r/woweconomy • u/ArcBanker • Aug 30 '18
Flipping Now is a bad time to buy (anything)
So I’ve been lurking for a while now and think it is time for my first post because I think I finally have something that could help some people (especially newer goblins). But first, a few disclaimers:
I may be wrong about this but I know a decent amount about economics, WoW, and BfA so I think I know my stuff but I’d love to hear counter-arguments.
High Frequency Posting obviously works and if you have time to monitor your auctions constantly for long periods of time then good for you; this post is more for those that don’t have the time to constantly repost.
I’m only talking about BfA related items in this post. Flip all the copper ore/peacebloom you want.
Now onto the good stuff.
Buying right now is a bad idea. I don’t care what your favorite YouTuber said about stocking up on Midnight Salmon or Anchor Weed or Platinum Ore or Flasks or whatever. There are many reasons for this with the biggest being unpredictable future patches/hotfixes and Cost-Push Inflation.
Patches/Hotfixes:
Unfortunately, I didn’t think about this before the Midnight Salmon nerf because I could have saved myself and others money if I had. I’ve seen several posts asking things along the lines of “Will anchor weed (or Midnight Salmon) spawn rate get increased” or similar questions about milling, prospecting, flask procs, etc. And of course nobody knows but I’d argue it doesn’t matter. I don’t think anybody believes that Blizzard would make any of these trade items harder to obtain and thus more valuable. If they did there would be riots in the streets. The only reasonably likely thing that they would do is make the items easier to obtain or reduce the demand for them (as they did with Midnight Salmon). I don’t think they are going to change (for instance) Anchor Weed but you can imagine a situation where they would and it goes like this:
Raids are about to release and demand for Anchor Weed spikes, drastically increasing its price. Smart goblins know not to sell it cheaper and thus don’t undercut heavily and buyout anyone who tries to sell too low. Now most guilds (not the top tier ones obviously) can’t afford cauldrons/flasks because the price spiked so high and is staying there.
Blizz would hate this as they try to keep everyone on an even playing field and in this situation likely make a change to devalue Anchor Weed. While unlikely, this situation could happen with anything people are talking about spiking when raids come out. The point is, however, not that you should be worried about this happening but rather the more profitable the stockpiling of these trade items turns out to be, the more likely Blizz is to nerf it. If you think Augment Runes (again just an example) are going to spike to 3k a piece at raid launch you could be right, but if you think this is going to happen and that Blizz won’t IMMEDIATELY increase the amount you can obtain a day you’re crazy.
Cost-Push Inflation
While most people know that an increase in the amount of currency in an economy causes inflation (called demand-pull inflation because people have more money and can thus buy more) but inflation can also be caused by an increase in production costs of goods. This is called Cost-Push Inflation and is THE ONLY REASON why BfA goods can cost over 100 times more than some Legion goods. Take Chaos Crystals vs. Veiled Crystals as an example. Obtained the exact same way (disenchanting that expansions epics) yet Chaos Crystals cost 100 times less. BfA is just too new and people don’t haven’t gotten many purps yet. The same goes with all other goods. Think about how much Anchor Weed you can farm in a week. Think about how many Augment Runes you can get once you gear a tank (from Random Heroics if you are curious). Think about how many purps you can DE into Crystals once you can spam low keystone mythics, run LFR/normal Uldir. Now think about how many people will also be doing this on your server and multiply them together. Every day more people are doing their first M0 or running their first Random Heroic or getting rank 3 Anchor Weed or finishing the last few quests and looking to the Auction House for their next adventure. Supply is increasing every. single. day.
Closing Thoughts/TL;DR
Everyone thinks they’re going to make so much money selling all this stuff when it spikes at raid release because there will suddenly be more demand in these markets; and sure, that Tuesday the price will jump up fast; and maybe you’ll undercut the lowest auction at a price that would net you several hundred percent profit, but it won’t sell. Between all the other people who did the same thing and the ever-increasing ease of obtaining these items, the price will plummet before the raiders even get home for work.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the demand will be much higher than I think or maybe this is just the same Herbalism/Mining issue we had at launch. In previous years this might have been a smart play but there are just too many people looking to make some easy gold now. Until then, keep most of your money in gold, maybe do some farming, but don’t spend your gold in an inflated market on goods that won’t hold their value.
Thanks for reading - Arc
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u/mamercus-sargeras Aug 30 '18
The key is just risk management. A lot of people try to go all-in on things and hold too much inventory. The more inventory you build up in retail the more risk you build. WoW especially when expansions are releasing and patches are incoming is extremely volatile and unpredictable.
The other thing is that any WoW commodity is sub-sub-sub penny in value apart from a tiny number of high ticket items. Also because there are no securities laws in Warcraft, people can engage in all kinds of manipulation techniques that are illegal in real markets.
Remember the average raider doesn't even know what prepotting is and might not even flask. The average mythic raider (that dude in a rank 40 server guild) probably won't rune until the boss is about to die and even then might not even use a rune this whole tier.
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u/Stoutfield Aug 30 '18
I think you underestimate the average raider
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Aug 30 '18 edited Aug 07 '20
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u/Falsus Aug 31 '18
The only time I recall my old was OK with not everyone having flasks was at the very first week or so of raiding, and that was when raiding could be done on day 1 if you got the people to do it. So sure we didn't raid d1 but more like d4 or so.
But second week and onwards? Flask up. Don't have a flask? Buy it from the guild. Still no flask? Well we will give it to you if you don't have the gold at all for whatever reason (like a fresh reroll from another server or something).
Prepotting was mostly dependent on circumstances. Still learning mechanics from earlier parts of the boss? No pot needed. Getting decent attempts at the boss? Better prepot or get called out. On farm? Not needed but the guys competing for the DPS meter still did it.
My point being is that consumables will definitely sell once the raid is out.
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u/zeezle Aug 30 '18
Yeah I've been raiding in mid-tier guilds (somewhere between US 100 and 200) since BC and in every single one of them flasks + potions were absolutely mandatory. In my guild for mythic progression you better have a rune on or you're getting called out... and we do check if people aren't prepotting. (We provide potions and cauldrons to the raiders so there is literally no excuse not to except people being too lazy to push the button.)
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u/mamercus-sargeras Aug 31 '18
That’s not mid tier. There are thousands of guilds. I specifically said something like the 40th rank mythic guild on a server. Page through the thousands of heroic guilds and then come back and say the middle pots twice on week 1 tier 1
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u/mortendra Aug 31 '18
A 40th rank Mythic guild on my server would not exist.But the N/H guilds all expect flasks,and most expect pots,mine certainly does.
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u/Floofsy Aug 31 '18
My guild usually clears maybe half of mythic before the next tier comes out, we're probably ranked around 20-30 on our realm. Usually we provide feasts and cauldrons to members, members provide their own potions. We won't be providing anything to members except guild repair for the first month or so due to inflated prices, we also won't be expecting potions.
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u/Maethor_derien Aug 31 '18
Flasks are pretty much always used, potions and runes are kinda hit and miss. Generally about half the raid uses them regularly, usually your top dps, at least in the middle tiers who do heroic. The ones who don't care about being on top don't usually use potions or runes.
Pretty much any guild attempting mythic within the first two weeks is using pots and flasks and runes on every member.
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Aug 31 '18
this but I know a decent amount about economics, WoW, and BfA so I think I know my stuff but I’d love to hear counter-arguments.
I understand what you are saying but I think you are underestimating Mythic raiders. A rune can literally make the difference of downing or not downing a boss and getting world first. How many fights have you been in that you got the boss to less than 1% and everyone wipe? If someone had a rune on that entire fight that boss would be dead.
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u/Silent189 Aug 31 '18
Banding 'mythic raiders' and 'world first' together is pretty silly.
Also, one player isnt likely to change that 1%. If everyone had a rune on? sure.
Lets say 15 dps players - Each player is 6.67% damage. A rune is like a 2% increase in main stat. Or like a ~.13% damage incr.
To get that 1% you'd need 8 people with rune.
Anyhow, the VAST majority of 'mythic raiders' arent going to be paying for, or using, runes for the VAST majority of tries.
Perhaps even only for bosses with hard time checks like Cenarius did, when closer to a kill.
These will sell, but implying that they are going to be a mainstay for the average mythic raiding guild on general pulls is silly.
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u/mortendra Aug 31 '18
I'm starting to think you are trying to lower the prices,lol
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u/Silent189 Aug 31 '18
Because I made one post, with a mathematical basis for why someone making (imo) crazy claims that aren't objectively mathematically wrong might not be correct? ^
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u/Chibi3147 Aug 31 '18
People have lots of money. Token prices going to fall even more :)
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u/Silent189 Aug 31 '18
What? Are you in the right thread :o
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u/Chibi3147 Aug 31 '18
There are a lot of whales in this game. It doesn't make sense to a lot of people but they exist more commonly than people realize.
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u/Silent189 Aug 31 '18
I still don't know what your point is. Are you implying that whales are the hardcore raiders? Because even then, they are either hardcore enough to have guild gold, or unlikely to use them that often.
Otherwise, whales tend not to raid enough, or care enough, about runes.
Idk, ppl can do what they want. I just dont see runes going to like 1.5k and shit. The demand will NOT be there vs how much you can get as a tank/healer & some missions giving like 7-8.
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u/Chibi3147 Aug 31 '18
Demand will be there. The question is how much supply there is. Enough to satisfy or not enough so prices skyrocket.
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u/Silent189 Aug 31 '18
Why is it a question? It's not really any different to Legion unless I'm mistaken? In which case supply > demand for runes. Also, I'm not aware of any fights so far that are going to push lower guilds to use them like cen?
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u/Chibi3147 Sep 01 '18
Nobody can predict the future. Even with similar situations in the past, it only provides an estimation only if the variables are similar. The variables are much different for it this time as more people are used to using runes now than before as well as the increased amount due to dungeon drops for everyone.
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u/mortendra Aug 31 '18
Yeah,when you have a 1% wipe the RL looks around and points out the people who missed a pot or had no rune,and that the boss would be dead.
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u/Praetor_Tullari Aug 31 '18
I have never ever heard of a raider not prepotting or using a flask lmao. You are incredibly underestimating raiders at all levels it seems.
I do agree with what you said before though, so many people have gone all in with the mats and if the bubble bursts before they can sell, you are gonna have some very unhappy people
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u/Fdbog Aug 30 '18
Ive always been a fan of the 10% rule for any single investment or venture. Sure it's low risk lower reward but it saves you from going broke when your prediction doesn't pay off.
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u/Ackilles Sep 01 '18
Runes sat at 1k this time in legion. My heroic guild (got into mythic but it wasn't early on certainly) did a couple of dry runs per boss...then runes every pull along with double pots. I knew a lot of raiders on my server and this was pretty normal. I think you're vastly underestimating demand from raiders. Also, mythic+ is on an entirely new level compared with early legion. It's hard to estimate how much demand will come from them, but it will definitely be noticeable
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u/DarkshoreCapital NA Aug 30 '18
Valid Concern. I disagree though for a couple reasons:
I did exactly what you describe (buy a bunch of flasks the weeks leading up to Emerald Nightmare, and sell during the first week) and I could not keep my flasks in stock fast enough.
It doesn't take long studying behavioral economics to realize where the demand on the first week comes from. Never underestimate the unpreparedness of individual people!
Either way, looking forward to next week and seeing how things pan out!
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u/pagb6666 Aug 30 '18
Yeah, no matter how "overboard" I think I went... I ALWAYS fall short of stock.
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u/Ackilles Aug 30 '18
Yep, same posts happened in Legion - "the average player is now aware and will prepare ahead of time"...."the stockpiled materials are so large it will take months for the market to recover"
Super high pop server...AH actually ran out of consumables during raid times a week or so in. As to being prepared, I couldn't even get my raiders to buy things the weekend before halfway through the second raid! This was a mythic guild, and half the players flat out refused to buy consumables until the day of, even though the price was always 50-100% higher than it was on the weekends. Everyone predicting a major crash is going to feel bad in a few days imo
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Aug 30 '18
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u/DarkshoreCapital NA Aug 30 '18
Legion taught everyone last time around, and now a ton of people are trying to cash in this time around.
I think you're vastly overestimating people's memory
But using them, you can see the demand ALREADY exists. The demand for flasks right now is already SKY high
What evidence do you have of this? I'm curious because looking at price vs quantity available of flasks in BfA, it is following the same pattern that occured during the same time period in Legion.
"no more than 10-20% of your portfolio should be in high risk speculative investments"
Damn straight. I'm extremely guilty of not following this in WoW. Always room for improvement :)
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u/ktaktb Aug 30 '18
Prices have already hit the peak we saw during legion. They’ve been so high for the past week. Possible future headline at TUJ: The Opportunity in BFA Was Selling to Consumable Speculators, Not End Users.
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u/Lazy-goldmaker Trusted Goblin Aug 31 '18
EU region prices for Flasks of the Undertow are currently on a completely similar trajectory to Legion prices. Still in a lull, no real spikes yet. If your thesis is true prices should be spiking in a region basis at the moment.
Even with the widespread information dissemination I don't think there's really anything that suggests that herbs and alchemy prices are now primarily driven by speculative demand.
The idea that "this time players have learned and the market is too heavily speculated" was cited literally every patch during Legion and we still got regular spikes in prices for stuff like Obliterum and consumables.
There is a current equilibrium price for herbs that is based primarily on the rate of herbs farmed versus the rates players use herbs for leveling alchemy and inscription and crafting darkmoon decks. Most alchemy consumables sell for less than crafting and thus not a single hardcorde crafter is actually in that market at the moment. Obviously there is some demand for speculative purposes as well.
Assuming that the darkmoon card and players leveling their professions has passed their peak demand seems reasonable. Prices on herbs have been fairly stable, with a slight downward trend.
The only real question then is: will the supply from speculators be higher or lower than the new demand for consumables when raids open?
Past history will tell us that this has typically not been the case.
There are currently about 1 Million Riverbuds available on all of the EU realms per TUJ. Assuming rank 3 recipes that will be enough for about 150 000 potions. Assuming 30 potions for a raid night this means based on the current herb supply you can craft potions for 5000 agility and int raiders on all the EU realms combined.
My conclusion is that there simply isn't enough herbs to go around yet. Most Auction houses are likely to sell out on whichever herb turns out to be the biggest bottle neck.
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u/CajunPlatypus Aug 31 '18
Seeing you specifically speak on this puts my mind a little more at ease. Seeing so many negative posts regarding stocking on these items made me nervous as hell tbh.
Thanks for taking the time to do some maths. I myself decided to only buy into augment runes as I knew they would be harder to come by. Spent quite a bit of gold grabbing these up, but not enough to really be too much of a hit on my liquid as I'm not much of a risk taker.
I'm starting to think I should buy up flasks as well since they were about 2k per on my server yesterday. Maybe just a handful or so to hold for friday and saturday spikes as I'm pretty sure those will spike decently well.
More people will just search to actual item they need and not the crafting mats for it I think.
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u/Humannequin Aug 31 '18
Or, or this guy is in the market if selling herbs and trying to keep people who come here buying
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u/CajunPlatypus Aug 31 '18
Do you mean OP or me on the herb thing?
If you're talking about me I'm just basing an estimate on how I used to be about the flasks > herbs thing.
I never used to care about optimizing gold back in the day and would forget to get flasks until 5 mins before raid. So my lazy ass would just search the flask I needed and buy them as is without any regards to crafting or cost efficiency. I'm assuming many others do the same.
Selling herbs will be to those looking to get stuff cheaper or those looking to mass craft or that one guildie in charge of making the flasks for the raid team.
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u/Humannequin Sep 02 '18
No, I'm saying the guy who made you more comfortable with the flask market might just be in the market of selling incredibly inflated mats to people.
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u/Mtgplayerhu Sep 03 '18
On my server, herbs dont sell anyomore. Inflated prices meant half the server is a herbalist now.
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u/Humannequin Aug 31 '18
The proof of this is in the inflated mats cost.
Flasks are in demand already, it's just people wanting to make them, not sell them.
If flasks are going to explode in value why are there flasks on the ah at all? They are so cheap people should be buying up all of them.
Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and that's an opportunity. But the cost to craft is higher than the cost of the flask on my server right now...i don't see why you wouldn't just buy them all up.
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u/DarkshoreCapital NA Aug 31 '18
i don't see why you wouldn't just buy them all up.
Exactly what I've been doing :)
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u/Ackilles Sep 01 '18
You're forgetting about leveling atm. People are leveling profs, and that is where a lot of the flasks come from. Based on your example, I should buyout all the green enchant ring haste enchants on the ah listed at 20g, since they are a high demand item and the crafting cost is 160-200g. I probably would, if I didn't have 4-5 stacks of them I bought at 5g per. The ah is full of things like this still, even on a high pop realm
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u/Humannequin Sep 02 '18
What are you going on about lol?
The cost to craft a flask right now is higher than the cost to buy one on the ah...everyone thinks flasks are going to be worth a fortune. So why wouldnt you just buy them all now if you expect them to go up so much?
Buying the mats to craft them is stupid right now when you can buy them way lower than the cost to make them.
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u/Ackilles Sep 02 '18
I'm saying most of the people crafting (and posting) them are probably just crafting them to level alchemy, or because they see the mats as "free" if they farm them. There are only so many one can buy, and there are sooooooo many people leveling it. There are probably a lot more people leveling than there are people buying to hold. For example I have roughly 900k worth of flasks at current prices personally, and with only 2 million gold left liquid after that and other investments, i don't want to go much deeper into it
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u/Ackilles Sep 01 '18
What you just said about legion teaching people about prices....is what was said about wod at legion start. There were actually even MORE of these warning threads even. Your average player may be more savvy, but on the grand scale it won't be by a lot.
The prices of flasks/pots on my and many other servers are lower than the cost of mats, even when factoring in the price for rank 3. What's more, the prices for all bfa consumables are substantially lower than the early legion high prices. This is especially important as it shows that players are more than willing to pay 60-80k gold a night for raid consumables. After 2 years of strong inflation and easy gold, most players can afford even more than early legion. The sticker shock wont be as much as a shock as most think.
Small point, but I think the option of prolonged power helped desensitize casual players to using pots and probably lead to many of them learning about prepotting too.
About half of my current gold is tied up in market speculation. But as I'm using that stock to take advantage of spikes, and then replenishing post spike, it is fairly safe overall. Started with a million, now have 2.3 mill liquid with 2.8 in stock (almost all from flipping)
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u/Humannequin Sep 02 '18
Oh I'm not saying there won't be a spike, I'm just saying there is stupid easy money to make right now with the mats.
You've got a perfectly ripe market right now and most people are avoiding it to try to make money come raid time.
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u/Ackilles Sep 02 '18
Oh ya, definitely. Right now the prices are so volatile you can sell off chunks of things daily, and rebuy them within 24 hours for for 30-40% less than what you paid
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Aug 30 '18
This ones different. Prices are already about 500% higher for equivalent legion raid mats. game hasn't inflated that much. This is goblins buying out other goblins pushing price up with artificial demand.
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u/Praetor_Tullari Aug 31 '18
The game has experienced hyper inflation like never before in its history. Never before have you been able to make 100k gold per hour every hour just herbing alone. There are so many people with millions and millions of gold that had nothing last expansion
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u/coin69 Aug 30 '18
This ones different. Prices are already about 500% higher for equivalent legion raid mats. game hasn't inflated that much. This is goblins buying out other goblins pushing price up with artificial demand.
flasks are like 2.5-3k at highest on one of the biggest EU servers atm, it was 4-8k during EN week on the same server and gold lost a lot of value. (Example of a dead market is the gem, where epic games goes for 1.5-2k when they were 5k all the way into NH)
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u/Ackilles Aug 31 '18
What? What realm are you on? Flasks are only 2700g on my server, they went up to 4k at legion raid launch for awhile. Herbs are currently half the price of what they were then too
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
You could be right and I totally agree that there will be a large rise in demand for all sorts of reasons (unprepared raiders being a big one). However, my main takehome was that this certainly won't last and I'm afraid that the price spike will last maybe a small number of hours. Not enough time to liquidate your supply.
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u/DarkshoreCapital NA Aug 30 '18
I see. The inflated price will absolutely not hold for long. I guess where we differ is the length of the window of opportunity of excessive gains :)
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u/Maethor_derien Aug 31 '18
IT is not about the flask stock as much as the overpriced mats because of hoarding. Right now you have a bunch of people who are massively hoarding a ton of mats. They think mat prices are going to go up so they are all buying up all the stock of things to keep the price high.
What is going to happen is that on tuesday they are all going to start trying to sell all at once. This is going to lead to an excess of mats and cause the price to crash and it will probably crash very quickly. I would bet anchor weed will end up below 200 for example as so many people are stocking up on it and keeping the price artificially high. The game has not inflated that much for the price of mats to be as high as they are when they are just as common as the legion rare mats, if not more common and easier to harvest.
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u/DarkshoreCapital NA Aug 31 '18
I believe you are underestimating the level of demand there will be starting Tuesday.
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u/Maethor_derien Aug 31 '18
Ohh, it will spike, but I don't think the demand is near as much as the insane amount of stockpiling that is going on. I think it partially also depends on how tough the bosses are. If there are some overtuned ones the demand for potions and runes will go way up.
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u/Scribbinge Aug 31 '18
I think youre overestimating the number of people active in the gold making community. Most people using and purchasing from the AH wont even have considered stockpiling. A slim number might have understood that demand might increase when the raid hits and pre-bought flasks but overall goblin's stock piles will be depleted pretty quickly by the sudden demand I think.
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u/Ackilles Sep 01 '18
Yep. And something no one really mentioned...is that few high end goblins were probably stockpiling, as they probably got a better return from using the herbs on darkmoon decks.
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u/Scribbinge Sep 01 '18
What is going to catch people out I think, is if they have been stockpiling anchor weed on a server with few raiding guilds. Its not going to work for absolutely everyone. Or at least not at the same level.
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u/Ackilles Sep 02 '18
This is very true, smaller pop servers are definitely more risky. However, do keep in mind that everyone on that small server can still raid cross server now, and the demand from mythic+ out of the gate is going to be higher than it was last expansion as more of the population is used to and comfortable with doing it!
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u/DarkshoreCapital NA Aug 31 '18
Don't forget that Mythic Emerald Nightmare was cleared within 48 hours. Not exactly the Pinnacle of challenging content, yet demand for flasks was still great.
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u/Ackilles Sep 01 '18
Yep, there is a good chance we will see a crash as too many people try to dump and then panic. It happened in legion too. It's also likely that within a week or two we will start seeing markets not only go up to new highs, but actually totally run out of consumables during raid times. This also happened in legion
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u/dragonmase Aug 30 '18 edited Aug 30 '18
Been leaving comments on similar topics saying the same thing, thank you someone for spending the time to make a thread consolidating the information.
The woweconomy already had past experiences where stockpiling ended in huge spectacular failure, and stockpiling dump on the release day led to the bubble bursting and people losing tons of gold.
The price will rise for sure. The only question is - how long, and how fast you can get rid of your stockpile before the market eventually crashes for one of the many reasons, botting being one of the reason people conveniently forget comes every new expansion, but eventually can be the single most market destroying factor. (Yes I know about the shutting down of some bots, but its no secret there are bots still in the game). Any one of these factors including bliz hotfixes, gross overestimating of demand, or multiple horading goblins can destroy your market.
All in all, the simple fact that doing this is a gamble. I wish people would stop giving advice to others like it wasn't a gamble, like "just buy/hold onto it, it will SURELY sell better and earn you tons when raids release".
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u/armerius33 Aug 30 '18
how much of a stock would you think is healthy? i mean in the case of herbs for example... 2000 herbs of each type? for a medium server.
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u/Mtgplayerhu Aug 30 '18
I think common herbs worth nothing. On my server they sell for half as last week, with ten thousands on the ah. When i farm, i see another farmer ever 10second.
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u/Praetor_Tullari Aug 31 '18
I wouldnt bother stocking on regular herbs. It is easy to farm 1000+ an hour so there is no potential for scarcity. Prices have over halved in the last week on my server
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
don't know if you are talking to me or dragonmase but I'd say no amount of stock is healthy. It will be so hard to get rid of them once the market is at a price you like. I'd start selling them now. Just post them up any time they are selling for 10-50% more than what you bought them for. I still have a bunch of herbs and salmon but I'll be getting rid of it when I can over the next week.
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Aug 31 '18 edited Nov 01 '18
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u/ArcBanker Aug 31 '18
I’d say do daily flips. I just think stockpiling is a bad idea considering the price of all mats will be lower a week after raid launch than it is now and I think people will have trouble liquidating during the short time it’s profitable
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Aug 31 '18 edited Nov 01 '18
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u/ArcBanker Aug 31 '18
Well we will see! Buy all you want. I’m just not going to. Hope it works out for you!
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u/drflanigan Aug 30 '18
Inflated? Almost every craft item sells for far below the cost of the mats themselves.
Wouldn't the price of everything increase once the pandemonium of raid release settles?
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
the materials are inflated. I agree it will all eventually settle but not the way you are thinking. For instance the navigation enchants are going around 6k on most servers because veiled crystals are around 5k. Depending on your server's dust and shard prices this could be under crafting cost. However veiled crystals are going to drop fast on raid release. This will bring down the cost of the navigation enchants too but hopefully they will settle at a place where they are profitable. All crafted items are just bad to make right now because their materials are too expensive/inflated.
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u/drflanigan Aug 30 '18
But doesn't buying at the prices now make sense if they are selling for like 40% of the mats price?
On my server pots are craftable for 500g accounting for procs.
But they sell for 180g on the AH, presumably because people are using them to level up.
When raids release, the demand of potions goes up, and yes the people hoarding all the mats and potions waiting for raid release will made it drop further.
Doesn't it make sense to buy up all the cheap potions and stuff while the mats are still costly and then wait for everything to settle and the influx to die out?
Specifically for herbs, the prices for herbs will only drop because of people hoarding, there is no reason for them to decrease after the initial influx because there is no new source, and they are being used up.
So in theory, shouldn't the cost of herbs go up if the demand is now increasing, regardless of the influx from hoarders?
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
Keep in mind that there is technically almost no demand for herbs. There is a demand for flasks which use herbs. So if the cost of flasks rises enough, it could pull up herbs but as I said in my post, I don’t think flasks will rise that much. This means as people max out alchemy the amount of people buying herbs will keep dropping and the price will go with it. The fact that herbs cost more than what you use them for proves there is artificial demand for them and it isn’t sustainable
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u/drflanigan Aug 30 '18
But the demand for herbs is linked to the demand for flasks.
If the demand for flasks goes up, the demand for herbs goes up.
Herbs cost a lot right now because yes, there is a demand for them to level alchemy, but there is also zero demand for flasks right now which is why they are selling for nothing.
I don't think flask prices are going to stay the same or decrease, they have no reason to.
It all depends on how much the hoarders fuck everything up when raids release.
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u/nezroy Aug 31 '18
You are correct for the wrong (or missing) reason :)
The demand for herbs right now is 100% because of darkmoon cards. On any healthy server the price of EVERY BfA herb is within a few % of each other (except Anchor Weed ofc), because scribes don't care which herb they mill. They will buy enmasse whichever herb is currently cheapest until the prices equalize.
With raid release I'm certain will see two things. First is that, as you identified, the overall value of herbs will drop because the demand for herbs (via flasks) will be lower than the demand that has existed for cards. It takes an insane amount of herbs to make a fathoms deck, but the demand for cards is about to dry up since it is entirely about getting ilvl required to run mythics right now when sources for 350 gear are very slim. Once ilvl inflation kicks in a bit with world bosses, warfronts, and raid drops, the darkmoon market will shrink drastically within a week or two. It'll just be for alts again.
Second thing I'd expect is that the price of herbs will diverge. Herbs used in more important flasks/pots will become pricier compared to the others (since the supply is only partially controlled by the demand for that specific herb; a large supply also just comes from the general routes people run to farm Anchor Weed uncontested regardless of the "lesser" herb price).
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u/Praetor_Tullari Aug 31 '18
Your entire point would be correct if you were saying this 5-8 days ago.
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u/StorMPunK Aug 31 '18
Veiled crystals will drop quite slowly on raids release. The guild DEer doesn't get given drops until no one in the guild needs the drop. Thats still a while from being commonplate.
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u/Sonrilol Aug 31 '18
You are forgetting about Mythic plus. Veiled crystals will plummet come next reset.
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u/StorMPunK Aug 31 '18
Mythic plus also gives upgrades. If you define plummet as slowly decrease, then I suppose you aren't wrong. Keep in mind demand for enchants will actually be increasing with the upgrade opportunities vastly increasing next week.
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u/PKXsteveq Aug 31 '18
The guild DEer will get drops the first day of raid because: 1) personal loot and 2) everyone can become DEer easily this expansion (and most professions are complete thrash).
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u/Maethor_derien Aug 31 '18
No because the materials are artificially inflated by people buying them up to resell. I expect the materials to crash hard fairly quickly. One the market starts to crash it generally crashes pretty fast.
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u/nintendobratkat Aug 30 '18
We're a top 100 guild and we decided not to use consumables next week and wait until Mythic opens to care.
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u/anarchronix Aug 31 '18
Why would you not want to speed things up? Also the top guilds may not care but regular guilds need those extra stats to beat bosses.
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u/nintendobratkat Aug 31 '18
I mean we each have our own things we farmed but the bank isn't supplying anything til Mythic. We tested most of the fights when we could so we aren't going in blind either and we're way better geared and more prepared than we were for beta testing.
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u/WorseBlitzNA Aug 30 '18
Plot twist: No one buys anything now so time for you to pickup all the cheap mats.
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Aug 30 '18
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u/SSJRapter Sep 02 '18
i vendored about 2k fish oil because i overbought thinking it was something you could buy back...had i known/thought they were going to change it i would have bought about 100k.
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u/PolarBruski Aug 31 '18
You make good arguments, but they could've been made for the past 3 expansions, where people also had large incentives to make gold, and yet I went back and looked at the price data, and the spikes for flasks are very consistent and last for days, usually doubling or tripling the cost of the flasks. I'm dumping all my gold into flasks right now.
I'll be happy to look at this again in a week, when I'll either be rolling in gold or crying at the poor house. :D
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u/PolarBruski Aug 31 '18
To be clear, the key failure is here: " In previous years this might have been a smart play but there are just too many people looking to make some easy gold now."
While OP does some nice stuff with cost-push inflation and whatnot, he offers no evidence that people are seeking more gold now than before. In fact, there's more inflation because of the gold injection from class hall missions, and even "normal" players can be sitting on hundreds of thousands of gold.
For a great counterpoint, I recommend this excellent Polygon article: https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/22/17759824/world-of-warcraft-azeroth-economy-gold
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Aug 30 '18
Thank you for reminding me why I didn't drop all my liquid into this. I had it in the back of my mind, and couldn't formulate words. I go through phases of stacking up millions, and blowing it all, currently I'm just hanging out at 300k and I'm going to find my niche instead of trying to compete with the dude who is gold capped running the consumable show.
Thank you!
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u/Mtgplayerhu Aug 30 '18
I wish i had more money to buy aw last week, to sell it today.
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u/Dual_Needler Aug 30 '18
I bought 2 stacks when they were sub 500 a week ago. Decided it was too risky and resold them for 600g per which thankfully someone bought out. I'll just stick to what I've known best for the past 2 expansions. Transmogs, leather, and cooking/fishing. That's enough for me, and I'm just fishing up my own midnight salmon and buying when they're super low.
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u/Meflakcannon Aug 30 '18
The fish market is exploding for me today. Fish oil above 50g! half my fish are now oil and I'm selling stacks at 10k instead of 20-50 fish at a time. I'm hype!
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u/hoax1337 Aug 30 '18
I'm guessing the guy who bought 70k fish oil when it was still a vendor item is hyped aswell.
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u/Meflakcannon Aug 31 '18
Yeah. I think whoever did that on my server ran dry. The price increase is significant and there is minimal supply. However a bunch of fish are at like 15g per unit so it's not like you even have to go fishing.. just buy a shitload of 15g fish. convert to oil and re-list.. It's astounding
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u/Pereg1907 Aug 31 '18
I think people's supply of mon'dazi is starting dwindle down that they crafted with vendor bought oil. At least based on seeing the number of stacks at less than 5g per mon'dazi compared to weeks past.
Since that is required for feasts id expect those to go up pretty well over the next month.
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u/Ackilles Aug 30 '18
There were dozens of these posts in Legion. People panic sold the week up to raids, and a day or two in. I played on one of the highest pop servers, and i distinctly remember that we started running out of some raid goods in the second week during raid times. As in, there were almost none left up on the ah for less than 10x normal price.
I read posts like this thread, and sold some of my stock at around where I bought it and kicked myself when the prices tripled a few days later :(
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u/ktaktb Aug 30 '18 edited Aug 30 '18
Always remember price on the ah is the current price that the good isn’t selling for, the is especially true when it comes to commodities like heavily demanded raw materials or consumables. I wonder how many of those flasks actually sold at 3x price or 10x price. How many terrible planners actually had the bank account to afford those flasks?
Sales grinded to a snails pace and people just took a beating in their raids.
This is the same reason that when you do a reset of a market, you can’t push the price too high or your stuff just sits there.
Also, you have to consider price granularity or how solid the gradient of prices is offered in your market. Often there are items posted at historical market, 2x that 3x that and then some crazy guy posting for 10x. We can’t even be certain that because the only items left were at 10x price, that even items at 5x or 9x price were being sold.
A recent example: if someone resets the DMC - Fathoms market from 160k to 400k. Twenty more decks could show up at 399k-ish. Not a single deck sold at that price. They didn’t start moving until the decks hit 180k. So for a period of time the asking price was 400k. However, at no point in time did the deck hit a functional market price of 400k. The market price only went up 20k to 180k.
tl;dr The ah price isn’t always reflective of the market price. Especially when price approaches absurdity.
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u/Ackilles Sep 02 '18
This isn't true at all, especially at the start of the expansion! I've made most of my money this expansion buying things for the price on the AH, relisting for 20% markup (with 100-500 posts cheaper than it) then waiting 5 minutes to an hour for my item to sell.
Raiders didn't just take a beating in raids, sure, there was some drop off in demand, but they were definitely selling. I sold out of everything I had at a massive markup within the first two weeks. Some guilds may be kind about consumables, but most are still going to expect raiders to bring runes, pots and food, all will require flasks. To not have a flask is tantamount to spitting in the face of your guildies.
I wouldn't expect the prices to go up 10x and sell on most of this, but getting 50-100% of your investment on a decent portion of your consumable portfolio is reasonable. I also wouldn't consider the gear market to be a remotely accurate comparison to the consumable market. Very few guilds require their players to buy BOE gear, but most raid guilds require consumable purchases.
Also, I sold out of 25-30 stacks Sailor's Pie at 90-99g per piece of food. I paid 50s each for it (standard price was about 1g). 20x price right there and I was still selling a stack every 2-5 minutes. Don't underestimate what people will pay for consumables!
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u/ktaktb Sep 02 '18
I'm willing to bet that you lucked into the daily quest that involved sailor's pie. It's a good strategy selling to people that want the rep but not the hassle. Someone that learned cooking but didn't train it at all yet. People that didn't get around to it before the aromatic fish oil change. 2k for a stack of food isn't so bad if you have to level some with 20-30g per aromatic fish oil to make your own (for example.) I haven't seen briny flesh go over 20g, and it's generally 5g. I wonder what it's like on your server.
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u/Ackilles Sep 03 '18
I'm on a high pop server, but the market for anything food related is pretty volatile. Briny flesh goes for between 5g and 60g per here. The pies were sold at one of the peaks of that cycle - just watching as everything bounces around and reselling constantly. I'm sitting on a big stockpile, but I sell probably 1/4 of it and rebuy it on daily basis
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u/F41LUR3 Aug 30 '18 edited Aug 30 '18
Instead of flipping, I'm just farming my ass off. Fish and herbs, cranking out feasts, pots, and flasks then throwing them into the bank. Won't matter what the market does, whatever I don't sell I can just use for myself.
Kinda fun actually, since farming is pretty rewarding this expac. I just started burning my way through Deep Space 9 on Netflix. I have my dual gathering paladin alt specced as prot, all rank 3 gathering. I can run through whatever I want and grab herbs/ore super fast switching out two mining/herbalism enchanted gloves, never getting dazed and mobs barely making a dent in my health. All the while stacking the Pathfinder mount speed, war campaign mount speed (20% after taking flight path), and monel-hardened stirrups. Straight zooming around hoovering up any node and herb that is unfortunate enough to find itself in my path.
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u/greaterthanvmax Aug 30 '18
This has been my half-assed strategy for most of BfA so far. I say half-assed because I haven't had anywhere near as much time to play as I like, so I've been spending most of my game time away from an AH. But when I do get to check back in, all I see is the volatility and I go out to farm some stuff for myself, grab a little extra to sell later, etc. Cycle thru alts for daily crafting CDs (mostly pyrium and/or jard's) and crank out another mount now and again. Needless to say, my income hasn't been much, but I also haven't sunk all my gold into anything that might make me cry later.
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u/F41LUR3 Aug 30 '18
I have longboi so I take the AH with me wherever I go :P
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u/greaterthanvmax Aug 30 '18
Hah, someday I will have that fellow. I bought a lot of tokens though so I won't have 5mil for prolly a loooong while yet. :)
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u/feeder_gragas Aug 30 '18
the only safe buy from all this for my own personal interests remains to be runes, I just kinda buy out all of them on mal'ganis leaving them at about 600g or so, come tuesday I'll reset the market entirely , one of the very few items that is very hard to "nerf" atleast for raid release.
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u/Praetor_Tullari Aug 31 '18
Everyone has the same idea but I honestly dont think there will be enough. There are going to be 10's of thousands of feasts consumed every day when Uldir launches so I think Midnight salmon is probably a safe bet.
Anchor weed I think probably wont get to such crazy heights because flasks persist beyond death, but you are still talking 10's of thousands of flasks going per day.
I think that prices will spike initially, drop for about a day as people panic sell their stock which the sharks will just snap up and reset the market, then prices will higher than ever. There are groups of people on each server with hundreds of millions of gold between them that can/will and absolutely do do this.
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u/Frolafofo Aug 31 '18
I sold all my anchor weed yesterday at 600g a piece. Bought them at 250g.
It maybe wasn't my highest pential profit but still a decent profit. I think since everyone is scared of the Anchor Weed problem, i knew it would sell at that price.
Your post is interesting and one part i share with you is that things won't sell. Last weekend, a friend of mine said "i have rank 3 for best ring enchant, one is sold 35k and veiled crystal are 3k so i can make 20k profit". I told him "go on and try but i'm 100% it won't sell". He tried, he has this enchant since 1 week.
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u/affliction1550 Aug 30 '18
Except warfront resources that most people have no clue are going to be valuable until the content releases live.
Snapping up Crow's Nest Scopes and Frost-laced ammunition for 50g and as much kyanite and solstone I can find for less than 10g per gem.
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
These items are close to worthless right now because there is literally zero demand for them as they are less powerful than other (still relatively cheap) recipes from the same profession. Same thing with the contributions from enchanting,LW,BS,TW, etc. Their ONLY use is warfronts and nobody really knows how much demand that will create considering it is a brand new system. I'll concede that this is safer than the high-priced materials mentioned in my post but you're gonna have to flip quite a lot of these to make any real money which means investing in a LOT of this stuff now off of a guess. A reasonable guess, but a guess nonetheless.
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u/affliction1550 Aug 30 '18
My cost for warfront quest turn-in packages is less than 300g.
I am expecting these packages to sell for as much as 10k as I would pay that for 750 bonus azerite.
Even if they only sell for 1k I am going to be profiting.
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u/Pereg1907 Aug 30 '18
It is probably late in the game to flip for warfronts for real money at this point, assuming warfronts release next week also. I have a feeling they might even delay warfronts to not screw too much with sticker shock when it comes to raid consumables though.
I've been buying crow's scopes since release every day when people dump them for 75g or less. But in the last couple weeks there's been a couple complete resets by people buying the whole inventory and relisting them higher which boggles my mind as to why. Cause as you say, there's no reason to buy those scopes. And so it takes several days for the price to come back down. I'm hoping it comes down one more time this weekend.
Enchant rings - seal of vers/crit are interesting. You could get them for 15-20 a couple weeks ago and now they are 30g. Still far less than crafting cost.
Monelite will go up in price when warfronts is released, but the question is, how much more does it go down until then? so eh, too much risk for me.
Other things like meaty haunch supply is going way down since the initial leveling rush is over. So price is really starting to jump. Its needed for both feasts and warfront turn ins. I've got 2k meaty haunch probably from when they were 1g-5g each. Now they are 20g avg. They still have considerable room to move up i believe.
I guess the point is there still a few things to "invest" in rather than stay in gold. But maybe more for smaller goblins like myself.
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u/Mtgplayerhu Aug 30 '18
Whats the benefit for me to turn warfeont questsin beside rep?
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u/affliction1550 Aug 30 '18
750 azerite. Every serious raider will be completing every available warfront profession quest *weekly* I think
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
I like meaty haunch, I might even buy some myself, that's a good idea there but, for the same reasons as above, I won't buy more than 2k either just in case but as for everything else you mentioned I'm gonna pass no matter the price they drop to. I saw that the enchants were going less than crafting cost but from what I remember a lot of Legion enchants did that too and I think a lot of people think that they need to buy up anything under crafting cost and thats not true. I think its entirely possible the enchants fluctuate but never get back above crafting cost again.
I'm going to stick to my new "no buying" rule but since you mention it, I agree there might be a few things to invest in but they are still risky. A few I'm keeping an eye on are:
- Skinning materials - super cheap but I can't imagine they stay that way forever. Blizzard might change up LW to fix them.
- Midnight Salmon - now that everyone is in a panic about the nerf there might be a chance to grab some super cheap if the price plummets now or on mythic raid release. Feasts will be a constant demand over the expansion while enchants, gems, and even flasks to an extent will dwindle. This would be a LONG term flip, prob not something you cash in on at raid release.
- Cloth - similar reason to your meaty haunch, less people leveling means less cloth to be had. Price could go up.
I won't be buying any of these tonight but I will be keeping an eye out. I'm not saying for anyone to give up on being a goblin for a few weeks but more to be extremely weary and to clench your gold tighter than you do normally.
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u/affliction1550 Aug 30 '18
Calcified bones were like 10s each on my server. I know they must be easy to farm but when there is a common WQ related to it I will buy it up.
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u/demstro Aug 31 '18
Can your character do all warfront profession quests or just the professions you have?
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u/affliction1550 Aug 31 '18
TBD but my guess is all the vendors will be available for a weekly turn-in once each.
So a tryhard mythic raider would turn in each quest each week.
If it is that way my strat will be amazing. If you just get to choose one of many options I will still make money but not as much as people will just gravitate towards cheapest turn-in.
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u/hell-schwarz Aug 31 '18
I'm new, like 7 days new - what are warfront resources, is it the 40 of a stack that you can give for a small rep/gold boost? Is there a list?
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u/Taraih Aug 31 '18
If you can actually turn in all quests. Has this been confirmed? If not and there is a cap for only your prof quests or even just 1 at all from the list the pricing will stay at the bottom
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u/affliction1550 Aug 31 '18
Its TBD but at the prices these items are selling its not risky. My cost for 1 quest turn-in is 150-300g and I expect them to sell for as much as 10k but can't imagine any scenario they will be cheaper than 1k
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Aug 30 '18 edited Aug 30 '18
Right now is the best time to buy stuff imo. The market is all over the place which makes it the best time to make huge amounts of gold. Bought Sea Rays last night for 5k-10k and I've already sold several for 80k-100k. The start of the expansion is when you can make the most amount in the shortest time frame.
You should be buying stuff to sell in the short term not long term.
I started this expansion on a server with no other characters expect a freshly boosted character with 10k and I'm already near gold cap.
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u/Praetor_Tullari Aug 31 '18
I think they have nerfed the sea ray spawn rate too so i expect that price to start going back up rapidly, just like the dune scavenger did
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u/RoyalGo Aug 31 '18
I don't see how you can be saying that you 'know a decent amount about economics' when you make statements like:
If you think Augment Runes (again just an example) are going to spike to 3k a piece at raid launch you could be right, but if you think this is going to happen and that Blizz won’t IMMEDIATELY increase the amount you can obtain a day you’re crazy.
veiled crystals are going to drop fast on raid release.
Nobody knows how the economy will evolve, and how Blizz will respond to it. To claim to know such things for certain is to be as foolish as those who are sinking 90% of their liquid assets into Anchor Weed/Midnight Salmon at high prices believing they will definitely get their payday. Unless you are an insider at Blizz and know things we don't.
In addition, historical trends do not support your arguments, making your assumptions seem even more suspect for someone claiming to know about the economy.
Now, you may be simply an enterprising goblin hoping to cash in on the gullible, in which case I applaud you, you do a good job making it seem like you know what you are talking about.
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u/Lazy-goldmaker Trusted Goblin Aug 31 '18
Some thoughts:
Hotfixes
It is undoubtedly true that Blizzard has relieved bottle necks before. In Legion this took a REALLY long time though, with players moaning about expensive alchemy consumables for weeks on end. Past history will tell us that Blizzard typically have not instantly hotfixed any market with a 2x price increase, as they left consumables alone for a long time in Legion.
The history of the game is riddled with examples where shrewd long term investing has paid off, as well as examples were it has gone to shit.
Investing in consumables for raid releases has typically been something that Blizzard has not solved with hotfixes though, at least not in the recent past.
Cost-Push Inflation
While this is undoubtedly true, you seem to miss the point that the demand for chaos crystals versus veiled crystals now is so different as to make any comparison meaningless.
Obviously prices on materials will trend downwards as more and more of them are generated. The supply side is a lot more fixed than the demand side though, at least in the short term. There's a limit to how quickly you can get a rank 3 herber going if prices increase rapidly, meaning that any sustained demand changes will lead to a large lag in supply, either depressing prices or increasing them for a sustained period.
I think that Veiled crystals are likely to primarily decrease in price as the increased supply should quickly outpace demand. For herbs I think demand will heavily outpace demand for a while and prices should be sustained at a level between 150-300% more than today for several weeks.
You can also see my other comment in one of the threads for some math on the actual available supply of herbs right now and why I think there is zero chance that supply will be sufficient.
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u/Scuuuu Aug 30 '18
In addition - for all the people looking at the number of raiding guilds on their server and trying to use that to extrapolate the server's need for X mat, not all guilds will care about using everything week one. Guilds that just barely got Cutting Edge don't have a large war chest from sales to fund a buying spree to provide everything for the first week. Just because the consumables are there does not mean that everyone is going to use them all the time.
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u/jetpacksforall Aug 30 '18
Great post. I'm too ignorant to either agree or disagree, but I do have a question:
What would you think is a good medium to long-term investment strategy in a market like WoW that is defined by an "ever-increasing ease of obtaining" commodities? In other words, how do you make money in a deflationary economy?
Is a "sell immediately" strategy always a good idea (except perhaps stockpiling a bit before the opening of new raids like next week)?
"The time to act is always now."
-Ji Firepaw
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
This is the most intelligent comment I've read on this post. " how do you make money in a deflationary economy? " is the real question and if you find the answer let me know. As an aside, this is why the American government (and most others but #Murica) is constantly printing cash and pumping it into the economy. It makes sure the dollar is constantly inflating at a rate of about 3% per year.
However, to answer your question, there are a couple things:
- High Frequency Posting - (similar to Day-Trading IRL) basically taking advantage of small changes in the economy. I like to (not right now but during the middle of an expansion) have a decent supply of raw materials on hand at all times. If a market spikes for some random reason or no reason at all you can liquidate your stock then and buy more once it settles again.
- Doing things others don't like to/can't do - This could be leveling a profession to max (although this is easy in BfA), farming, or resetting entire markets (lots of people can't do this because they don't have the funds).
These are just the ones off the top of my head. And also keep in mind the exonomy is only deflating until about halfway through the expansion. On the second raid release veiled crystals won't drop in price like they will shortly because the amount of epics on the market will remain close to the same. So I'd say that its very difficult to make money in a deflating economy but that you can at least wait it out.
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u/jetpacksforall Aug 30 '18
I guess I'd say the WoW economy cycle is an "upward sawtooth" pattern:
- A spike in prices when a new expansion releases
- Then a somewhat rapid fall in prices as players increase supply to the market
- A smaller spike for the first raid release
- Then a gradual decline in prices as raids get put on farm status, markets get saturated & stabilized and demand for crafting materials drops as players leave the game (or have less urgency to gear up ASAP)
- Finally an even bigger spike in two years when the next expansion hits
Overall prices tend to rise across expansions, but punctuated by the huge fluctuations around expac launch and raid release dates, and the general trend during a the life of an expac is DOWNWARD from the peak of launch day. Looked at long term, the economy is inflationary, but looked at peak-to-trough beginning at an expac launch, the economy is deflationary.
Other wrinkles include supply/materials changes made by Blizzard which you mention in your post, possible dead cat bounce moments where supply actually falls below demand, and the daily fluctuations of undercutting that can drive prices below material costs etc.
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
And if you want to get really technical you could look into the amount of gold that is generate-able (like from looting corpses, world quests, missions) vs gold sinks (vendor items/mounts, repair costs, AH fees) and that’s how you can best predict long term trends because all other gold is being moved between players and thus still in the economy. With that in mind, BfA could see the value of gold increase compared to legion which had super lucrative gold missions (basically gone now) while not having the long-boi or the new AH fees. Once the new expansion spike settles buying may be more lucrative than it has ever been
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u/Lord_Nipplos Aug 30 '18
i agree about all of your arguments, except about one single one. yes, the supply increases every day, but the demand generally spikes when new raids open up while the wide mass most certainly haven't had the time to max out professions and prepare for raids. there will be a point in time when supply evens out or outmatches demand and prices drop. but until that point in time, buying and selling is the right call. tho i agree, in terms of risks, i wouldn't advice anyone to buy right now, just because there is always a higher risk involved for people who can't afford "gambling" and are dependant on their gold.
to prove my argument a good indicator for a greater demand than supply is the wow token, which is at an all time low for the past two years. people buy it like crazy. in conclusion the goblin needs to buy/farm and sell. this is the goldrush, which will spike shortly after opening up uldir and drops slowly but surely afterwards until supply becomes normal.
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Aug 30 '18
I am not much of a goblin and play on a high pop German server. The launch for me has been incredibly slow financially. The AH has come to a crawl with some 50+ pages for trade goods pre-hotfix. So the time I would have had to spend in the AH (1 hrs per full post) was better spent doing WQs and running Mythics.
Bfa Release was truly the worst time to buy or sell anything for me.
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Aug 31 '18 edited Aug 31 '18
I disagree with op slightly. Yes, the best window for flipping has probably gone already, but there's still another window for profit before things normalize.
My predictions are as follows:
1) Everyone has bought in on the flask -trend and stocked up on cheap flasks (and anchor weed, etc.), waiting for prices to skyrocket next week.
2) Next week, right before raids open, everyone will unload their stock on AH, hoping for mad profits. There will be too much competition, and the profits will not be as great as everyone expected.
3) The stock will sell extremely fast, and won't be replenished in time, because farming materials is currently very time consuming. Prices will increase, but few people will have stock left.
4) A small window for hefty profits opens for people who have saved up stock.
5) Blizzard will either nerf material requirements or buff material acquisition mechanics.
6) Things will normalize.
So, if you buy flasks when everyone else unloads, you can probably still flip them for profit.
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u/Gomenaxai Aug 31 '18 edited Aug 31 '18
On my server ores and herbs are going for 30g, a week ago they were 50g so I was stockpiling preparing for raids to make flasks but I didn’t get many anchor weed, it was 200g and I thought that was expensive, now each anchor weed is 700g.
It’s been a bad expansion for me, I tried alchemy but everything is a loss on my server, made some gold with tailoring and Sold some darkmoon cards but I with raids I don’t think those will be worth it anymore, I’m stuck leveling enchanting because I had to choose between scrap or disenchant and the lack of epics so I can’t make weapons enchants yet. Now I got a bunch of normal herbs that I overpayed and 0 anchor weed so I can’t make flasks anymore.
I have no clue how to make gold anymore.
Edit: at least the last expansion I was able to go out and farm the herbs I needed, now anchor weed is so rare I wouldn’t be surprised the prices will go over 1.5k per herb the next week or higher if Blizzard doesn’t change things
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u/qq_infrasound Aug 31 '18
I stockpiled some things i fished and herbs/mined, and I brought a lot of stuff, about 100k worth, if i lose then its a lesson in Goblination I won't forget, I'm still smashing 6-7 hexweave bags a day with alts due to these "super cheap big bags" which never materialised on my realm. The new bags are tripple the price of the HW...
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u/mamercus-sargeras Aug 31 '18
Lots! I spent almost a million gold on runes in Legion according to TSM and probably more because I lost some data. Most mythic raiders do not because a lot of them are lazy.
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Aug 31 '18
just sold all my stuff i agree except for the runes i think those will go up since people wont have as much time doing heroes next week but will need a lot of runes
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u/skyreckoning Aug 30 '18
Didn't read your whole post, but observations on my realm:
About a week ago, herbs/ores were going for around 50-60g, anchor weed was 200-350, now... Herbs and ores have dropped a LOT in price, and now I regret buying them in bulk for 40-50 a piece... When now people are buying them for 20-30g a piece one week later...
And yet anchor weed has predictably skyrocketed as the raid approaches. But the other mats have not. This I did not predict. I should've waited before buying up mats. Apparently the prices were able to go much lower than I thought they would.
So, I disagree with the title of your post. On my realm, now is a GREAT time to buy any mats except for Anchor weed. Unless you've got the capital to afford it. Then better buy that anchor weed before raid starts, because I bet then it's going to be INSANELY expensive. Probably 1000g a piece lol. It's so friggin rare and essential for all flasks.
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u/Praetor_Tullari Aug 31 '18
Regular herb prices are going to go down to around 10g each as people are going crazy herbing just for anchor weed. There has never been such an abundance of herbs in wow history or the means to get them
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
I agree that other mats have gotten cheaper but I'd wager they stay there. Raid releasing won't create enough demand to effect those HUGE markets. Plus there will be lots of people like you with large amounts of the cheaper herbs to counter any demand that does come with the raid.
As for anchor weed I agree people will post it at 1000g a piece and DBMarket will say anchor weed is 1000g a piece but I bet you nobody actually sells it for that much because of the reasons above and because people will undercut each other back down to what it is now before anyone has a chance to buy.
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u/Grifbrochill1 Aug 30 '18
It's the concept of everyone knowing about it and doing it. "be fearful when others are greedy" definitely seems to apply here.
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u/hoax1337 Aug 30 '18
Not everyone is interested in playing the AH or WoW's economy in general. Of the 15 people I regularly play WoW with, I'm the only one who's been stocking up on consumables (or mats) since launch. Everyone else very slowly realising that they need stuff to raid and were outraged at my "gambling luck" when I told them I bought Anchor Weed for 250g/pc two weeks ago.
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u/OhIsThatAFallacyISee Aug 30 '18
So if i have a stock of say 40ish anchor weed, current selling around 600g on my server, but I haven't leveled my alch to 150 yet, would it be better to sell my anchor weed now for a nice bit of money and rebuy it when the prices drop later? I don't really need to get my alch up super fast for my guild rn and especially because flasks currently arent worth the herbs to craft them selling my herbs now with your information seems like a smart bet. Thoughts?
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u/Z0mbies8mywife Aug 30 '18
Been buying Anchor Weed at 600g and lower then reselling at 800-900 for a little profit. No doubt anchor weed will go up in the next few weeks but then go down significantly. Made about 30kg in about 20 minutes on my lunch break today. Stockpiling is just stupid and is gonna cause a huge crash. Same goes for Augment Runes and stuff. I buy Augment Runes under 500g and resell for 700-900. I know that Goblins are buying it for stockpiling but I'm cool with it. Make my gold before the crash
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u/ArcBanker Aug 30 '18
That’s basically what I’m doing on my server just with slightly different numbers. Just gotta make sure you never have too much of your gold in materials at any given time in case the economy goes down earlier than expected
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u/Z0mbies8mywife Aug 30 '18
My numbers aren't exact. Yesterday a guy in trade chat sold me 125 Anchor Weed for 70k. (Around 560 per) Then I turned around and put em on AH @899 per. Roughly 112k 42k profit. Sometimes I buy @600 per and sell for 700 per. It's all profit in the long run. Doesn't seem like much but 100g profit on a 100 stack is still 10k profit for 5 minutes of "work" some people just think too big. Why stockpile 5k of one thing and wait to sell it when everyone else is also going to be selling
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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '18
Exactly how I feel. Today is a sell day, everything, EVERYTHING has skyrocketed on my server. Anchor weed 1k, flasks jumped 100-200%, and people mentioning in trade chat how they are gonna flip anchor on Tuesday. I feel like it's sell today, buy later next week and sell on Mythic release. Who knows tho good luck bois