What to Sell Before Cataclysm Guide

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

Everyone has been speculating on what items to buy and stockpile for cataclysm, but what about all the stuff you should get rid of? Also, how should you get rid of these soon to be valueless items?

Let's go through the various professions and address specific items which you should sell or use to craft items and then sell before cataclysm's release.

Alchemy
Flasks, elixirs and potions may sell to levelers but they will quickly drop to worthless within a week or two of the expansion's release. I would advise getting into some undercutting wars on raid nights and really pushing your items. Remember the previous posts I've done on flask selling? Try to post an hour before the prime raid times with a handful of each flask/elixir/potion. After waiting an hour then you undercut everyone who has undercut you and take the prime selling slot with the bulk of your items. Obviously you should be doing your daily transmute epic gem cooldown even if you don't have a jewelcrafter to cut and double the value of the gem(s) you get.

Leatherworking
Arctic fur will probably sell well the first few weeks when people need skill ups. However, since borean leather will retain quite a bit of value it would be worth your while to wait and not convert all your leather into furs until you know for sure what is used to level leatherworking. I've had great luck selling frosthide leg armor as well as the good old fashioned uncommon quality borean leather armor.



Tailoring
Spell threads and leg enhancements should be used and sold asap. The 22 slotter you can make with tailoring will lose a lot of its value in cataclysm as will the spell threads since you won't need them to get 450 tailoring thanks to frostweave bags. Not to mention the fact that abyssal bags are cheaper. Contrary to popular belief, I would suggest keeping your frostweave cloth to sell it for about 50% more during cataclysm. I could easily see stacks going for 20 gold when they are selling for 10-14 now.

Blacksmithing
Titanium shield spike, titanium weapon chain, titanium plating and eternal belt buckle will all become worthless in cataclysm. If you have titanium ore/bars and want to get rid of them, craft titanium rods post cataclysm but prior to the expansion you should be selling all the other items I've listed here as much as possible. I'm easily pulling in 1.5k per day from these items. Note that titanium rods will be the #1 item to craft while leveling blacksmithing to 450 so be prepared for the profitability of these rods to be a much smaller margin during the expansion than they are today.

Jewelcrafting
All the rare quality gear you can craft with jewelcrafting will not sell well in cataclysm. Same goes for rare and epic quality cut gems. Cut uncommon gems will also be pretty much worthless since there is no gear while leveling in wotlk with gem slots. Uncut rare and uncommon gems however will retain their value since they help with skill ups to 450. Uncut epics will be worthless. Meta gems are something you'll also want to get rid of quickly before cataclysm, but take heart, these are selling amazingly well. Shielded skyflare diamonds have made me probably 4,000 gold in the past two weeks alone at 200 gold a pop. A note on metas: if the expansion features meta slots in leveling gear then having metas would be awesome, however, the wotlk expansion featured no gem slots of any kind during the 70-79 grind so expect 80-84 to be no different. If you'd like to play the lottery you could do your daily cooldown and see if you get some scarlet rubies.

Inscription
Glyphs will all retain value and actually go up in value throughout cataclysm, peaking with certain key events like patches and the expansion's launch. Expect another glyphmas on dec 7th as people change to collecting leveling glyphs and get some of the new level 81 talent glyphs. Snowfall inks will be completely worthless except maybe for a handful of skill ups to levelers. You'll see a market for selling the vanishing powder reagent as well. Runescrolls will be pretty useless after the first few weeks of cataclysm so sell those as well as your snowfall inks. Be sure to trade in your ink of the sea into lesser inks so you're not stuck with just ink of the sea when the new top dog inscription ink is added to live servers. See my guide to selling snowfall inks before cataclysm is released.

Enchanting
Dream shards will have zero value in cataclysm. Abyss crystals will be similarly valueless and will provide an opportunity later on for those enchanters who are savvy enough to buy out the crystals and shatter them for the much more valuable infinte dust and lesser cosmic essences which levelers will need. I've been selling quite a few berserking and spellpower to weapon enchants as well as powerful stats to chest. These three enchants are a great way to get rid of those dream shards and abyss crystals. If you don't have an enchanter, try selling abyss crystals in sets of 10.

Eternals
These are a tricky lot. Fire, earth and water will retain quite a bit of value due to many professions requiring them to level up. Earth for jewelcrafters, fire for engineers and water for blacksmiths are some of the uses for these eternals but there are others. I would sell off shadow, life and air while you can. See my dirty guide to selling eternals.

Frozen Orbs
Will these be valuable in cataclysm? NOPE. Be sure to make use of frozo to diversify and sell off the orbs. (EDIT: As some commentors have mentioned, you will still be able to sell frozen orbs as eternal fires as long as frozo is featured in the expansion. My take on this is to just convert them into the items you want to save for the expansion now, such as the eternal fires).

Primordial Saronite
With justice points being able to purchase these it is likely that even with the shadowmourne guild achievement the price of these will not increase much during cataclysm. Maybe save a dozen or so but I'd sell the rest now.

Notice how in most of these cases I'm telling you to sell crafted items instead of just the materials? 9 times out of 10 you're better off taking the time to make something with your materials and then sell the results. This goes for pre-cataclysm liquidating as well as the normal day to day auctioneering activities. Remember the markco-vian economics of identify, diversify and automate!

What do you think of this list, did I miss anything? Comment!