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.

March 2012 Glyph Sales

Stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 62,832g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1226
• Average Price: 51g25s

Almost identical month to last month, including the gaps where I just didn't process enough mail to find sales a couple of days in a row. Could this be the end of the expansion setting in? I guess it could explain why I'm writing about glyph sales from March so late!

My horde counterpart, my only other horde character has just entered Cataclysm zones, leveling with my wife and Kal's horde characters. So now I have maximum level enchanting and jewelcrafting on the opposite faction and can enjoy participating in the crafting market without (or with less) cross faction arbitrage.

I chose jewelcrating and enchanting to fill in the gaps in professions that Kal and Jondy's horde characters hadn't covered to make our tiny, tiny guild more self sufficient. Both Kal nad Jondy have multiple horde characters at max level, so I managed to grab that last two professions that weren't covered. Having a three person guild is fantastic. During my regular AH scans, I can just fill up bank tabs with raw materials to help level professions, stock the guild with consumables and of course, some naked profiteering.

I chose a warlock as my (only) horde character for a couple of great reasons. Firstly, I wanted a pure DPS class so I didn't feel compelled to have an offspec. Secondly, I didn't want a mage, so naturally a second warlock was ideal. Lastly, a female blood elf who has been dubbed "Witch Queen" was a great departure from my Alliance activities. Both Jondy and Kal serve me well despite the nickname and leveling with a paladin and druid who both have tanking and healing specs is just a dream. Instant queues with no responsibilities other than setting $@#% on FIRE! is the hordie life for me.

February 2012 Glyph Sales

Stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 59,597g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1209
• Average Price: 49g29s

At an almost identical average price, sales plumetted in February. True to my new glyph production line, I only sat down to create glyphs twice in February and was a little slack with posting.

My major issue of late, is finding reasonably priced herbs. I'm not sure if it's a ban wave for the bots, but herbs have been very scarce. I've only just recently broken the drought with a supplier in trade able to supply me with a couple of hundred stack of Whiptail CoD. I love the CoD system, since I don't have to stand there repeatedly trading six stacks at a time, and figuring out how much gold to put in the little box. Inevitably running out of bag space, taking a little break to mass mail the herbs to an alt (which I then have to return for milling) is a giant pain as well. I get that having your herbs returned over 48 hours later with no coin to show for it is a risk, but bulk buyers LOVE CoD.

I have recommitted myself to the Darkmoon Card market, since I am sneaking up on 1 million gold in sales since the start of the expansion. I'm not sure if I'll actually get there, since even raid finder now has superior trinkets in comparison to both Volcano and Tsunami... but it still remains a profitable biproduct for alts looking for BoE gear to accelerate their ability to join in the fun. I'm looking forward to sharing some graphs and a look back over the market for cataclysm soon.

Finally, I was so pleased that I got some comments from my mostly rhetorical question about the Vial, so I quickly got the materials together and send my wife a little present in the mail! Then it was her turn to take me for a joy ride!

Jondy flying through the skies of Stormwind; Borgthor enjoying the ride.

January 2012 Glyph Sales

Stats:

• Total Glyph Sales: 98,174g
• Total Glyphs Sold: 1988
• Average Price: 49g38s

Another great month, with a good average price. Very happy with how I've got my glyphing set up, and it will be business as usual like this for a while.

I have absolutely no idea what happened on the 10th of January. I have a theory though, and it is the result of crafting in bulk and storing the glyphs in a couple of banks. Having many of each type of glyph in storage completely removes the dependency of actually getting my expired glyphs out of the mailbox to repost. So, if I'm running short on time (like between Christmas and well... now) the most important thing is getting the glyphs to auction, not collecting the coin, making more glyphs or even retrieving expired auctions. I can duck on, post glyphs and log off. When I look at my inbox and realise I have 1k+ mail to retrive, I'll just afk and empty it one bag full (160 slots) at a time.

Lots more posts on the way, including a couple of stories about my adventures on Lightbringer-US.

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.

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.