JMTC Carnival: How are you making Gold in Cataclysm?

This post is written in contribution to Just My Two Copper's Gold Making Blogging Carnival. Hosted by Markco and Mageshadow over at Just My Two Copper. Check them out daily for gold making tips.

My 3 Top Ways to Make Gold In Cataclysm

Jewelcrafting!
Jewelcrafting has always been one of my favorite professions. Not only because of the cool perks you get with it, but because it is used by everyone. Everyone needs gems. This means Jewelcrafting is a never ending stream of money. I have made profits in Jewelcrafting by picking the Best Jewelcrafting Recipes to Buy and staying ahead of my competition. I'm always on the look out for cheap gems which I have cuts for. Currently, if you keep a close eye on the market, you should be able to earn anywhere from 30-70g per gem cut you have.

Also, making the most out of the New Jewelcrafting Daily has been very helpful to me. From this, I'm able to understand what gems to look for, and make easy profits everyday.

Finally, pairing Jewelcrafting with Enchanting is very profitable currently. On days which Jasper are not used for the Jewelcrafting daily, I stock up on them. Some go in the bank for resale, and others are made into Jasper Rings for disenchanting. Here is how I figure out if the formula is profitable.

Jasper Rings disenchant to at minimum one hypnotic dust. On average you get closer to two dust, and can also proc lesser celestial essences and small heavenly shards. So anytime Jasper is less then or equal to the cost of 1 hypnotic dust I buy them. This is very common on my server, and I know I will end up in the black once all is said and done. From my results, I pretty much double my money so it's a no brainer.

Flipping!
Oh yea, once again I am flipping. Flipping is often times a risky move. I tried it a little early at the start of Cataclysm and got burnt a couple times. However, I have found some items that are pretty easy to flip. I can't give you an item list, because they really vary. What I can tell you is watch trade chat. One thing players are doing is leveling professions rapidly and dumping their excess. This lends its self to being a very lucrative way to make gold. Keep liquid gold always on hand and do market research. Be ready to pull the trigger when the opportunity presents its self.

Fishing!
Probably one of the most underrated gold making opportunities right now is fishing. However, I'm cashing in. Fishing alone is great money, and when you pair fishing with something like mining, the results become even better. I also have a Carnival Post for Cold's Gold Factory that outlines fishing for Volatile fire. One of the best Gold Per Hour investments for me in the game right now.

To sum it all up, I'm making 90% of my income from Jewelcrafting, Flipping, and Fishing. This trio of skills has netted me the biggest return on time invested. I hope this helps, because we all need to have a Vial of Sands!

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Jewelcrafting Daily Quest: 4 Ways to Profit

I recently wrote a post about Jewelcrafting in Cataclysm that was pretty successful. It involved making the most profits from picking the right cut for your server. It can be found here: Jewelcrafting: Go Against the Grain However, there is still more Gold to be made from the daily quest its self.

During my morning ritual, one of the first things I do is go check out the Jewelcrafting daily quest given out in Orgimmar. The quest giver gives out 5 different quests. There is no set order (That I know of) that the quests are given, so they appear to be random everyday.

The quests are:

A Present for Lila - Cut and turn in 3 Timeless Nightstones
Nibbler! No! - Cut and turn in 3 Solid Zephyrites
Ogrezonians in the Mood - Cut and turn in 3 Jagged Jasper
Elemental Goo - Farm 10 Elemental Goo from Elementals
The Latest Fashion! - Test 10 Stardust


The first 4 of the 5 are the 4 different ways to find profit. The other is sprinkling some fairy dust on any player or NPC around you, so no money here. However, lets focus in on the 3 "Cut and Turn in Quests" first.

All three of the Cut and Turn in quests require 3 uncommon gems. So during the day when a particular gem is needed, those gems are going to sell for more. Infact, I've seen them go for as much as 5 times more. So here is how you cash in.

Step 1:
Check the daily. Go list any of the gems you do have. I suggest listing in stacks of three. That way a player only has to pull the trigger once. A good starting number if you're the first one to list is 315g for a stack of three.

I know what you're thinking. "I don't have any of those gems. In fact, I buy them everyday to complete my own daily." This brings us to step two.

Step 2:
If it is Zephyrite day, after I've posted my Zephyrites the next thing I do is search for Jasper and Nightstones. Because these gems aren't going to be used that day, they can often be well under priced and flooded. I'll scoop up all of the under priced gems and save them for the next time they are used in the daily. This is something you can do throughout the day as without the demand, these gems will become flooded. This is where the real profit is.

Use this two step method everyday and the Jewelcrafting daily makes for a great additional income stream.

Wait, there's more!

I said 4 ways to profit!

The quest Elemental Goo wants you to go collect 10 Elemental Goo from Cataclysm Elementals. Make the most of this! Go kill an elemental that is going to drop you some Volatiles. I personally recommend an Elemental that is going to net you Volatile Air. These are currently the most difficult to obtain and command the highest price. Markco from Just My Two Copper made a great video on farming for Volatile Air. It can be found here: Where to Farm Volatile Air in Uldum

Implementing these methods will allow you to make the very most of your Jewelcrafting Daily in Cataclysm.

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Cold's Gold Factory Blogging Carnival: What is one of your Favorite Farming Spots in Cataclsym?

This post is written in contribution to Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival. A monthly blogging Carnival hosted by Cold of Cold's Gold Factory. Be sure to check him out daily for gold making updates.

There are a lot of FANTASTIC farming spots in Cataclysm. With all kinds of new materials being in demand, lots of folks have returned on the old way of making gold. Farming. However, this early in the expansion farming is currently one of the best ways to make gold.

My favorite spot in all of Cataclysm is located in Hyjal and the Sulfuron Spire. (Map above) This spot was originally reported over at Just My Two Copper "Fishing for Volatile Fire" However, I feel this spot is so incredibly good I wanted to give it a full write up.


Requirements:
Level 1 Fishing. You'll only be fishing from Pools so your level doesn't matter. Level 100 fishing helps because it will allow you to utilize find fish to spot the nodes, but isn't necessary

What you'll be looking for are 3-4 Lava Pools located in front of the instance. Just fly over, land and fish until your hearts content. I've seen very little competition here, and on average there are 3 pools up at a given time.

The average pool will give you 7 Volatile Fire This is not a typo. More often then not you'll be catching 2 Volatile fire per cast.

To give you an idea of how lucrative a spot this is, here is what I did this evening.

I spent one and a half hours farming the spot. By farming I mean watching Family Guy, writing this post, and checking back in to WoW every 5 or so minutes. During that course of time I farmed 84 Volatile Fires. Again, that is not a typo. 84 Volatile Fires in 90 minutes. Volatile Fires currently go for 30g on my server.

84 Volatile Fires x 30g ea = 2,520. That's about 28g a minute, or roughly 1680g per hour. Making this spot one of the very best in Cataclysm. The best part about this spot is you are farming a highly sought after commodity. Volatile Fires sell near instantly and you'll never be sitting on them trying to get them to sell. It's literally like fishing for Gold.

In the Gold Making Blogosphere, I am probably the biggest advocate for fishing. If this isn't enough to get you to pick up a fishing pole, nothing is!

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A Pet Makes a Great Holiday Gift

It's that time of year again. It's Christmas! Or well, it was Christmas. I hope everyone had a great holiday spending time with Family and Friends. However, it's time to go back to work and get back to the daily grind. For me, this means hopping back onto WoW. And working that real job, but I digress. Anyway, Christmas comes a few days later in WoW because of those family obligations, so this week may be the first time for friends to celebrate in game. What does this mean? Presents of course!

One of the things I wrote about pre-cataclysm was hedging against inflation by buying up Argent Tournament Pets. That article can be found here: Pro Tip Argent Tournament Pets If you took that advice, then I'm sure you have several pets sitting in the bank waiting to be claimed by a new owner. This is now your first GREAT opportunity to put them up for adoption.

I put up 4 pets over the past two days. All of the pets I sold were originally purchased for 450g at the end of Cataclysm. Each pet sold for 2500g. There are a few reasons behind this.

Competition:
I'll be honest. It was low, and by low I mean none existent. I was the only person to have these pets listed. So that helped.

Availability:
Making these pets available was the key to my success. I know a lot of you have them in the bank waiting to be cashed in on, but now is a great time. Why? Because of that age old question "What do you want for Christmas?" A lot of people are offered or purchased a Christmas gift. It makes things a lot easier when people have a reasonably priced item to chose from.

Throw up a couple of pets, or a couple of small big ticket items (Sub 3k). Things like Pets and Battered Hilts come to mind. Collectors and Achievement junkies will be on the receiving end this Holiday season. Make the most of it!

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Tol Barad Peninsula: 450g in 30 minutes

Tol Barad Peninsula:

Tol Barad is a zone accessed at level 85. It's essentially the Wintergrasp of Cataclysm. However, it has some Gold making opportunities that play out a lot more like the Isle of Quel Danas. (Did I spell that right? No matter)

After reading this post post by Alto: Tol Barad - It'll "Lure" you in... I got excited and decided that I would check it out myself. So I packed my bags in Orgimmar and headed to the portal. I was greeted with a pleasant surprise.

Upon arrival through the portal I found 7 quests. One of which required a victory in Tol Barad so I omitted it for this experiment. There were 28 minutes left on the Horde Controlled timer so I set out to do the quest.

I completed the quests, grabbed a couple nodes of elementium, and hit a sweet spot of Fathom Eel pools. In less then 28 minutes I had made nearly 500g. Here are my results.

Quests: 99g
Volatile Water x3: 60g
Volatile Fire x2: 50g
Fathom Eel x12: 120g
Embersilk x12: 48g
Elementium Ore x 16: 80g

Total: 457g

It didn't take long to do, and I'll be doing it everyday as I grind the new found rep for the two mounts that are offered. This is a great way to take full advantage of your surroundings when you are out and about questing. These principles can easily be used in whatever zone your in.

Enjoy!

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Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to send a quick message to everyone. I hope everyone is having a very Merry Christmas and enjoying their time with friends and family. Even if you don't celebrate, I wish you the very best on this day.

As for me, I'll be trying to find the best spot to stuff my face and then fall into a deep Christmas coma.

For CappedByCata be on the lookout for more content and more a rigid posting schedule. I hope to provide at least five days of new content a week. If not more. Also, new projects are in the works so I am very excited about those. If there is anything you think that could be done better, or anything you would like to see feel free to let me know.

Also, a big thank you to WarcraftEcon for the recent mention in Cataclysm Gold Making Guides: Weeks 50-51 2010 It is always appreciated.

I'm off to go find something that will sit still long enough for me to eat it. Merry Christmas!

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Call for Questions!

I'm very happy. In recent days I've put out two posts that were probably some of my most commented on ever. I like that. I know I have traffic, but it's always very nice when people leave their opinion. I do really appreciate that.

For today, I want to open up the floor. What are your Gold Making questions? Whether it's about a particular item, technique, or other nuance of the game I would love to take a stab on it. If it's an exceptionally thought provoking question I will write a post on it and feature it here.

So leave me a comment here, shoot me an E-mail to CappedByCata@Gmail.com or send a Tweet to CappedByCata

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Outside the Box: Is Cataclsym "Fun"?

My favorite aspect of World Of Warcraft has slowly changed. At first, I was a typical player. In the traditional sense it was all about making my Character better. Getting the best gear. Downing all the bosses. You know, the typical play style. However, as Wrath lingered, my play style changed to that of a collector. Achievements played a bigger part of the game for me. Then, when I started blogging, my game changed again. I was still a collector, however I started a new collection. Gold. I really focused in and that became the real draw of the game for me.

With the release of Cataclysm, I jumped in on the achievements and actually had ALOT of fun leveling for the very first time. They really got that aspect right in my opinion. However, now that my main character is 85 and has finished most of the new zones, I have very little desire to leave Orgimmar. I just log on, do some auctioning, maybe go farming and then log off.

I tried to get into the new gear grind. I really did. However, I think we were so spoiled in Wrath, I'm just not wanting to conform to the change. I play a Warrior. I know I should be tanking. But thats not fun. Fun to me is holding two two-handers. I don't want to have to tank just so I don't have to spend 50 minutes in a que. Moreover, heroics are stupidly over tuned for the masses of players. The mentality of the old player base no longer exists. No one understands the concept of interrupts, crowd control, or threat anymore. Now that all of those things are very much back in the game, I feel like the game has been turned on its ear. I spend 50 minutes in a que to be grouped with four people who have no idea what they are doing. No I'm not an elitest in any fashion, I just wish I didn't have to wait around 50 minutes to find that out.

I feel like a lot of things need to be addressed. It may be the difficulty, or it may be player mentality. One of which Blizzard cannot control.

So I suppose I'll be leveling alts and staying in Orgimmar for now. What do you guys think? I'm I totally out in left field? Or are some of these thoughts valid?

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Bulk Buying: I keep getting burnt.

One of the things I have done since the inception of this blog as always look for opportunities to buy in bulk. Sometimes this usually means from legitimate players who don't know of a better means to make money. However, more often than not, most bulk buys come from "Gold Farmers" You know the bi-product of the gold selling business. Not something I condone by any means, but these products usually end up getting flooded into the auction house. Whenever I see low levels toons with obscure names selling end game materials I'll usually whisper a price leaving myself plenty of room to profit and offer to buy everything. This has ALWAYS worked. Until now.

Over the past week, I've been burnt. Twice. The first time I bought about 100 stacks of Obsidium Ore for 150g a stack. Less then 48 hours the ore could be found for on the AH, posted by other "Gold Farmers" for sub 100g numbers.

I took the hit, and just assumed this is a one off. Again today I picked up 150 stacks of Elementium Ore for 70g a stack while it was on the AH for 120g a stack. I come back today and see that almost none of my ore has sold, and is now down to that 70g number but flooded on the AH and not isolated to one person selling in trade chat.

So for now, I'm not buying in bulk anymore. It keeps tying up my capital and returning smaller then when I originally invested it.

So I pose a question:

Is this a normal price fluctuation? Prices finally starting to settle out? Or have perhaps the market for raw goods collapsed? Or maybe more Gold Farmers are farming these materials then previously due to the high prices?

I don't know. I can't figure it out. I just don't like losing money. Any of you guys have any advice?

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Enchanting Spotlight: Hurricane

As we all know, enchanting is a fantastic profession in regards to overall profitability. I'm currently in the process of leveling up my Priest to 75 so I can make the most of the profession. But in the mean time, I'm taking full advantage of my enchanter friends to rake in the gold.

One of the scrolls I've been having crafted has been Hurricane.


My main is a Fury Warrior, so that's why I tried these out. I don't want to get into any discussion about stats or best in slot enchants. That's much to elitest for me. All I know is that the proc is awesome, and it looks really cool. (This helps with it selling.)

Mats:
6x Heavenly Shard
6x Volatile Air

Total Cost on these is coming out anywhere from 550g - 600g.
Scrolls are currently selling for 750g - 830g.

Keeping 2-6 of these on the Auction House will end up being very profitable.

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Jewelcrafting: Go against the grain

This week I've been jumping into the Jewelcrafting game. Better late then never, right? I was too busy leveling and farming to level to 475 to open up the daily in the early stages of Cataclysm. So now, I do the daily and get my token and cash in on a cut.

If you take a look at the Auction House, you'll notice that all of the common cuts are already very much exhausted in terms of competitors. Bold and Solid cuts are very much in high demand and in high supply. However, here is my tip for today.

Go against the grain.

Do not buy those high demand cuts. Buy a cut that's not in such high demand. For example, my first cut was Rigid Ocean Sapphire. 40+ Hit Gem. I know that hit is a big factor in the early stages of any content, so people will need it; but not gem it as heavy as say a Strength cut, a Stamina cut, or an Agility cut. What this means for me is that I have to fight less people to provide those Hit Gems that will be sold.

I went ahead and picked up enough raw gems to get to 515, which is where cuts go gray. Here are my results.

Raw Ocean Sapphire: Average cost 135g ea.
Total cost for 45: 6,075

Rigid Ocean Sapphire: Average price 275g. Sold over 4 days.
Total Gross Profit: 12,375g
Total Net Profit: (Gross - Cost) 6,300g sans fees.

So not only was I able to get my Jewelcrafting to 515, I was essentially paid 6,300g to do it. Why? Because I invested in a cut that has far less competition on my server. I also sold slowly over a 4 day time period. This kept the prices high and the supply low.

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My Apologies

I received an e-mail forwarded to me today. A writer who is not only a great content provider, but a big fan of my work felt a little neglected that I overlooked him on my most recent post. But do not worry, I have not over looked you!

Gold Making Spotlight:
Alto over at Alto's Goldish Advice

Much love, brother :D

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Pro Tip: Play it Safe

Cataclysm is fun. So fun, I haven't left Orgimmar since I finished leveling my Warrior to 85. Why? I don't want to tank. I don't feel like grinding rep. The dungeons ques are too long. You know, the typical QQ. Oh, and the gold making on the Auction House is too damn good. :D

So rather then fly around Uldum when I got off of work this evening, I decided to kick back and read some gold blogs. I must say the gold blogging community has grown by leaps and bounds. Lots of great new writers bringing in lots of great new content. Many props to authors such as Fractella at Of Gaming, Grinding, and Gold. Zoxy over at Trading with Zoxy and Zenith over at Zenith's Round Table I must also mention the great content being put out by some of the guys that really got me started with Gold Blogging as well Moravec from Follow the Gold Road, WarcraftEcon, Marcko and Mageshadow over at Just My Two Copper and Cold over at Cold's Gold Factory home of the most up to date Gold Making blogroll on the planet. How else do you think I keep up with everything?! Oh, and they are all members of the Consortium. So make sure you're a member too :D


So big shout out to all those guys for putting out great material. Make sure you check out them, and the other gold bloggers out there.

I bring all of this up, because after reading a lot of these blogs I wanted to go back to a point I made a while back when I was talking about Cataclysm preparation. I've already seen many guides posted for JC + DE'ing profits, cutting gems for profits, crafting BoE gear for profits etc. While these are all great ideas and can make some good money, there is a high potential for getting burnt.

Go back to the Basics
These prices that you are seeing today WILL NOT last. They will continue to drop lower and lower until they level out to a price the economy can support. Running spreadsheets for profiting off mat prices now is not applicable. You could wake up tomorrow and the mats for all of those BoE blues you just crafted could have dropped 100g each. Prices aren't going back up, they are only going to go down until they reach an equilibrium the market can handle. Sure, goods such as Truegold will maintain a higher value longer because they are cool-down controlled, but they too will soon drop.

Does this mean you can't make a lot of gold now? Hell no.

What this means is get back to basics. I know it's tempting to go jump in to that crafting profession, dump of a bunch of money and make some of the new shineys. I want to do it too. However, in the long run it won't be nearly as beneficial as if you just keep continuing to be the supplier rather than the consumer.

Keep Mining. Keep Farming Herbs. Keep Skinning. Keep Fishing. Keep doing all of those things that allow you to bring raw goods into the economy. If you have to prospect for Gems, sell your Gems raw. If you have to transmute things, sell your transmuted items. Keep bringing raw goods into the market. Delay your leveling now for the sake of your pocket book. It will pay off in the long run.

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My thoughts after week one of Cataclysm

Things are starting to come to a close for me. Before I know it, I'll be back to the normal daily grind and once again spending most of my time outside of Azeroth. I have enjoyed my vacation that I planned around Deathwings crazy antics. All and all, I'm a little sad that things have to go back to normal for me, but thus is life.

Anyhow, so what did I think about my one week submersion? It had it's highs and lows. The low being I got sick about mid-way threw, and wasn't able to play as much as I would have liked to. But even with that, I still think I did very well for my weeks worth of time.

What did I accomplish? Well, here is a list:

Level 85 on my Warrior
525 Fishing on my Warrior (Haven't cashed in on this yet)
525 Mining on my Warrior (Lots of time doing this)
475 Jewelcrafting on my Warrior (More of this soon)
30,000g made

Overall, I feel I did a very well. Of course, I was hoping for more gold, but everything was so out of whack with realm firsts, I don't think there was such a big cash crop this time.

Half of my gold I made during the leveling process. Always picking the most expensive quest items to vendor, sending any BoE's to my Disenchanter, selling any raw materials as fast as I gathered them. Once I hit 85, I went into mining mode and made a good bit of money there as well. However, I've also been doing a couple other things.

Here is a list of things I'm selling on the Auction House:

Elementium Ore: Lot's of it. 190g - 240g a stack

Pyrite Ore: When I have it 200g - 400g a stack

Raw Gems: Money is in the uncut - 35g - 250g ea depending on gem.

Volatiles: All of them. 20-50g a pop

Gatherer Enchant Scrolls: 25g ea no problem

Enchant Scroll - Mighty Spellpower: 350g on these, going pretty well.

Netherweave Bags: Finally starting to pick up. 15g ea.

Enchanting Vellums: Caught this tip on someones Twitter. Can't remember who, but thank you!


A couple things to keep in mind:
You don't have to be the cheapest seller. For most items, there is so much demand even if you sell in the middle of the pack you are still going to get bought out. This will continue as more and more people hit 85 and jump into their professions

Watch for good deals. Keep an eye on things in markets your comfortable with. Don't be afraid to take a risk and re-list some things for higher margins. It's easily done in this high demand low supply market. Also, keep an eye on farmers in the zone you're in. Send them a tell, let them know you're a buyer. I caught a guy out in Uldum today. Ended up selling me 100 stacks of Elementium Ore for 120 a pop because I would buy them all. I'm currently re-listing slowly on the AH at 235ea. Remember, people are still impatient, and often times don't have a firm grasp on the values of their items. Take advantage of this.

Overall, I feel the week went well and I see myself becoming more and more wealthy as time goes on. It won't take very much in game time from this point forward to gain more wealth. I'm also keeping an eye on all professions and seeing which alts I should be leveling up.

What about you guys, any of the crafting professions making you crazy wealth? Please share with me your tips and advice if you have them!

More soon, enjoy your time in Azeroth!

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Exciting Times!

Can I just preface this post by saying how Epic Uldum is? This might be the best zone they have ever made in my opinion. The only thing remotely close to this is Nagrand. Anyway, Cataclysm has been pretty awesome thus far.

Though I was beat out to realm first 525 Fishing by about 10 minutes, I'm still having a great time. I'm currently level 83 and have made about 15k leveling alone. I want to give you guys a quick run down of what I'm doing. A list of whats worked and what's hasn't.

The Good:
Enchant Scroll: Gatherer: This still selling great at 25g a pop
Looted Embersilk: Getting about 100g a stack
Volatiles: Fantastic getting 30-40g each. Doesn't matter what kind.
Pyrite: This stuff is golden. Getting about 100g an ore.

The bad:
Netherweave bags: Haven't sold one. This may be because everyone is so focused on 85.
Elementium Ore: It hasn't gone for the insane prices I predicted. While farming is certainly a great income source right now. It's not at all what I think everyone expected. This may be because there was no real competition for the majority of the realm first professions. You had to get to 84 and the ones who did that had all of the mats to themselves. The ones who knew they wouldn't make it to 84 in time didn't buy anything. So we didn't have the massive demand that I think the majority of people were predicting.

It's coming around though, and I think things will get better as we progress and more and more people hit 85. I'll be diving into Jewelcrafting as soon as I'm level capped and go from there.

Keep farming, it won't end up bad for you but it may have not been the get super rich super quick plan that I thought it was going to be.

What about you? How are things going on your end?

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I can't Believe I'm awake

As excited as I am about Cataclysm, this blows. I'm so sleepy. It's 2AM here on the East, and I'm just sitting here waiting. All the Euros are already off and at it. Just 52 minutes to go at time of writing. Hollar at me on Twitter if you're up too! @CappedByCata

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Pro Tip: Enchant Gloves - Gatherer

Above you see a picture of Hot Cakes. Why? Because that's what these things are selling like!

Step 1:
Hop on a 375 Enchanter. Go to any trainer and train Enchant Gloves - Gatherer if you don't have it already.

Step 2:
Buy a crap ton of Vellums from the vendor.

Step 3:
If you don't have a bank full of Greater Cosmic Essences buy some. I bought a ton today for 2g each.

Step 4:
Make Enchant Scroll: Enchant Gloves - Gatherer
Mats = 1x Greater Cosmic Essence

Step 5:
Post them on the AH. None were posted on my AH. I posted for 25g each and am selling like mad.

Step 6:
Why are you still reading this? Seriously. Do. This. Now. This covers all three facets of gathering and will explode in demand. Go now!

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Pro Tip: Mammoth Mining Bag

No matter where you are in your time line for Cataclysm preparation, there is always room for a little easy gold making. So here is a Pro Tip for ya.

As you know, during the first few days of Cataclysm mining is going to be serious business. Any prospective miner worth their salt is going to need a couple Mammoth Mining Bags I know I needed to pick up a couple. However, I couldn't find any on my server. So listen up Leatherworkers, now might be a great time to cash in.

With prices falling on all commodities as people are unloading, pick up some Borean Leather, or use some of your own supply and cash in. The cost is 8 heavy, which may sound steep but a serious farmer will snatch them up.

Good luck and have fun!

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A lesson in Opportunity Cost and Why I took the Plunge.

Above is an actual screen shot of my auctioneers bag. Yes, that's mine. The same guy who started this blog in August with about 1,000g to my name. My goal was to reach the original Gold Cap (214k) before the release of the Cataclysm expansion, this goal has been surpassed by about 31k gold.

It feels pretty good to be capped. However, I now have that new 1 million gold milestone in front of me. This is my new goal in Cataclysm. Capped in Cata perhaps? Either way, I'm excited.

Today, my post is going to be two fold. A basic lesson in Opportunity Cost and why I scratched off that Rhino Loot card and sold it in game to reach my goal. Yea, spoiler alert.

Let's start with Opportunity Cost:

Not too long ago, I was sitting in my Economics class in College. (Really, like Jan - May of this year) I didn't major in Economics while I was in school, but I took it has a filler class my final semester because it interested me. One of the first subjects we covered was Opportunity Cost. What is Opportunity Cost?

"The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action." Source: Investopedia

That's the basic premise. You have to weigh your investment decisions based on the next best thing you could have done with your money. Here is a more WoW related example.

Option One:
Invest 5k gold into Argent Tournament pets. This is a safe investment, an investment that will eventually go up. Say you're going to stick with this investment for three months and then sell. In those three months, your pets rise to 10k gold. So that 5k netted you a 5k profit. (Please forgive things such as inflation and lets say these numbers are constants and not variables.)

Option Two:
You invest 5k into maxing out a trade skill. You invest into your trade skill, and over the next three months you use your trade skill and you make yourself 15k gold. At that point, let's say you unlearn the trade skill and can no longer be productive from it. (I don't know who is going to do that, but stick with me)

So in Option one, you've used your 5k and made 5k. In option two, you used your 5k and made 10k. So what's the opportunity cost?

If you chose option number one the opportunity cost is what you could have made if you chose option two. So it's an additional 5k.

While if you chose option number two, the cost is what you could have made if you chose option number one. You still come out ahead.

I hope that made some sense, if not, take economics. It's worth your time. Anyway, I used opportunity cost to determine whether or not I was going to sell my loot card for $200 Real Life dollars on eBay or sell the item in game for a major profit. Here is how I made my decision.

I took the Plunge

Since I started this blog, up until this point, I have made about 150,000g. I have maxed out numerous professions with that money, stockpiled for Cataclysm, and bought my toons some fancy items and mounts. I've always been a mount collector. So I was always interested in the loot cards because of the mounts. If you saw my last post about this you'll know over the Thanksgiving Holiday I happened into a card shop while visiting family, bought some booster packs, ($20 worth) and hit the loot card lottery. Now I had a tough decision. Was I going to sell the card and pocket two hundred dollars? Or was I going to redeem the card and sell it on for in-game gold. Now, I know this moves the subject into ethical gray area. Is this gold really earned? Aren't you cheating other players? Couldn't this be considered buying gold? It could be a lot of things. Me personally, I look at it as a time investment.

At work, I make roughly $17.30 an hour (This excludes commissions and bonuses.) That means to make $200 at my job it would take me 11.56 hours. Or roughly 1 1/3 days at work. The value of the item in game 130,000g (At least that's what I sold it for.) At that exchange rate, for my opportunity cost to be equal I would need to be able to make 11,246g an hour. Obviously, excluding an amazing farming job in the early hours of Cataclysm, it's just not going to happen.

It took me 3 months to make my first 130,000g. I'm not going to trade that time spent for a currency equal to me spending 11 hours at work. It makes no sense to me. So after diagnosing those aspects of the decision it was clear. I would sell the mount in game.

The mount sold overnight. I tried selling in trade chat and took a lot of heat from my server. Saying I was pricing it out of peoples range because our server is so small. For me, that made the item more valuable. With a smaller server, players know that this item is likely never to appear on the Auction House again and were more apt to buy no matter what the cost.

So when all is said and done, this one item pushed me over the edge. Sure, this may not be the way you would have approached the situation. You may have always taken that $200. But for me, it made much more sense to cash it in.

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Cosmetic Changes

Cosmetic Changes:

That's the first thing I wanted to touch on. In my last post I spoke about always being in the state of change. So I took that to heart and changed up the Blog Template a little bit. I like it. What do you guys think? Is it easy enough to read? Anything you guys think I should change for the better? I'm open to feedback, so if you hate it I'll change it back. Let me know!

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