25,000 / 25,000 Glyphs

All the way back in February, I posted about hitting the 5000 glyph mark on the way to the guild achievement for creating 25,000 glyphs. Today, I'm posting (albeit a little late) that I hit my 25,000 glyph mark on 10th November 2011, almost a month ahead of schedule for the guild achievement inside a year on a single character. Today I hit 30,000 and celebrated with a graph.

The major bump on my road to 25k glyphs was the nerf to the guild achievement. The moment it was reduced to 2,500 glyphs, I had already hit the 10k mark. The major side effect of the nerf was that I could no longer use the achievement to track how many glyphs I had made. However, for the builk of the year, I was very much a glyph on demand crafter which made it easy. Every time I would make glyphs, I posted them all on the AH, meaning I got a neat tally from TSM every time I broke out the 'ol inking set. Thow in a spreadsheet, add a graph and head down power through in my favourite market.

You will notice that the graph is decidedly more jagged towards the end of the year. I've made some big changes to my glyph operation recently, and have started to bulk craft and store glyphs and have added an extra layer of efficiency to my glyph operation. I am looking forward to sharing the changes and December results soon.

4.3 Gold Making Predictions: Perfection and Slow Going

I made a quick couple of predictons for 4.3 gold making before the patch, here's how they panned out.

Chaos Orbs will fall to 50g/ea

Chaos Orb Prices in 4.3

First of all, the giant supply was dead on the money, with over 400 being posted on the first day. Secondly the price fell extremely quickly to the 50g mark as predicted. The major reason the price hasn't fallen any further is because of the way the Economics of Dreamcloth Are Changing. I had considered the floor price of [Chaos Orbs] in relation to Dreamcloth before the patch, but I'd missed out on a crucial piece of information. The number of orbs required for each cloth dropped from 5 to 4, which Flux was kind enough to tweet, so go read his detailed post if you are into all things dreamcloth.


Living Embers will rise in value

Living Ember Prices in 4.3

For the first part of my prediction, I was absolutely dead wrong. [Living Ember]s have not increased in value, however the way I had planned to make coin from them is working very nicely, if a little slow going. I was fortunate enough to get plans for [Fists of Fury], [Emberforged Elementium Boots] and [Endless Dream Walkers] from Firelands... I was a little slack on rolling on the last few patterns that dropped, which in hindsight was a little silly.

All three have been selling for a good markup, although selling quite slowly. I suspect that as valor boots get cheaper and cheaper, the crafted boot market will dry up.

Stockpile

I've been through my stockpile, with much of the ore actually going straight into buckles, they have been selling so well (almost 400 buckles since the start of the month for over 70k in sales). I have sold a heap of leg patches, and keep selling out faster than I can get reasonably priced leather. The Darkmoon Faire has come and gone and my stockpile of decks and cards has been moving nicely. I wish I had picked up a LOT more cyrstals before the patch, as the price has more than doubled and keeps going up, however enchant scrolls have continued to be profitable. I've even dabbled in the epic gem market, but that's a subject for another time.

750k Milestone

I'd been hovering close to the Petting Zoo achievement for a while, so I thought I'd celebrate 750k in style and learn a [Guardian Cub] and [Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw)] to bring it up. I was pleasantly surprised that after buying my parrot purely because it was an epic pet and cost 15k gold, just how much I like it. The slow flapping of the wings, the parrot sounds that it makes, it has to be easily in my top 5 favourite pets in the 100.

Lost Engineering Recipes? Nope.

So Faid and Cold were at each other on Twitter today, regarding Cold's post regarding some engineering recipes that had been removed from the game. As the back and forth continued, and apologies were demanded, I thought I'd help out and have a look for myself.

First port of call (as Faid suggested) was Wowhead. I found this comment that told me where to go and learn it directly from Kablamm Farflinger <Transportation Engineer>.

So after an arduous journey, I finally arrived and...

I can make my very own [Dimensional Ripper - Area 52]!

So fear not engineers, you can still obtain the "recipe" and create these magical devices... so find out more, have a browse of some of the fantastic comments over at Wowhead. Now Cold and Faid can kiss and make up, and engineers can be zipping around all of Azeroth and Outlands in style.

November Glyph Sales

Stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 49,943
• Total Glyphs Sold:  1383
• Average Price: 36g11s

Another solid month of sales, although towards patch 4.3 I had a lot more competition, and it's continuing into this month. With the recent issues with moving items in and out of guild banks, I've completely retooled my glyph operation, using my mysales data to determine my worst performing glyphs, and ship them off to my baby shaman. I'll get to that post in the next week or so.

My stockpile for 4.3

Horde Guild Bank

I don't usually buy in bulk or horde inventory (aside from herbs and glyphs) but I thought it was time to have a quick stocktake before 4.3 hits.

I have about 532k on Alliance and 85k (after a little spending spree) on Horde.

I'm not a gem guy. I have plenty of rare gems ready to go for myself, but not a stockpile to sell. I recently lifted what feels like a ton of ore from the horde auction house, so I'll be able to produce gems as required when 4.3 rolls around.

I was surprised just how many volatiles I have, which will be great for pumping out buckles and leg patches. I'm also sitting on (what I consider) a lot of Truegold, which will be fantastic for burning through my orb collection.

I have just collected a fresh supply of herbs, and have been busy crafting glyphs now that I have reworked my glyphing (look forward to another post describing the changes). I'm probably sitting on anywhere between 80 - 100k worth of glyphs up on the AH, and towards double that in stock. I have a bunch of Darkmoon decks ready to go, with another bunch of partially completed decks as well. I've decided to wait until the 4.3 faire to hand them in, just in case Blizzard to something silly with the reputation earned.

Herbs on hand for potions, elixirs and flasks

I'm missing [Twilight Jasmine] as the last of my supply went into flasks for my guild and transmuting [Demonseye]. I haven't been too much into flasks and potions recently, and I'm waiting for 4.3 to restock on potions due to the change in required materials.

The other things I'm missing in my stockpile are for Enchanting and Leatherworking. I can't seem to get leather at a reasonable price lately, and the leg patches just keep on selling. So I'm basically down to 10 hides that will soon be leg patches and sold. I'm hoping someone dumps a bunch before the patch hits. I've also probably missed out on cheap crystals, as the price has steadily risen over the last couple of weeks. I made some predictions for 4.3 gold making, but have no clue with crystals. We'll get to split them into shards, plenty more people will be running 5 mans again... but will the increased demand for enchants outstrip the new supply of crystals and shards?

What are you stockpiling for 4.3?

Item	Quantity
[Truegold]	85
[Hardened Elementium Bar]	69
[Titansteel Bar]	28
[Folded Obsidium]	52
[Ebonsteel Belt Buckle]	79
[Elementium Ore]	5560
[Obsidium Ore]	1298
[Pyrite Ore]	1856
[Blackened Dragonscale]	766
[Guardian Cub]	3
[Inferno Ruby]	43
[Ember Topaz]	34
[Demonseye]	42
[Volatile Earth]	1848
[Volatile Fire]	1382
[Volatile Life]	2579
[Volatile Water]	263
[Volatile Air]	199
[Chaos Orb]	69
[Azshara's Veil]	2250
[Stormvine]	3500
[Whiptail]	5500
[Inferno Ink]	279
[Earthquake Deck]	4
[Volcanic Deck]	9
[Tsunami Deck]	4
[Hurricane Deck]	6
[Embersilk Cloth]	383
[Hypnotic Dust]	187
[Greater Celestial Essence]	217
[Heavenly Shard]	27
[Maelstrom Crystal]	43

Gold making predictions for 4.3

Living Ember Price Falls pre 4.3

[Living Ember].The price has just been crashing leading up to the patch, bottoming out around 200g. My prediction for these is that they will rise in value after 4.3, since the supply will dry up much faster than the demand. With the LFR tool, there will be much less incentive to put together Firelands runs since it will be much easier to just jump into the LFR for a complete lack of mechanics to deal with, and better loot to boot. The supply will dry up very quickly. As for the demand, cheap 378 gloves and boots will be popular for alts looking to give their iLvl a little spit and polish before tackling the new 5 mans (which also give 378 loot) and Dragon Soul. Demand will fall off quite quickly, but there's coin to be made before it does. Putting my money where my mouth is, I have bought 16 of these at an average price of 230g for resale or crafting after 4.3 hits.

[Chaos Orb]. Assuming the current cost of a bound orb is 500g (if you can even find someone that has them), I predict these will crash down to under 50g each on the AH very quickly. I have 69 of them, mostly hidden away on two engineers and a tailor. I know I'm not alone, and when we unleash our stock on Azeroth, the supply will be plentiful. I plan to release mine as quickly as I can, but in the form of crafted weapons and armor.

365 Weapons. 365 weaponry will be a fantastic outlet for the massive glut of incoming orbs. Unfortunately for the weaponry, they will be competing against the 378 weapons in the new 5 man dungeons for alts and casual players. I predict there will be a lot of competition so the price will drop reasonably quickly until [Truegold] reserves are used up. Fortunately I have a good supply of Truegold, and I'll discuss my "stockpile" (much creative license taken) in my next post.

What are your predictions for the 4.3 economy?

500k Gold Milestone and Interview

I finally submitted my interview for the Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame, so head on over and check it out! In the mean time, I've been flipping cubs and managed to move another 100k across to horde while maintaning my 500k balance on Alliance.

I've also given my glyph operation a major overhaul, since the guild bank interface has gone from clumsy to unruly... a great feature for guild masters would be to allow turning off logging of transactions from guild bank tabs. It's not like the armory can provide an out of game interface for that anymore, and the amount of data kept for display in game isn't worth the hassle.

The picture above is from when I first introduced Twitchie the Gnome Warlock, but because he was a glypher, I couldn't show you his face.

Guardian Cubs on Dath'Remar

The [Guardian Cub] is here, and the prices are already plummetting on Dath'Remar.

The cub started off at a modest 25k and fell to 15k almost immediately. The next morning it had hit 11k with a total of 13 cubs available. On day 3, it had hit 7.5k and has slid down to just over 7k.

At this point, I'll be waiting until it is under 5k to pick mine up... How long do you think that will take? Do you think it will even get there?

Update: The Undermine Journal is now updated with data over the last day or so, with the price dipping just under 6k.

October Glyph Sales

Stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 53,937
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1410
• Average Price: 38g25s

So a very similar haul to last month as I go in to maintenance mode. I'm coming up to 25,000 glyphs since the start of Cataclysm, and have been putting my interview together for the Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame since I recently hit the 500k milestone. Yes, I snuck that in there... 500k, woo! More on that when the interview is up.

September Glyph Sales

Starting with the stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 59,204
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1518
• Average Price: 39g

The average price continues to climb, potentially in no small part to a conversation I had with a fellow glypher. As I have mentioned before, a lot of my low priced glyphs are bought by competitors in the glyph market. I make a profit, they attempt to reset the market price, and I make even more coin undercutting the inflated new listing.

Recently I was online when my competitor started to buy up glyphs, so I initiated a chat thanking him for the sales. He immediately recognised me, and asked why I post my glyphs at such low prices. We had a quick chat, and in a lull in the conversation I was naturally AFK milling and missed the conversation resuming. It turns out that my competitor is a fellow blogger, and writes about gold making and glyphs specifically, so was particularly interested in my methodology. He also asked me to refrain from posting in his newly reset market for at least a couple of hours.

I was delighted. I thought, "this stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet". A kindred spirit in the gold making community. So I wrote him a mail explaining, yes, I'd leave reposting until later in the afternoon. I also mentioned that I had a blog myself (that since most of my raiding is now covered in the guild blog) that deals with gold making, and I'd love to swap sites and chat about glyph strategies.

I didn't hear back from my fellow glypher, but it did give me some things to think about. He is willing to buy out cheapish glyphs, just to reset the market for a couple of hours at most. When I say cheapish, based on my costs he sometimes buys glyphs at 5x the cost price. His maximum price is over 300g, so I started to think about how many he would have to sell to make a profit on his initial investment. At less than 10%, I figured that buying out cheap glyphs might just be a reasonably time efficient way of collecting a stockpile of glyphs. No milling, no turning pigments into inks... just browsing for underpriced glyphs for purchase and resale. Certainly the margins are lower, and frustrating if the market doesn't stay reset for long, but finding cheap herbs and milling isn't for everyone.

It's a shame that I didn't get to catch up with my fellow glypher, as I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have guessed my main motivation for approach to glyph selling. I'm very comfortable with the amount of gold I generate in game, and I've accumulated more gold than I could reasonably game. Aside from making enough coin so I can by my 6th 85 alt another pair (or two (yey for dual spec)) of Valor bracers at 5k, my income is far greater than my expenses. Yes, originally I was into glyphs to make a whole bunch of coin, but since Cataclysm...

... I'M ALL ABOUT VOLUME.

Devotees will recall that my goal from the start of Cataclysm was to make 25,000 glyphs inside a year. I was so keen on doing this all by myself, that I expelled all the other inscribers from Twitchie's guild so I could more easily track my progress. Of course, I was devestated when Blizzard dropped the guild achievement down to 2,500 glyphs... but a quick tweak to my processes meant I could easily track my progress myself.

So my pricing really has very little to do with maximising my profits, and all todo with moving large volumes of glyphs. I realised quite early on in glyphing, if you just hit every single profitable glyph, regardless of how fierce the competition the coin just comes flowing in.

The volume is also my motivation for never cancelling glyphs in order to repost. If I want to have the cheapest glyph of each time right now... I just make them all and post new glyphs. The side effect of this approach is that I make glyphs in reasonably large batches, which makes tracking my progress towards the achievement more efficient.

One thing did change after my conversation with my fellow glypher. I raised my ceiling price for posting glyphs from 96g to 296g. If someone can by glyphs at 500% profit to me, and then reliably sell enough at 10 times that price to make it worth their while... why not see how much of that psychotically priced glyph market I can capture? Well in the last month I had 77 glyphs (or 5% of my volume) sell at between 96g and 296g, which I'm going to call bonus monies.

Now into October, I'm back to a 48 hour post cycle since I'm not as active with my daily gold making routine. I've also had the supply of everything aside from whiptail and cinderbloom pretty much dry up, so potions and flasks have taken a dive as well. Fortunately, I've been able to find a reasonable amount of volatile life, and I have plenty of Darkmoon Cards for this months faire... and I'm secretly hoping they distinguish between the reputation earned with the current faire with the new and approved 4.3 faire... that was a lot of epic decks to get two toons over the line to exalted. Finally, the savage leather has all but dried up, so my killing on epic leg patches has too for the time being.

August Glyph Sales

It's that time again, starting with the stats.

• Total Glyph Sales: 110,199
• Total Glyphs Sold: 3737
• Average Price: 29g49s

An absolutely massive month of sales. Excited to be back over 100 glyphs a day and breaking the 100k gold mark for sales. The average price is still climbing, and I'm guessing that is just due to demand since there is an increasing number of significant entities in the market. Yes, that's right... I called them entities. Fellow sentient beings just seems too touchy feely.

The alarming thing about the stats is the volume of gold I'm getting through. Since I'm not yet at the 500k gold mark, I must be spending a whole bunch of extra coin on my alts for 4.2. Which reminds me, introductions to a couple of newly 85 toons is in order. I also had 31.5k sales for [Ebonsteel Belt Buckle] so other sources of income aren't insignificant.

20,000 / 25,000 Glyphs

A full 2,500 glyphs ahead of schedule comes the 20,000 milestone on the road to 25,000 glyphs in a year since Cataclysm launched.


One of the pleasant surprises from milling sooo many herbs is just how long the Darkmoon Cards are remaining profitable. I have just ticked over 400,000 gold in Darkmoon Card sales since the launch of Cataclysm, and on average I'm still able to get at least 100% markup on the cost of creating decks. [Darkmoon Card: Volcano] is still BiS for most casters in the game, and [Darkmoon Card: Tsunami] is a delightfull healing trinket and sells for even more coin. I generally just aim to offload the, "only useful for grabbing an extra hit in Chimaeron" [Darkmoon Card: Earthquake] at cost. The hurricane cards aren't particularly good sellers, with quite variable prices but still a money maker. The cards do make good presents too, and I'm up to over a dozen used for alts, friends and guildies.

Twitchie's Workshop

Rather than explain my workshop as I have done in previous posts, I thought I'd post some screenshots of Twitchie's newly upgraded setup. Firstly, it's all about the satchels. There are 344 unique glyphs in the game, so while all of them aren't profitable to make regularly, the more space the better.

More space! I have a guild bank tab for spill over glyphs. When I relist expired glyphs, I generally only put up two of each profitable glyph, so depending on the volume of sales and fluctuations in price, I will have a lot that go into storage for posting another time.

My second guild bank has recently been converted to ink storage. Despite the complete lack of midnight ink in the picture, it really helps to know what I've got on hand. Right now, the tab is almost empty, as I can't keep up with the current glyph demand. The good news is, prices are going up!

The last tab is for general storage, particularly Darkmoon Cards and spare rare inks and pigments. Anything else BoE is fair game here too, since I have very little space not devoted to glyphs in the bank.

July Glyph Sales

Starting with the stats from July:

• Total Glyph Sales: 51692
• Total Glyphs Sold: 2319
• Average Price: 22g29s

So last month I had a good week off 'active' warcraft. We had friends stay and both Jondy and I took an entire week off raiding. The timing was a little interesting given that it was the second week of patch 4.2, but it was planned far enough in advance that it was worth dipping under our regular 100% attendence.

The average price has remained steady, and I got back into the routine towards the end of the month for some more consistent sales.

I've upgraded my workshop since patch 4.2. Helly kindly made me 10x [Royal Scribe's Satchel] which has given me an extra 40 slots for glyphs. I've also started using the Restock queue in TSM, which adds an extra level of automation for creating high demand glyphs. With both of these improvements, I've decided I'll only need one bank tab for spill over glyphs, converting a second bank tab for ink storage. With the TSM Gathering module, having inks in a guild bank rather than the mail give me better visiblity of my stockpile, leading to fewer restocking errors.

For the first time, I've also been buying herbs direct from a herbalist. I had been cautious about doing this as I really don't enjoy the bargaining process... however after I bought a TON of herbs direct from their trade ad, I thought I have nothing to lose (particularly when they said, "if you need more I can go and farm some"). So I sent my price via in game mail, and was delighted to have several mails chock full of [Whiptail]. So the convenience was worth it, but the added bonus was it was 10% lower than the minimum price I'd seen through the AH in the last few weeks.

For August, I'm back to a 24 hour posting cycle. While I don't like to babysit auctions, I think a 48 cycle was getting a little too long, particularly when TSM Crafting can't tell if my currently listed glyphs are actually the cheapest. I've put in a ticket on Curseforge and with any luck that won't be too hard to implement.

After I heard a chat about collusion in the gem market, I was tempted to whitelist (rather than blacklist) my biggest glyph competitor, but haven't implemented that yet. When you whitelist someone, you never undercut them, but post items at the same price. The theoretical advantage behind doing this to a competitor is that when they cancel and repost (which I never do with glyphs, but many do) they won't cancel the auctions that you have price-matched, because they haven't been undercut, giving you longer exposure in the market at the lowest price. If anyone has any experience with this tactic, let me know in the comments.

June Glyph Sales

Starting with the stats from June:

•     Total Glyph Sales: 72624
•     Total Glyphs Sold: 3331
•     Average Price: 21g80s

The average price of a glyph continues to plummet on Dath'Remar, but I continue to sell more and more glyphs as my process is refined. I'm rarely using more than my bank and one guild bank tab for the stockpile, and usually have around 30k stock on the AH, with a coverage of around 2 of each profitable glyph posted each time I post.

Since patch 4.2, I've been making a killing with leatherworking and jewelcrafting, dwarfing my glyph sales, but I'm looking forward to persisting in the market at least until I've created 25,000 glyphs since Cata.

May Glyph Sales

Starting with the stats from May:

• Total Glyph Sales: 77375g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 2450
• Average Price: 31g58s

The average price of glyphs has taken a drastic hit, with the number of competitors increasing and at least one that has set a maximum value for glyphs at 40g. Volume is up, but it's taken an extra 25% in sales to still fall short of the 81.8k revenue from April.

Another factor in falling glyph prices is the reduced cost of herbs, with stacks of cinderbloom and stormvine both available at around 20g. Whiptail is still worth milling since it can be found occassionally at around 34g a stack (which is about equivalent for milling purposes).

Finally, a large factor in the average price of glyphs I sell is the volume of glyphs I'm deliberately pumping out. I'm currently still on track to produce 25,000 glyphs in a year, which changes my threshold for how much profit for each glyph I'm prepared to make. Listening to the Power World: Gold podcast the other day Nev from Auction House Addict commented that she concentrates on glyphs that sell for over 100g. When Cataclysm first came out, I too enjoyed a Merry Glyphmass but even then I would pump out glyphs down to the 50g mark just to push as many as possible out.

At this point, I think I've conquered a great strategy for getting a great volume of sales (considering the competition) in the least amount of time. However, I'm wondering if my 48 hr, no cancellations strategy is pushing the price lower than I'd like.

Justice Point purchases for the toon who has everything

So you've been running heroics on many a toon, and very quickly you've run out of gear to spend Justice Points on. If you're anything like me, you now have every conceivable heirloom, even ones that you don't see using in the foreseeable future. What next?

Coin. Twitchie is all about the coin. In the true spirit of, "Time is money, friend" I have broken down the options to the coin value per boss kill. The calculation uses 77 Justice Points per boss (from the guild perk, For Great Justice at level 18).

I wasn't surprised at just how little extra value you get, but I was surprised at just how bad [Maelstrom Crystal]s were.

Naturally the mileage on your server may vary, and these Dath'remar prices are the mean prices for the realm from the Undermine Journal. For the herbs, I nominally guessed the average value of a herb based on middle ground between Cinderbloom and Twilight Jasmine.

Item	JPs	#	Value	Total	$ / Boss
[Greater Celestial Essence]	400	1.00	41.82	41.82	8.05
[Heavenly Shard]	600	1.00	53.47	53.47	6.86
[Maelstrom Crystal]	3750	1.00	236.00	236	4.85
[Savage Leather]	375	5.00	3.36	16.8	3.45
[Elementium Ore]	1000	20.00	1.89	37.8	2.91
[Hypnotic Dust]	100	1.00	2.51	2.51	1.93
[Embersilk Cloth]	1250	20.00	1.46	29.2	1.80
[Satchel of Freshly-Picked Herbs]	1500	20.00	1.40	28	1.44

April Glyph Sales

Starting with the stats from April:

• Total Glyph Sales: 81897g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 2030
• Average Price: 40g34s

A 1/3 rise in number sold which was pretty huge. I'm seeing a decline in the average price, with some new competition. While I like to reset the price down to 125g, I have a competitor that thinks 40g is even more reasonable, which could actually be a positive thing for volume.

The most fun looking at the data is the while the addon only picks up the name of the buyer less than half the time, the number of glyphs bought by my competitors is AWESOME. If I make a glyph for 10g, my competitor buys it for 30g (and all the others at that price point), re-lists it at 300g and I undercut and sell more of the same at 125g... it's win, win, win... there just aren't enough wins for that.

Looking ahead to May, things are getting even more cut-throat, and I finally get the TSM gatherer module to tell me what's stored in my guild bank in the crafting window.

10,000 / 25,000 Glyphs

10,057 Glyphs done... and 7,807 to burn in order to satisfy the first guild glyph making achievement come 4.1. Now that Blizzard has decided to reduce the achievement from 25,000 to 2,500 glyphs I'm hoping they have a progressive list of achievements so I can continue on my way to 25,000 glyphs in a year since Cata launched.

I'm pretty happy with my new system, and how easy it is to churn out the glyphs. I have 6 [Bag of Endless Pockets] in my bank, which leaves enough space for a few BoP items and PvP gear (although doubtful I'll ever commit to that grind on a second (let alone third) toon). I have 4 inscribing bags on my toon, one of which stores inks and parchment ready for glyph production. That leaves at least 3 huge bags and the backpack for processing glyphs from the mail box. I also have two guild bank tabs reserved for glyph stock as well.

The beauty of all this storage is that it allows me to produce glyphs very efficiently. Regardless of what I have on the AH, or in storage I can create an entire batch of all the profitable glyphs and get complete coverage of the glyph market. Since I cover the entire market, even after the first few rounds of undercutting (which is pretty brutal with glyphs) I still have a reasonable coverage at the lowest price.

When I re-list glyphs, I just set a maximum number of glyphs to post at the lowest price and anything over that I just whack back in my glyph storage. I will often do a 'top up', and create the extra high demand glyphs that have sold out at this point, and save the mass production for later.

Creating glyphs faster than I can sell them is great for high demand periods. On weekends, I take three trips to the AH, each time taking 3 inscribing bags worth of glyphs, 2 from my bank and one from the guild bank. I can take advantage of the increased demand and post more glyphs without having to make them at the time. At my peak, I've had almost 2000 glyphs listed for a total of over 100,000g worth of glyphs for sale at one time.

The next question is... what to do if there isn't a 25,000 glyph achievement to shoot for? Do I complete the goal I set for myself, or do I scale back production for absolute maximum gold per hour and get reacquainted with some other markets?

March Gylph Sales

Starting with the stats from March:

• Total Glyph Sales: 71404g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1563
• Average Price: 45g68s

The number sold was up, particularly due to some better results during high demand times. Pulling down 8k gold on a Sunday was a fantastic result. The ability to post more glyphs for the weekend is due to my new processes for handling glyphs, which I'll be posting about for my 10k / 25k milestone for the guild inscribing achievement.

February Glyph Sales

I finally got around to exporting data from MySales and it was great to finally have some hard numbers on my sales in the AH. I finally installed MySales when I started trying to reduce my addon footprint. The behemoth Auctioneer was on the way out, replaced by Auctionator and the precursors to Trade Skill Master. I finally decided to remove beancounter, and loaded up MySales instead.

There are a couple of little limitations for MySales, which don't impact the data too much. Firstly, the date for the sale is always when the coin is collected. For glyphs, that isn't much of an issue, as I tend to collect mail at least once per day if not twice. Enchants that I sell on Zenborg, or the rubbish I try and offload on my little storage toon is a different story. Secondly, the addon doesn't always do a great job of recording the name of the buyer. It is really fun to tally up how much other toons spend on your stuff... particularly your competitors (but that is a story for another post).

So here's some numbers to go with the graph for February.

• Total Glyph Sales: 59302g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1267
• Average Price: 46g80s

So at over 2k per day, the glyph market is quite healthy.  I think the slump in sales (and subsequent rise) in early February was due to my decision on how to tackle the 25,000 glyph guild achievement inside a year. At this stage the numbers indicate that I'm only selling 60% of the glyphs I'm churning out for the achievement, which is actually a little better than I had anticipated. The best part of the new system is that while I'm creating an excess of glyphs, I'm spending less time doing it and making more gold per hour.

I'm happy with the average price being under 50g. I refuse to sell glyphs for more than 125g, and am often undercutting my competition by as much as 50g (on the rare occasion more). There's just something about going above a 900% markup that doesn't sit well for me. Yes, the glyph market has a stupendous number of items to keep a track of. Yes, at times it can be a little labour intensive (windowed mode woodpecker milling is awesome). Yes, competitors can be ruthless. Yes, glyphs are a one time investment now (and a couple of hundred gold is but a drop in the ocean)... but providing quality glyphs at a reasonable price, is just not that difficult.

I'm pretty excited to look at some of my other markets and have another look at glyphs for March.

Cross-faction Arbitrage Never Looked So Good

 

A big shout out to all my Hordies who have been supplying the Alliance with Volatile Life and Twilight Jasmine at 66% and 35% of their (Alliance) market value respectively.

Initially I was completely disinterested in stepping over to the Horde side to help make coin purely because it seemed messy, risky and time consuming. The first few times I moved coin across to Horde, I used the neutral auction house and just soaked up the 15% cut, moving very very expensive linen cloth.

Once I had a decent amount of capital, I realised that I could actually sell my Darkmoon Cards for more on Horde than on Alliance, and the adventure began. The desire to complete the Mix Master achievement for the guild, the awful flask market on Dath'Remar, saw me sinking large amounts of coin into Volatile Life on Horde and since then I haven't looked back.

Volatile Life is very easy to move, since it stacks in 200, which is worth over 1k per stack. Even though it's a little messier, I couldn't resist snapping up Twilight Jasmine this morning at around 3g50s each... so much so I blinked and 10k had disappeared in a flash. With any luck, I'll be able to make flasks at less than the combined cost of the materials again.

Thanks again to my underlings at <Antithesis> for helping to move the coin around.

250k

Another gold milestone crept up on me the other day; 250k on the server. I had originally intended to get all the gold on alliance, but I have started to get into cross-faction arbitrage, with a fantastic avenue to pursue it. As soon as I had hit 250k, another Darkmoon card sold, and Twitchie finally got to equip a well deserved [Darkmoon Card: Volcano] of his own. I still have a deck up my sleeve for Zenborg in about a weeks time.

Now that I'm at 250k gold, I'm not sure more coin is any more useful. Since I'm not likely to spend more than 50k gold on a single item, as long as I'm over 200k I'll be on the lookout for the most attractive of money sinks.

Image by: tao_zhyn

5,000 / 25,000 Glyphs

 

A big milestone yesterday for Twitchie, hitting the 5000 glyph mark since Cataclysm hit. Since Twitchie is in a 'quiet time' guild, he's the only scribe in his guild, making glyph output very easy to track.

So at the moment, I'm just a touch behind the goal of 25,000 glyphs in a year. Initially when I started this quest, I was dominating the glyph market, and increased production of glyphs just lead to more and more coin. There were a few 'glyphmas' moments after cataclysm hit where I just could not keep up with demand and the coin was flowing in. However, recently there has been a surge in competition on the glyph market, so both sales and profit are falling.

Which leads me to the question, "Do I really want to achieve my 25,000 glyphs in a year goal?"

On the positive, I think producing an average of almost 70 glyphs per day over the course of a year is pretty awesome. And even with the increased competition, it is still an excellent way to make coin in game.

On the negative, as my competition increases, my sales decrease, profit margins falls and inventory management gets more difficult as I have trouble offloading glyphs as fast as I produce them. The bottom line is my gold per hour suffers, and while I love the gold making game withing World of Warcraft, there's a lot of other things I like to do in game.

So... I'd love to get your thoughts. Firstly, what do you think of the goal itself? Are you into setting yourself an extremely arbitrary target and going for it? Or do you prefer to reach your gold goals as efficiently as possible?

Secondly, what is your strategy for the glyph market? Do you have multiple posting alts divided by class (or by volume like this consortium poster)? What addons do you use to manage your inventory?

I'm resistant to multiple posting alts, and would prefer to use any or all of: Twitchie's bags, bank or guild bank to manage glyph inventory. I'm keen to find an addon that can not just shuffle stuff between bags and bank, but follow a set of logic about how it does it (e.g., make up stacks of 2 glyphs for posting from my bank). I haven't found this addon yet, but I'll keep looking. The major limitation of using one toon is simply that even with four scribbling bags, there isn't enough space to post all of the profitable glyphs in one sitting, but keeping inventory management manageable without resorting to posting alts would be a nice compromise.

Drake fixed!

 

=O I'm actually riding!

Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake

Hi, my name is Twitchie and I'll be taking over the Time is Money segments of this blog. I'm the glyph making powerhouse that revs up the coin generating machinery of the Borgthor empire.

No, I haven't (yet) had a psychotic break, but I thought I'd let some of my toons speak for themselves, since they have various different interests, and it's a nice way to organise the posts for the blog.

More on the coin front later, but first up... Mounts! I was lucky enough to have the [Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake] drop in normal Stonecore the other day and snap it up.


Twilight Highlands was the ideal place to get a great picture of where you 'dangle' as opposed to 'riding' the mount. I decided to open up the Twilight Highlands portal, since my favourite place to farm leather is from the Untamed Gryphon, who also drop [Delicate Wing], a key ingredient for [Broiled Dragon Feast]. The graphic alone is a great reason to make this feast for your friends.

It was very satisfying to win the mount shortly after upgrading to Master Riding on my first toon to pay for the privilege, and I'm looking forward to collecting many more of the new mounts on other toons.