2M Gold spent since gold cap

So it's milestone time. Just over a year ago, I hit the gold cap. I had assumed that once I had enough capital to pretty much do anything I wanted, that I'd ease up on the gold making or at least find some thing to purchase. One of the reasons that it took so long to cap was that as I accumulated more gold, items in game just seemed cheaper and cheaper, so my spending went up. In the end however, the joy of the Warcraft economy won out and I had 1M gold. Unfortunately I didn't have a good record of my spending up to that point, but I vowed it should change... and it did.

I started tracking what I call 'frivolous' spending. Big ticket items that I can do without. So my graph doesn't count gems (aside from two ridiculously priced sprees in early Dragon Soul), flasks, food or repairs. It doesn't count transmog costs, bags (even the big ones (even fridges)), bank tabs or enchants. All those things are the cost of living for my main and an army of alts, and can probably be paid for (with a few exceptions) by dailies and incidental coin loot.

What my graph does track is BoEs, presents, mounts, pets, major guild contributions, rare recipes and cost of flight training.

I'm pretty excited to hit the 2M mark inside a year since I hit gold cap, and I'd like to share some of my highlights:

1. To celebrate hitting the gold cap, I made myself another [Mekgineer's Chopper]. All this time my main had been riding around in a chopper, yet the Overlord of Twitchie Enterprises used pretty standard transportation. I put a stop to that! Fortunately, about the same time, my wife had been putting in the extra time and effort, grinding out [Canopic Jar]s to be finally rewarded with the recipe after the expansion had been out for over a year. So it was time, and she made me a  [Vial of the Sands] and we flew across Uldum together, like never before.
2. My wife makes her own, well deserved [Vial of the Sands] and a matching [Loop of the Kirin Tor] to whisk her away to romantic evenings in Dalaran. Guys, you can never go wrong with jewellery!
3. In amongst BoEs for my main, I spent 42.5k on my Paladin Tank alt so I could gear up and cruise through Dragon Soul.
4. I took my shadow priest to a 25 man Dragon Soul GDKP run and picked up [Experiment 12-B] for 155k. It was just after the announcement of account wide mounts, so the bidding was fierce!
5. [Vial of the Sands] for a friend's birthday.
6. Mists of Pandaria launches and I'm going to buy all the things!
1. My wife reluctantly accepts a [Mekgineer's Chopper]. 
2. Realm First Blacksmithing at 46k,
3. [Reins of the Grand Expedition Yak] and friends at 113,400g
4. [Serrated Wasp Bracers] heroic tanking bracers from the Black Market Auction House for 45k (which I'm still wearing).
5. Pandaren Flying for 2500g (which will end up at 27,500g after all my alts are leveled).
7. [Sapphire Panther] and [Relic of Niuzao]. The trinket was pretty cheap, and I picked it up just after the buff was announced.
8. I got together with a goblin engineer friend to have my [Depleted-Kyparium Rocket] crafted. I supplied some blacksmithing gear with my [Spirit of Harmony] in exchange for the spirits in the rocket. 
9. [Mimiron's Head] for 750k. I wrote about my experience with the BMAH bidding process, and to this day don't regret a copper I dropped on that mount!
10. [Reins of the Onyxian Drake] got me over the 1M in mounts through the BMAH, and is a fine looking drake. In hindsight it also put me over the 2M mark in major spending since hitting the gold cap.
11. Mad Money. I realised that I was pretty close to the 2M mark, and when I looked at the date of my gold capped milestone I decided I'd better get to spending. So I bought a whole bunch of pets, organised some BoEs for alts and couldn't decide what to buy next. Then when I went back to check my expenses I realised that I'd forgotten an extra zero on the price tag of my Yaks! Bam! 2M spent since hitting the gold cap.

Looking back over my spending I decided to add up my gift giving and was surprised so see it came up to 154k gold. Then I quickly remembered that it's 154k out of 2M, which puts it in a little context. Moar presents! I'm interested to see just how much coin my alts have siphoned from The Enterprise, and just how trivial the cost of all my flight training is (all my characters have ultra fast flying) is.

December 2012 Glyph Sales

December and January are usually months of mostly auto pilot, but the average glyph price climbed over 20g as we finished off 2012.

December Stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 66525g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 817
• Average Price: 81g43s

Higher average price means more profit for my time, as herbs continued to be plentiful and cheap. The shoulder inscription market settled down for some smaller margins, but plenty of profit still to be had. I also managed to get through enough herbs to make sure I could create darkmoon cards with both of my scribes, and already the sale price on completed trinkets are coming down to under 300% of the materials cost, which is still OK even if there's a cooldown involved. I don't know where other tanks are getting their trinkets from, I've really enjoyed my [Relic of Niuzao], but it currently sells for less than double the materials.

I've been having a great time with blacksmithing, selling the crafted 450 gear and PvP gear. I finally managed to offload some gear I crafted with [Blood Spirit]s, and now that the price has settled around the 1.1 - 1.3k mark it looks like the raid patterns should be more steadily profitable. I've been farming [Mote of Harmony] at my main's farm, and I have been unable to keep up with the demand for 415 and 463 weapons. I value my spirits at 500g/ea (50g per plot which compares to 10g/vegetable) and can usually make another 1 - 2k gold profit on top of that for each weapon.

I had been having a great time making flasks (461k in sales so far) until all of a sudden the price of [Golden Lotus] just crashed on my server. I put the feelers out on the Consortium Forums, and found that it was an epidemic. I bought up aggressively, and continued to make flasks and get into gem transmutes... but the volume just kept coming. Right now, the price has settled to where I consider 30g/ea cheap, and the flask and primal diamond markets have corrected accordingly. Fortunately, my patience has paid off with primal diamonds with a few cuts already returning to 600 - 800g/ea.

I know I've been saying for a while now that I'm having a great time with cooking, and there's plenty of information to come soon(tm). I've been taking a look at my cooking related sales, and the major stats so far are 328k in sales, with over 100k of that coming from [100 Year Soy Sauce] alone. More to follow, and a few milestone graphs as well!

Onyxian Drake for 266k

The Onyxian Drake is my favourite looking drake based mount in the game (including the protos). I was a little reluctant to pay too much for it, and was surprised that I managed to grab it for a little over a quarter of a million gold.

The Black Market Auction House is getting me into a lot of trouble, and it is a little scary that in the recent past I've spent more than the gold cap on mounts.

Regardless of their individual aesthetic appeal, mounts have a number of factors that change their value.

• Sentimental association. Even though Mimi's Head is one of the best looking mounts in the game (in my opinion), the mount is really all about Ulduar. I can't mount up without being flooded with fond memories of one of my favourite raids. It is more than just riding in a robot head helicopter, it evokes the first tram ride to that robot and the gut wrenching process of learning to defeat Yogg Saron (and educating people about the fight over and over and over even through new expansions).
• Ease of farming. Contrasting the last two mounts I purchased... Mimi's Head requires a raid team, even if it's just a small one... and killing most bosses in Ulduar, which is a BIG raid. The time and organisation investment is sizable, even though Yogg+0 itself is getting exponentially easier to beat as expansions come and go. The Onyxian drake drops from both 10 and 25 man and does not require a hard mode. 10 man is soloable, and at worst, if you can get a couple of friends together it is very quickly farmed each and every week (similar to Tempest Keep for Ashes of Al'ar).
• Drop Rate. Unless Blizzard comes right out and tells you what the drop chance is for a particular mount, you're really just guessing. The best guess is usually derived from Wowhead, who have a reasonable sample size to work from. It is worth getting even a rough idea of the ballpark drop rate before you decide to invest the time in farming (or the gold when bidding gold on the BMAH).
• Number of sources. The BMAH has introduced a great new source for mounts, and with enough gold, a much better chance of obtaining them when they eventually appear. However, many mounts already have more than one source. The prime example here is mounts obtainable from dungeons, where tanks and healers can get lucky with their [Misty Satchel of Exotic Goods]. My highlight from the satchel was the [Deathcharger's Reins], as well as many rare pets including a [Tiny Emerald Whelpling].
• Rarity. The factors above, other factors (such as server raid progression and even duping) as well as the newly introduced BHAH conspire to create a certain number of rare mounts on a server. If I saw Onyxian Drakes crisscrossing the skies in Pandaria, would I have paid over 250k for it? Probably not, and time will tell just how quickly the BMAH dilutes the value of these rare mounts as the expansion progresses.

While we can rank the ease obtaining a mount and its scarcity objectively, how much anyone is willing to pay is very subjective. I've heard of mounts like Mimi's Head and Ashes of Al'ar going gold cap very quickly after being posted, so the competition from realm to realm will vary enormously. It is a good idea to start thinking about what different mounts are worth to you, and start saving! When a mount appears, I recommending looking at your current gold situation and deciding on a limit right away. When it comes to bidding, the later the better, and I might post on the science of narrowing down an auction end time later on.

All in all I am very happy with my recent acquisitions and have managed to stay above the gold cap so far. I'm really looking forward to posting my graph of liquid gold since I finally started tracking it before Mists of Pandaria was released. The BMAH has introduced some significant bumps in the short time it has been active.