I have a large supply of ink, herbs and glyphs. The sell of those 20 stacks did not interupt my production so selling them gave me 700G I did not have. 700G that can buy me 35 stacks of herbs.

September 16, 2009

Discovering the epic gem market

Filed under: Jewelcrafting,wowbanker — Tags: — Kevmar @ 8:52 am

I have to admit that I was very slow to jump onto epic gems. I had my hands full with inscription. I did level a JC a while back but have not done much with him. I have been slacking on doing my daily JC quests.

I had to take his tux off and get his gear back out of the bank. I just got my 4th token so it was time to pick a pattern. I went to the AH and did a QA summary scan. I saw a smooth kings amber listed at 230G with only 2 up. Raw I see this gem at 150G. So I buy one, go get the pattern, and cut it. Next morning its already sold for 225G.

I guess it has started. I am slowly discovering the epic gem market. I am going to take my profits and put them back into JC and see if I can get a large bankroll going with little investment. I hope I can take what I learned with inscription and apply it to epic gems.

Reflections: Things I tried before

Filed under: Reflections,wowbanker — Kevmar @ 5:48 am

At the moment I am working with lots of good ideas and big gold makers. I have focused on all the things that worked and have not taken many big risks. Before I found my grove, I would work on one big idea at a time. Some of them worked well and others not so well. Yet others I had the right idea but my timing was off.

So I am going to add a new occasional series called Reflections. These will be about past ideas and how they did or did not work out for me. A good deal of them are from interpreting patch notes. So the exact opportunity I was working on is not available but the ideas do repeat.

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