I'm going to walk through these examples with jewelcrafting simply because it's my current high stock profession. Some of this will only apply to jewelcrafting (prospecting, for example) - but a lot of the concepts can be applied to any profession where a continually replenishing stock is required.
Option one: Buy low, stock high
Getting back to my previous posting strategy, my goal is to have 2 of each gem on the auction house at all times. Right now this means 18 gems total on the AH at any given time. Obviously, when one or both of these sell out, I'd like to repost fairly quickly, meaning I'd like to have a decent stock.
Let's take a look at the current prices of [Dream Emerald] on my server: 20g. One possible option for stocking dream emerald would be to buy any and all gems below this threshold, up to a reasonable limit. I have 2 dream emerald cuts, and each sells anywhere from 3-10 per day. Reasonably speaking, I'd like to have a stack of dream emerald at all times in order to meet demand.
Today, a stack of dream emerald will cost me 400g. Anything at or below this price I can buy, stock, and have waiting in cut or uncut form to post later.
Pros:
- Fairly reliable stock levels
- No need to buy goods at time of crafting
- Buying and crafting can be done in a single batch per day rather than every posting cycle
- No need to worry about temporary surge (25g!) in prices when restocking my cuts
Cons:
- Stock levels can be too high. On a slow day I could invest 400-800g in 1-2 stacks of dream emerald and only sell 2 or 3 gems all day.
- Prices may drop below the current day's threshold. If prices drop to 15g for a day I have essentially thrown away 100g per stack of purchase dream emerald
Option two: Buy average, stock low
Using our trusty Dream Emerald example once again, I could also employ a different strategy in stocking this particular gem. As stated above, I know that I sell between 5 and 20 of these per day. This usually translates to 3 or 4 (or more if they move quickly) posting cycles. On an average day I will probably post 5 times.
Taking this into consideration, I can employ a low stock, or even really, a no stock strategy in where I don't store any uncut Dream Emerald whatsoever. Rather than purchase an entire stack of Dream Emerald and wait to sell them, I can purchase them "just in time" from the AH, cut them into the finished goods, and then post on the auction house.
Pros:
- Less money invested into stock, more capital available to invest in other markets
- By design, ensured to get the best current possible price for my raw goods
Cons:
- Potential to overpay. Again, the current price may inflate. If I need to pay 25g for a gem that was once 20g, I'm now overpaying at 100g a stack.
- Far more time invested per posting cycle. Instead of a single crafting/buying session, I now need to engage in several smaller buying + crafting + posting sessions daily.
Option three: Prospect
Finally, and this one really is jewelcrafting specific, there is the option of going after your materials via a different route. Prospecting is, when you get down to it, just another means of obtaining the exact same thing. At the end of the day we are after uncut gems - this can be a way of getting those gems more cheaply.
The effort here is a bit more involved, and you really need both an enchanter and an alchemist to make this the most profitable. I don't want to get too distracted in this post with a elementium shuffle tangent - so for now I'll simply discuss the current situation of elementium ore on my server.
Right now, elementium stacks hover at right around 110g on my server today. On average, this will get me around 4 green gems and 1 blue gem per stack. This isn't exact, but is close enough.
The inherent trouble with prospecting in a volatile market isn't that the margins aren't there. The issue is with the amount of gold needed to invest. Let's assume that I want to stock 20 of each gem type (120), and that this stock will last me a full 3 days. This is reasonably fair, given my realm, posting schedule, and demand.
Assuming a fairly uniform prospect rate of 1 gem per stack, I'll need to prospect 120 stacks of elementium ore. At my price of 110g today, this comes down to just over 13,000 gold in investment costs. Let's assume that I can offload the green gems using my alchemist and JC to flip a profit - my concern here is not profit relative to my investment, but profit relative to when I am buying and stocking it.
On my server, at least, raw gems are a lot more stable than ore. It's not uncommon to see gems shift 5-10g over the span of a day or two. However in that same time period you can see a 20 or 30g swing in ore stacks. The lows go as low as 85g, the highs go as high as 120g.
Pros:
- Much higher potential for profit with Alchemy + Enchanting triangle
- Potential for lower costs of raw gems (Derived from above, really)
- Alternative source of raw supply, depending on your server's AH
Cons:
- Much higher time investment
- Much higher gold investment
- Far more susceptible to market shifts (Not only in rares/ore, but uncommon gems, as well as metas, dusts/essences)
Taking it all in
To be honest - I haven't personally settled on a method yet. I'm very much leaning towards a medium stock, buy low approach where I take an educated guess on the cost of mats over the next few days.
I don't expect cata to settle down fully, particularly in the gem market, for at least another month or two. This means that I'll likely be stocking my gems in the day to week region, rather than holding on to stacks and stacks of uncuts that will last me months.
Long term - my belief is that once ore prices finally stabilize (remember when you just knew that saronite was 13g a stack?), prospecting will be the way to go 100% of the time. For now, I think it's too much of a risk to invest FULLY into this method. I will likely to continue searching for elementium ore on the lower end of the market price, snapping up stacks when I can.
Other than that, my main method of stocking uncuts will continue to be buying raw off of the AH. It's far too tiresome to buy multiple times a day - I tried that this weekend and absolutely hated it. I'll see what keeping a moderate supply does for me, and how much it costs me in the long run. I think at the end of the day, I'm willing to pay 2-3g extra in costs per gem if it means making my posting cycles a lot more simple to automate.
Jewelcrafters Wanted!
JCs - now's your turn to speak up. What have you been doing to acquire and maintain your stock through the expansion? Are you following any of the strategies listed above or have you employed a different method?
Is anyone simply abandoning the rare market for now and stocking tokens or working with jewelry? If you're out there - let me know what's working for you!
1 comment:
I tend to stock up the ore I get from doing dailies with a miner, but also like to keep the rare gems that are obtained from regular prospecting.
Anyway, I'll always end up having a somewhat medium stock at hand.
I'm also keeping all JC daily tokens on one of my two jewelcrafters; mostly because I'm lazy, but also because I could use those tokens to purchase epic gems or anything else that might be added later.
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