How dare you!
I’m honest and open when people ask me questions. I’ve got a track record of demonstrating that here in my guides and my posts each week. I always make time to talk to people in-game when I get random whispers. I always make time to listen. I enjoy the contact, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy helping. With me so far?
There’s one thing that seriously pisses me off though – when someone approaches me, asks for my advice and upon receiving it actively refutes it.
Now I freely admit to being wrong on occasion – ok once, in June of ’97 – but this is a different kettle of fish.
Imagine one day you’re in the kitchen making a sandwich. A friend or family member appears and asks you to take them through your sandwich making process. As you oblige and begin explaining they begin shaking their head and say ‘wrong, nope, nope, won’t work’. See what I mean? :)
So I had a whisper the other day from a friend:
“How on earth do you make profit selling mongoose enchants?”
Not too uncommon a question, really. I gave him my usual rundown on the importance of stockpiling enchanting materials. Explaining that whenever the price of void crystals, arcane dust or greater planar essence fell below specific thresholds I bought them in unlimited quantities.
I went on to explain that from there I added 30-40% margin to the material price and that became my minimum selling price. Seems like a sensible system right? Here was the response:
”How can you make a profit? The cost of materials in the AH is more than the scrolls!”
Okay…Maybe he missed me talking about threshold prices and stockpiling. I decide to cover this specific example in detail. At the time the scrolls were selling for 255g on our server which is on the lower end. I share the calculations with him:
60g = 40 x Arcane Dust @ 1.5g
33g = 11 x Void Crystal @ 3g
64g = 8 x Greater Planar Essence @ 8g
157g = Material Cost
+ 40% = 219.8g Minimum Sell Price
So there we go. Even with the mongoose market in a lull I’m still making in excess of 40% margin on a sale – happy times! After a brief pause I get:
”I stockpile too and prices are never below what you just said”
Where are you supposed to go from that? How are you supposed to respond? “Gosh darnit, you got me! I’ve been selling them at a loss this whole time!”.
The audacity, the ignorance, the temerity!
I always find myself thinking about these conversations for a while afterwards. I think sometimes it must be stupidity, sometimes a fragile ego unwilling to accept data and sometimes maybe a combination of both.
I think I’d best call /rant at this stage and leave it there. Anyone got similar stories?
By buying cheap materials and selling at a markup to your cost you are clearly making money.
However, if (as your friend said) you are selling the enchant for less than the current price of materials (even though you paid less when they were on sale in the past), is it possible you would make MORE money if you just stockpiled cheap materials and then sold the raw materials now at a profit, rather than the enchant which you are selling for less than current market value of materials?
Of course you likely have the advantage of monopolizing your niche enchanting market compared to the large number of competing suppliers in the enchanting material markets.
Enchanting materials fluctuate too much day to day and within too small a range for it to really be profitable to do that.
Buying greater planar essence for 8g each and selling them ‘expensively’ at 12g each would make for slow profits indeed.
Granted there are exceptions to this rule like Golden Pearl which can be in relatively short supply – I see them vary from 60-120g on my server.
It’s really all about stockpiling, meeting or exceeding your margin target and monitoring the market.
If there’s a patch coming or for some reason there’s a material shortage that drives enchanting mat prices up then you switch to whichever option is going to provide you the greatest return in the timeliest fashion! :)
Not WoW-related, but to share a story of people who just can’t accept an answer.
One day at the store I used to work at, I was passing through produce when a woman of about 55 or so stopped me to ask if I knew where the peaches were from.
Glancing at the side of the box, they were listed as blankety-blank Farms – “But I’m not sure where that is.”
“Could you find out?”
I paused for a moment, but just nodded and turned back around to go into the produce backroom where one of my coworkers was working. He’d been there for a couple decades, as near as I knew, and I trusted any answer he’d give me about produce.
“California. All our soft fruit comes from California this time of year.”
I go back and share this information. “I asked our guy in produce, and he said California.”
“What if he’s wrong?”
I didn’t have an answer. Well, OK, I DID have an answer, but it would’ve gotten me in trouble to say it. So I just kind of stood there with mouth agape going, “Uhh…”
“I just want to know they’re not from China.”
I continue to pause, but decide to look on the box again. Sure enough, “Product of USA.”
“OK, I just wanted to know they’re not from China. ’cause, you know, fruit from China will kill you – that’s what they do there. I mean, fruit here will kill you, too – well, you’re young, you probably have a good immune system, but” blah blah blah.
A little later the thought occurred to me – “do we ship -any- fruit from China? Would it even survive the trip in large quantities?”
But yes, I very much sympathize with the situation of, “I… I-I have no idea what to tell you.”
Stockpilling is the best way to earn gold very fast , a nice way to earn easy cash is watching the prices of Borean leather and frozen orbs….dunno how it is on other servers but Borean leather here on Arathor-Eu are fluctuating between 8-20g a stack…..Arctic fur very stable for some time between 80-140 each , and you might know the vendor in Dalaran who sells Arctic fur in exchange for 10 heavy borean leather…if you have a leatherworker like me…..60 borean leather makes 10 heavy borean leather=1 arctic fur , so i buy the arctic between 24-60g each and resell for mostly the double of it on the ah :)
Same counts for frozen orb, prices are between 15-25g…i always buy them for less then 20g each and stock them…..wait till the prices for eternal fire or life raises above 40g each and exchange your frozen orb at the dalaran vendor for the eternals and put them on the ah , more then 20g profit each i make that way , other way is here on my server…saronite ore….i can buy those for 10g a stack…i also have an alchemist which i use to transmute titansteel bars, so 10g a stack and let’s say i buy 24 stacks=240g…i send them to my miner and smelt them to saronite bars 480 ores=240 bars , then i send those to my alchemist and transmute them in to titanium bars 240 saronite bars= 30 titanium bars , i use the frozen orb to exchange those to the eternal fire , buying the eternal earth for 3,5g each and eternal shadow for 6g each, my mats 240g for the saro 150g for the eternal fire , 35g for the eternal earth and 60g for the eternal shadow= total for making 10 titansteel bars 485g , titansteel bars goes around 100g each on my server so big profit , for this way to earn gold you have to be sure to have your bank filled up with mats cause the market will fluctuate with prices of mats and you are sure to fill your bank account :) , i started this meth since i readed your Insane in the Membrane Guide…which is an awesome guide :) , think im on my 7th or 8th week for the grind and im almost there , revered with ravenholdth and halfway with Dmf, so another 4 weeks till the new Dmf and im finally done !
Since Dmf is the biggest pain i had to think a lot how to make big amounts of gold since i mostly use 80 decks to turn in my average deck will cost 800g x 120 decks …that’s a lot of gold , now im on let’s say 85 % and i have over 50k gold in the bank and more then 100k worth in mats stocked in 2 bankalts , also 50 80 darkmoon trinkies which i still need to sell on the ah , for the record when i started the archie i had less then 3k gold and no mats at all and that was 7-8 weeks ago :)
Keep up the good work Saate , like youre guide’s and blogs :)
I, too, play the Mongoose juggling game – pretty much as you describe it here. I think I understand what the idiot was getting at – if the price of the mongoose scroll is less the the combined price of the mats then it seems like it would be a loss, but actually I think it just shows a lack of understanding the fluctuations in the enchanting mats market. I do quite well out of mongoose, but I certainly couldn’t be arsed to be making a 4g profit on individual void crystals.
Want to thank all of you for making these replies.. Ive never really used the Auction House to make gold.. Ive mostly been doing quests and only selling stuff on the Auction House when I absolutely have to do so.. With your “spelling it out for me” I think im ready to start using the Auction House to make some money by buying and not just selling..
Saate,
I get that with my DK stuff…. I don’t even really try to make a comprehensive guide because EJ does that so well, but I regularly get /whispers asking about how2play and it’s quite interesting when one says ‘no, your’re doing it wrong.’ Or, ‘don’t forget to xxx.’ Really? You created a toon just to say that to me?
I love talking to people, but when I get that response I usually /shrug and say, ‘ok, do it your way..’ these are usually the same ones that keep whispering me in the middle of a raid, when I ask them to either wait until raid is over or to send me an in game mail…
As for gold, I don’t have any cool enchants, and the JC market has gotten dicey on my server, but I actually DO make pretty good profits on void crystals alone. Usually, I can find them for ~24-26g during the week, and starting Friday I list them for 32-38g, and usually can sell several stacks that way. Every little bit helps.
This is a serious pet peeve of mine as well!
A couple of weeks ago I got an in game mail from another druid asking for some gearing/gemming advice, and I did a very through breakdown of her gear for her, with one of her first action items being: OMG GET YOUR 4 PIECE T10!!!
Now, she’s taken a good bit of the advice I offered her with regards to gemming, her spec and some of her gear upgrades. But, after commenting to me that she actually had a 4 T10 set all gemmed at the 264 level, and that she must have gotten some bad advice from someone who told her that some 277 pieces were better than her 4 T10 bonus (which is wrong!), she still continues to wear the 277 items /sad
Oh well! I tried =)
But I definately know where you are coming from! Don’t ask if you don’t want the answer, or just want to argue about it!
Little late to the party on this one, but that’s my biggest pet peeve in anything AH related. I regulary monitor fluxuations during the week of almost every material, and through experience I can nail the exact best buying and selling times for almost everything I deal in – and it’s about 82 different items.
People I’ve taken pity on I share my knowledge with, but I do that knowing full well and good that I’m more than likely talking to Bubbles the Chimp. Even people I’ve known in the game for years do this to me. I show them how and I let them make some money in glyphs because any talking monkey can do that. Now they’re the Warren Buffet of the Auction House.
I handle it well when I know the person, normally I let them go on about how my ideas are awful and won’t work. I just create a new bank toon, load it up with bags and go to work destroying them in sales until they give up. As one of the wealthiest people on the entire server, I certainly don’t know anything about making gold.
Mongoose is bar none my favorite enchant to stockpile for. 40 arcs, 8 planars, 13 void crystals and I’m in business. I make way more than 40% on it, but only because I only buy when the market bottoms out and sell the scroll itself when I see a height. It’s purely an investment and not a flip.