Cornering a Market

There are very few times in my Wow career that I have used my professions to actually make money. And even more so, to use the AH wasn't exactly my forte. Until I discovered a little secret last night.

Leiandra's professions have always been enchanting and tailoring. Until this last expansion, I had to sit out in front of the IF bridge and spam trade channel letting people know that I have the enchants. Tailoring was less of a chore, but it didn't ever make much money. Oh, I suppose there was the time back in TBC where I had the pattern for Belt of Blasting that was a pretty good money maker. But other than that... well... you just don't go off and make a boat load of Moonshroud Robes and expect to sell them in one weekend. Currently I do sell my enchants, but only a few at a time. I'm mostly just burned out on spamming trade channel, and generally just lazy about making money.

Well, Zanderfin has been my miner/jewelcrafter. For the most part, I'd say it's been profitable. He's mostly used his own materials to skill up. And most of the meta gems I used to finish off the skill up process have been sold for only a small loss.

But last night, I happen to do a quick scan of the AH to find out what the current price of Runed Cardinal Rubies were. It's one of the few epic cuts I can do, so I'll post one of those every once in awhile for a small profit. When the results showed there were none, I had to check a few times. Sure enough... none. So, I quickly posted 2 for about 40g more than I usually post them.

Then I searched again to make sure nobody else had quickly undercut me. The results showed 1 auction. But wait. Where did my other auction go? Did I mess up and forget to post it? After searching through my bags, I finally looked at my auctions tab. Sure enough, somebody had bought the first one at almost break-neck speeds. What's a person to do? Yep, throw a few more up at an even higher price.

When you have a profession like Jewel Crafting, it's actually quite easy to make some money. Each gem is relatively cheap. Even epic gems are only about 200g. (Which is kind of a lot, but not as much as a couple thousand for epic tailoring items.) Every class needs them in some form or another. So, with the low price point, people are generally lazy about purchasing a raw gem and finding somebody to cut it. They simply get the cut gem, and move on. It's not worth the inconvenience to save a few gold for that one gem.

And that, my friends, is the beauty of Jewel Crafting. The "pure stat" gems like pure spell power, pure attack power, or pure stamina seem to sell the best. The more I do my daily JC quest, the more gems I can cut. And.... most importantly: I don't have to spam trade channel!!! Yeah!

The down side of this profession. If you're a miner/jewel crafter, there is an opportunity cost in using that ore to prospect. You don't get to make the boatloads of money as you're leveling up. A lot of your gems will probably be sold to a vendor... especially the lvl 70 ones. But you'll eventually get to make some pretty sweet money with this profession.