To Flip or Not to Flip? Using "The Shuffle" Overstock in The AH For Profits

  
*Ok, I want to remind the "farmers" out there that if 4.0.6 drops tomorrow, are you gonna give up a bit of AH love to get your rare world drops (enchant bracers and meta recipies?)? Just remember to pop your Potion of Treasure Finding, as they are up-nerfing those as well. Or are you going to be "farming" the AH to get these on the "cheap", for server firsts? And what about the new "Rare Monsters" we heard about dropping as well? Hmm. I suppose you will find out soon enough what my plan is/was and how it worked out. =)
 

Good day, fine folks! I am starting off with a question to you.....How many times do you read (or hear) "nice idea, but that doesn't work on my server, too much competition" or "the uncuts gems are so cheap, it isn't even profitable to do the shuffle anymore". I see it and hear it quite often. I have even said that myself....


     The problem with this style of thinking is why you are stuck at your current gold "stock". Thinking outside the box, thinking in the box, burning the box, whatever you call it, we all gotta snap out of it, right? Two weeks ago, I had a few bad days at the AH (partially because I didn't post more than 50 or so auctions, as I was extremely limited on playtime) and a good part of it was sales were slumping. A few more people got into my market, and I needed a bit of the pvp AH break.

     Enough with my bla, bla, bla, I am now going to cover what dug me out and back to my usual 10K+ "The Openings" (if you don't know what that is, look back a few posts, I was in a habit of SS'ing my daily mailbox moments).

     Looking at my stock in the bank, and the COD's piling up the in mail with Ore, I came to a conclusion. I missed a market. With all the prices on uncuts down to basically cut/vendor prices, I wasn't selling. I would D/E everything I crafted (the normal shuffle here) with the gems, toss up the blue procs, and that was it. I didn't really think until my slump last week that I am missing out on a huge market.....

     Simple supply and demand, but I seemed to slip this one in the back of the brain, and it got lost in all the cata cobwebs (I used this process all the way back in Vanilla thru Wrath, but not in Cata yet). Time to dust em off and get banking.

     What I am talking about is a type of "reverse" psychology, but in the WoW form. Carnelian Spikes. Jasper Rings. Hessonite Bands. Alicite Pendants. Now this post will explain the process, however if you are not into this game, you will get the picture of how to do this with any item.


I explained in one of my Coaching meetings last night this process with using Savage Leather Scraps to turn into Savage Leather, to turn into Heavy Savage Leather, then finially turning them in at Twilight Highlands to get your Prisitine Hides, and at 50% of current AH prices. Now even though this process seems simple, it's surprising that every server has areas of this sort that are not utilized. The Blackfallow Ink flip (to Inferno Ink) and many others are also viable. If you are interested in a one on one "Coaching" with me, don't hesitate to click anywhere on this paragraph to get more information (scroll down to altosgold for me!), or email me direct at altosgoldishadvice@gmail.com .

     First off, I want you to open up your AH, click onto your "BUY" tab on Auctionator *thanks Azuriel (you should have this addon already. If not, get it, download it, and continue reading). Now I want you to make a new shopping list, and name it carnelian spikes (or whatever, really, it just makes life easier this way to check your prices quickly). You might notice that the names are in quotation marks "". This tells Auctionator to only pull up that exact name, for instance if you just put in carnelian, you will get all the cut gems, the uncut, spikes, etc. It helps out other times, but this one you need to do it this way. Because I said to. Ok? Ok.
     Now you need to check the prices. Disenchanting Carnelian Spikes will give you (on average of 100 blocks that I tested) 1.8 Greater Celestial Essence, and 1 Hypnotic Dust.
     Now you are probably telling me "I call bullshit Alto. You get either one or the other". You are correct. But if you do this on a mass scale, that is what ONE spike averages out for D/E. So when you are pricing if this will work on your server, use that as an estimate (I use 1.5 and 1 when I am doing the flip, but you can use whatever).

 We know that Spikes are 3 Carnelians, so one will cost 16*3, or 48 gold. Now add the 4.5g for three Jeweler's Settings, and we are now at a "current" price of 52.5g. Now there are a few that are cheaper than mats cost, so I will buy these spikes up. Why you ask? You should already be able to answer this question, but humor me and continue reading.... =)

     Now, we check the current price of Greater Celestial Essences, and they are sitting at 39g (current AH price). We know that "mass d/e" says we will get 1.8 of these...(39g * 1.8= 70.2g). Now normally, I do not factor in the Hypnotic Dust price, as I don't use the 1.8 either. For quick math purposes, I use the "times 1 and a half" method. So basically, I am looking at 60g per spike, right?

     So to buy the Carnelian at 16g and craft them myself (not including the "shuffle"), I am looking at a 8 gold profit per. See where I am going with this? Now 8g isn't a lot, but if you were to factor in "mass" amounts of these made, 8g turns into an 800g profit on 100 (actually, I ended up with just shy of 1600g profit on my 100 test I did).





Now like I mentioned, this is a brief "generic" style of working the AH. I talked before about using this style method in other areas, and you might be doing this already, or maybe you aren't. This is a non-server dependent method you can utilize for a consistent profit in almost every aspect. Take a few minutes and check your AH in this situation. Similar? Now check the savage leather I mentioned above. Similar? See, there are alot of profits out there in the AH, you just have to look....

*Edit- Who knows if this will continue to be as profitable, as the blogosphere has been mentioning that the Carnelian Spikes ilvl might get nerfed so they will not proc the Greaters as much anymore. Bah, who knows. No one but Blizzard I guess....