Old Markets Gone Bad!

This month's topic for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival is one that many of us can have a chat about. If you've been making gold in-game for a while, there are bound to be markets that have died on you or that you've given up on. I know I have a few but I've narrowed it down to just one market.

Name one of your historically profitable markets that is now defunct and what can we learn from that old market?

I think you can probably guess from my header image which market I chose for my topic this month - yup - vendor bought cooking recipes! I stumbled into this market within a month or two of starting to play WoW. The Pilgrims festival was in full swing as I started leveling my 2nd alt & accidently found the cooking recipe vendor in Stormwind when I wanted to add Cooking to her profession list. I had a little bit of gold then from selling turkeys I'd picked up whilst questing so off I went to the cooking trainer to get started. Except I didn't find the cooking trainer - I found the recipe vendor so I bought the recipes anyway, having no idea that I didn't really need them to level my cooking.

It was one of those serendipitous moments when I accidently bought 2 of the same recipe so I just threw it on the Auction House - I followed the existing prices & just undercut by a few copper. I think it earned me about 6g back then and it took me a few days to realise it as I was busy questing & leveling & didn't check my mail! Needless to say, I quickly ran back to the AH to check some of the other cooking recipe prices & a fledgling Goblin was born! I think I made maybe 500g from just those cooking recipes in that first foray into the AH.

Fast forward to the next Pilgrims festival a year later & I had a few more alts on the go & a level 80 too. I'd been dabbling in the AH but not in any serious way. I was in a busy guild, chatting, dungeons, raiding a bit all took up my game time so although I was never short of gold, I wasn't racking it up like some goldmakers. That inspiration/necessity came later & is a different story! So for this 2nd festival, I remembered the cooking recipes & looked up on Wowhead to see what other recipes might be out there. 

The Stormwind vendor was always the easiest to get to - my bank alt lived in Stormwind but my 2nd or 3rd alt was working through Outland - I'd regularly pop over to the Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar Forest & pick up 2 or 3 of each recipe & post them back to my bank alt. This year, I raised the prices & some of them were selling for 30-50g. I loved this market - the Stormwind set cost about 1g & sold for 15-30g each - all the time!

I can't remember all the other recipe vendors but I do know I made good gold from this market right up to the launch of Mists of Pandaria. The new Cooking trainer & leveling method for cooking means that most players now level their cooking just standing in Halfhill. I bought a set of recipes from the Stormwind guy just last week - I was curious to see if there was any market left for them. A few have sold but only for 2-5g now - still a very good profit & still a reasonable market to try for some starter cash but for me, it's just not time efficient enough now.

So what can we learn? Well I think the most obvious lesson is that some players are just plain lazy or downright stupid! Think of all the cheap vendor bought stuff that sells for much better prices on the Auction House - gold bloggers have been writing about them for ages but there are still players out there who have no idea you can buy say, crystal vials from a vendor! But don't forget, I'm not even talking about limited supply items - those I kind of understand buying off the Auction House, there's a time element to getting them & for some players, time is more precious than gold. Nope, I'm talking about unlimited supply items just like cooking recipes!

There is still a small market here - some players like to have all the recipes & some prefer to level a profession as they level their alt so they do it using the older recipes & materials they pick up along the way. It's not a market I'm bothering with now although if you are just getting started, it may be worth a try. A 1g investment could net you 50-100g profit even if you have to relist them a few times.

****************

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses!

Horde Gift Guide | Alliance Gift Guide

Old Recipe © CrissyAlright under Creative Commons licence

Spring - Time For Fresh Starts

© Nev 2004, Spring Blossom

So, it's been a while again but I finally logged into game a few times this last week or so. The first few hours really wore me out - my eyes really had problems adjusting to the whole movement stuff after months of static websites but eventually they settled down & let me get on with trying to remember where I had left everything! I never intended to just stop playing like that, it was just the way it worked out but I lost everything in my mailboxes & I'm pretty sure I had a few big-ish items gone bye-bye but never mind, they would be out of date by now anyway! So my first few evenings back in game were taken up with emptying rubbish out of banks & bags, as well as catching up with my lovely guildies.

Just before I stopped playing, I also signed up for a US account which I played for about 2 hours & never went back! Bad timing all round except that it gave me a lapsed account when the new Scroll of Resurrection was announced so this week, thanks to Cold over at Cold's Gold Factory, I've restarted on that account. No heirlooms, no cash back up, nothing except 50 empty character slots & a few basic addons. Cold doesn't have to worry though, I'm Alliance so his Horde gold making empire is safe ... for now :P

So with a clean slate, I chose my usual human banker, levelled her to level 5 & ran to Stormwind. She had about 8silver to play with. I also started a human hunter to be my main questing alt & by the time she got to Goldshire, she had about 9 silver which I sent to my banker. So with 16 silvers, I bought 2 of the cheapest cooking recipes from the guy in SW Old Town, then ran to the florist on the canals to see if there were any herbs available. There were a few bits & pieces so I bought those up & ran to the Alchemy supplies shop in the mage Quarter, nabbed all the herbs I could there & off I went to the Auction House.

Off I went to the Auction House & started to list my haul of cheap herbs. Arrggggh, I'd forgotten the deposit/listing fee so I only managed to list the 5 auctions shown in the screenie above. Well that was a bust I thought so I logged back to my hunter & did a few more quests. You can tell I'm out of practise at this game too - look - I only listed them for 12 hrs - normally I would pop them up at 24hrs - it's the same deposit for most of them & I don't lose the deposit after just 12 hrs if they don't sell.

So I told myself to slow down & think this through - as I was running back to the alchemy supplies in the Mage Quarter, I passed the fishing trainer & a light bulb went off in my head! I quickly checked the cost of training & a fishing rod & decided to fish for vendor trash for 10 mins.

Here's my haul
8 x tangled fishing line @ 18c each
6 x tattered cloth @ 1s each
5 x weeds @ 18c each
3 x driftwood @ 18c each
1 x sickly fish @ 18c each
1 x old boot @ 18c each

So in about 10 minutes of fishing I gained a grand total of 9s 24c & 10 achievement points for catching 25 fish! Those 9 silvers let me post the rest of the herbs I'd managed to pick up and as of late this morning, I'm up to about 20gold now. More than enough to really get going again.

Not the biggest gold making revelation, I know but if I've missed this simple way to get some basic starter cash, how many others have too? I know to go get some cheap vendor items & list them but I've been gold making a while now & reading blogs & stuff for even longer. This brand new empty account is kinda reminding me of the basics so I thought I'd pop out a post so I don't forget in future & maybe help a complete newbie to make those first few silvers.

A Profitable 'Oopsie!'

I'm still trying to max my Leatherworking but having skinning on a priest is possibly the slowest form of farming torture! I've been contemplating dropping mining on my paladin & re-instating skinning but yesterday afternoon I had a total brainfart & clicked the wrong button before actually making my decision. Bye bye max mining :(

Oh shoot! now what? Well, I decided I may as well go ahead & level my skinning back up so I decided to turn it into  one of my 'experiments'! I balanced my pally out to 3k gold & a spare alt to 1000g to act as a banker for the duration of this little experiment. I have sent absolutely everything except vendor trash to the bank alt & she's been listing it. But my pally also has Archaeology so where the skinning sites have coincided, I've also managed to put a few skill points on my archaeology. I've also done some sidetrips to find Elders as it's the Lunar Festival & I was going to be flying around anyway!

So what has this to do with making gold & profits? A few days ago, Zoxy posted his JMTC carnival blog post and if you look in the comments, you will see I was very happy because he mentioned the RecipeProfit addon. This is an excellent replacement for one of my old favourites, RecipeRadar which is broken & no longer supported. So after unlearning mining, & relearning skinning, I logged out to get some addons sorted.

RecipeProfit adds icons to your minimap to show you where vendor recipes are - it works like the gatherer/gathermate nodes & you can switch it on/off quite easily. As I've been running around skinning, I've also had to empty my bags etc so I've spent a few minutes here & there, visiting vendors & buying recipes (by recipes I mean plans/schematics/design/patterns etc).

You can see from the mysales image & the AH image - things are selling fairly well! I still have loads of stuff listed & I haven't quite finished levelling skinning yet so more yet to come & this is just the first 24 hours.

I also got very lucky & picked up a Dark Whelpling :) Auctioneer price says average of about 1900g but it's on AH at 750g at the moment. I'm torn because my pally is my pet & mount collector but I also want the gold! arrrggghhh, decisions, decisions!

So I guess what I'm saying is, don't forget vendor recipes while you're out & about  - RecipeProfit is great & if you're currently doing the Elders runaround, why not pick up a few vendor bits while you're at it? It could be worth your while & if you're short of time to make gold, this is a great way to combine questing & shopping!

Auction House Alt - Day 16 Update

Today I took my banker to the inscription trainer & powerlevelled her (hehehe!) to 75 to get the Minor Inscription Research facility. I used 10 stacks of peacebloom/silverleaf at 2g a stack to get there & made enchanting vellums for as many points as possible, knowing that they will sell even though they are now available from the vendor. I also bought 1 stack of bruiseweed for 7g to make some Midnight Ink to produce my 1st glyph.

One mistake I made was to make too many Ivory Inks at the start - I was watching the skill points, not checking at what point the next recipe became available so I posted the excess Ivory Inks on the AH, along with a bunch of the Enchanting Vellums. I also bought a 5 stack of Vanishing Dust just for the hell of it - listed 1 for laughs & it sold for 3g! Of course, the other 4 are now listed too :)

Another booboo I made was forgetting that I had actually put anything in her bank! When I did that side trip to Exodar last week, I bought extras of all 3 types of Moth Eggs & stashed them away & promptly forgot about them until now. I checked the AH to see how many were listed (none at all) then listed 1 of each at my price. I bumped it up a little from the market average just for giggles & fingers crossed.

After a late night mailbox check, I was pumped to see this - WOOO HOOO!