"WTF is happening with the Gem market???
Hi Marcko, avid follower of your website and of implementing all the tips and ideas that come through and have successfully gone from 3k to 150k in about 3 months. BUT, over the past 2 weeks and more recently over the past three days the price of epic raw gems (King’s Amber / Cardinal Ruby etc) have literally plummeted in price.
2 months ago the sale price of a cardinal ruby was 160g (made up of scarlet ruby 40g and eternal fire 30g). Last night the average sale price of a cardinal ruby was, dare I say it, under the 100g. 2 months ago King’s Ambers were 150g (made up of autumn’s glow 6g and eternal life 20g), last night they reached an all time low of 85g!!!. All other gems were hovering around the 90g-100g mark.
I can understand everyone cashing in their battleground marks for gems and selling them but 2 weeks on I thought it would have plateau’d out – yet still they plummet.
The price of ore remains steady across the board, ie saronite, thorium, titanium, adamantite. Frostweave cloth / bags, netherweave cloth / bags remain the same.
Cat is still a long way off (I’m presuming here as we haven’t even heard of the PTR etc) and there is still another patch to be released and people are still raiding therefore getting new gear to gem up.
So, is there any clear explanation as to “WTF is happening with the Gem market”? Is it happening on other realms or just Frostmourne? Should I hold on to the gems that I transmute every day or should I retire my 12 alchemists until the market picks up?
Regards
Charlot"
The answer to why gems have dropped so quickly is a simple one: Random BG Finder. Players like myself who have finished buying everything they can with honor now do the BG Finder for arena points or because it can be very fun to just instantly que for a random BG. With the increase in honor gained I have found that I can rack in ridiculous amounts of honor and with nowhere to spend it I turn to buying uncut gems. These gems then hit the market in the form of cut ones for super cheap, along with every other player who doesn't have anywhere to spend their honor. If blizzard made it so that you could transfer honor between toons with honor points (not talking wintergrasp marks here) then the gem market would be a different story. Imagine how devastating selling frost lotus or arctic furs for honor would be to other markets. There's not much you can do about the gem prices dropping, although you can sell rare and common gems alike for amazing profits from prospecting saronite.
11 comments: on "WTF Gem Prices"
Anonymous said... April 27, 2010 at 8:05 AM
I believe the best days of making gold as a Jewelcrafter are over for now, but with cataclysm it will be epic goldmaking again.
For now, I've retired my JC and I spend some time doing battlegrounds to level forgotten alts (amagad, people still do Arathi Basin???)
Gustavo said... April 27, 2010 at 8:14 AM
At my server, gems prices have dropped at the same rate. But the price difference between an uncut and a cut one is almost the same (30-60g), so, no problem with that.
Same thing happened with rare gems and I'm still making profit from Runed and Bold Scarlets, for example.
Harry said... April 27, 2010 at 8:41 AM
I'd also attribute these low gem prices to the fact that not many people are getting upgrades in gear. Most of the people that are raiding ICC have few upgrades left.
Foo said... April 27, 2010 at 8:45 AM
Prices change. I am still making more gold buying cheap epic gems, cutting then selling, than I am from the glyph market.
Anonymous said... April 27, 2010 at 9:07 AM
Perhaps you could respec one of your alchemists to jewelcrafting, and take advantage of the low gem prices and start doing epic cuts? As Gustavo said, the markup is still the same, and as you mentioned - people are still raiding and still need cut gems.
Just a thought.
Anonymous said... April 27, 2010 at 9:08 AM
Same over here, cardinals being the worst affected (110-120g) and in the primetime hours you can sometimes pick up the cut cardinals for less than the uncut!
Liam said... April 27, 2010 at 9:45 AM
Same thing has happened on my realm.
Tho i am able to still sell for the same profit.
This means i actually get a higher profit percentage because im spending less on the uncut gems.
Anaalius xoxo
Anonymous said... April 27, 2010 at 12:29 PM
Over the last few weeks I've noticed a slight decline in enchanting scroll sales. With the same amount of crafters uncutting each other, and a lower amount of sales, prices have begun to drop on the scrolls. In the last week on my server, I too have seen a huge drop in prices of gems. The same thing had occurred through the weekend. Undercutters have run the gems into the ground due to slower sales and an increase in supply. I think until any new content comes out you have to be smarter about your purchased supplies than usual.
Anonymous said... April 27, 2010 at 1:38 PM
Yea the market is pretty dead, although enchants are selling like hot cakes for me so I am still buying 11g saro stacks and doing the long winded thing, but it's very profitable - 5k in last 2 days plus gems still sell, but you have to know which cuts and it's all about timing of course.
Baiin said... April 28, 2010 at 3:58 AM
Same thing is happening on my server. Although some people are "trying" to be crafty and spamming trade chat for a JC to cut the gems they pic up from BG's then posting them, thinking they will sell for even more. The result: cut gems are going for LESS than uncuts in some cases (really only blues, reds and yellows). But the rare gem market is still alive and well on my server and I gotta say I LOVE TUESDAYS! made 2800g in gem sales tonight ;)
Anonymous said... April 29, 2010 at 12:53 PM
This has impacted Epic AND blue cuts on my server. To the point where some blue cuts are barely above vendor. Saronite ore is still cheap but the shuffle doesn't seem viable anymore in large quantities on my server. There are more people selling than buying, and it creates a huge backlog of blue gems which for me tend to expire more than they sell, costing me AH fees that cut into already really really low margins.
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