The Right Time For The Deal

   In the business world, the timing of your undertaking into a certain market is one of the most important things. Well World Of Warcraft happens to work the same way. What i mean is quite simple, as in the real world, in WoW you need to be able to scope out the supply/need of given goods, then assess the situation and see if there's a way to take a bit of the over supply of one good and make it into goods that are in low supply. But enough about economics, i don't want to make this sound like a econ class, so lets get down to the WoW part of this whole thing.

   As it just happens, now we are in the perfect spot to take advantage of this strategy i have been using for a long, long time now. Before i go even deeper, let me make it clear that for this strategy to have the full profit making potential, you will need to have a Jewelcrafter, and preferably some of the WOTLK gem patterns. Now would be the place where you start asking why?  Well, that perfect spot i was just talking about, that's the pre patch period when everyone is capped on justice points and valor points. What this means is that you can find people trying to monetize on their excess points by any means possible, it's better to get anything then nothing right. Well this is where you come in.

     You have a choice, you can either try and do what almost everyone is doing, or you can play it smart and make triple that gold or even more. Here is how it all works.

   In Dalaran you will find a Justice vendor selling all kinds of goods, but among all those now worthless items are the WOTLK uncut epic gems, and behold they are only 220 justice points. So what this does is, it's opening up a kind of a exchange office for justice. Now first thing you would think is that those gems are pretty much worthless because we have Cataclysm  gems, but you would be wrong. Epic WOTLK gems are still a very much sought after commodity, mainly from people twinking out their alts, or by people leveling up their alts, it doesn't matter which ones, they all need gems.

   So at this vendor you can exchange your justice points for gems, or you can turn towards the troll cave (trade channel). Taking the latter would require just a hint of imagination for a catchy macro, and you will be swarmed with people whispering you trying to sell you their justice points. ( Are you capped on justice points, are you sick and tired of killing and plundering and getting nothing out of it because you are capped. Well whisper me and i will buy your justice points ) Another thing worth mentioning would be that, you are going to need another macro in which you will explain how to do it, because you will get gazillion whispers asking you how are you going to buy their justice points. This is also the part where you will need a way to get people to Dalaran, so being a mage, or having a friend of yours tag along and teleport people around is useful.

   Now that we got the where, out of the way, it's time to get on the what part. Two of the most used epic gems, and the biggest sellers are the Cardinal Ruby and the King's Amber .  The first one is the obvious one because it's the pure stats one, and the second one holds the +crit and the +resiliance buff which are both a great seller. What i've done in the past is, i have all those raw gems in a shopping list and whenever i would see them for less then 100g i would buy them out, cut them and repost them back for 195, and i would love it every time when i were to see them posted for prices like 20-30g. So if you are looking for some kind of a base line, check the prices on your AH, if someone has posted them for cheap (under 100g) buy them out and cut them. If you don't have a jewelcrafter it doesn't matter, buy them anyways and repost them at a higher price, and the person looking to buy one cut, will buy your raw gem and try the trade channel for someone to cut it for him. What i usually do is i pay 400g to someone for 1100 justice points (5 gems) and i end up selling them for 195g each which racks up nearly 1000, so there's 150% profit margin.

Before we head out, while you are still in Dalaran you might want to check out Frozo the Orb Trader. This is that crazy gnome flying on a carpet because he's too cheap to buy a mount. But crazy gnome aside, he's another exchange office kind of guy where he can turn those, usually, very cheap Frozen Orbs into things of a greater value like the Eternals or the Crusader Orbs (demand is very very limited). So while you are here, give ol' Frozo a check, and check the prices on Frozen Orbs as well as the Eternals and see if there's space for your profits in there.

   So there we are for now, we saw how to "help" people get rid of their excess justice points and make profit from it, we saw which gems we should keep an eye out and we saw a gnome.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.