Monday, October 4, 2010

Is The Jewelcrafting Daily Even Worth Doing Anymore?

Trying to Save A Dying Market?

Market Flop
The cut gem market has been plummeting and soon the alchemy cooldown will be removed from epic gem transmutes.  This will lower the value of uncut gems even further, which will in turn drop the value and profits from selling cut gems.  Once cataclysm arrives, all of our gems will become nearly obsolete as players getting new gear will be looking for the best cuts.  The wrath cuts will be replaced with the new Cataclysm cuts.  Is the jewelcrafting daily even worth doing anymore since these cuts will be obsolete soon, the market is crashing, and competition this late in the expansion is rather fierce?

Market Flux
Yes, the daily is still an excellent and easy way to obtain Jewelcrafting Tokens, but spend them wisely.  Many people have turned to just switching them to Dragon's Eyes and selling them on the auction house.  The value of these has dropped as well.  Cross check the Dragon's Eyes new low price with the value of Nightmare Tears and see if you can profit off of the tears on Tuesdays.

What I have been doing is spending my tokens on rare and epic patterns for the jewelry.  Most of the jewelry is selling for good profits still and also has become a way for me to get rid of some of the rare gems I have accumulated.  At this point I don't recommend buying epic gem patterns because they are only going to drop in value.  With the increase of people trying out PvP, Arenas, and playing lots of alternate characters, the value of the leveling, PvP gear, and Fresh 80s items has not dropped with the gem market.

What To Buy?
If you are singing the crashed JC market blues, then check the values of the jewelry on your server.  Go ahead and run those jewelcrafting dailies and buy up some jewelry patterns.  These leveling items will hold their value much longer than the gems.  The jewelry tends to sell better on the weekends, when more people are on and more alts are being played.  Try it out.  DPS and Tanking jewelry is a good place to start.  Then add in PvP jewelry and caster jewelry.  These are definately better profits than the current cut gem market is yielding at this time.  And the jewelry patterns don't use epic gems at all, so you are free to continue in that market if you like.  This is an example of diversifying, even though it is still within the same profession.  Also selling crafted jewelry gives you another option instead of placing all you eggs in one basic.  Speaking of eggs, don't miss out on yesterday's post.


  1. At least on my server, the JC market is still worth it. I took a long break from WOW, and when I came back (about a month and a half ago) I finished pushing my DK alt's JC to 450. Having done so, it's been the best moneymaker by far, even w/o an alchemy alt to help provide epic gems. Just buying the uncut gems off of the AH or from /trade nets me about 20-30 gold per gem profit, with the occasional 70-80 outliers. I may have missed out on the JC heyday for Wraith, but it's still good money.

  2. When you have auction house campers and auto-post semi-botters undercutting you within minutes, it gets hard to make a profit regardless of the prices. You can have super low production costs, but if you never sell anything its pointless. All it does it eat away at your reserves by wasting money on AH Fees.

  3. Funnily enough, you just described the inscription market on my server - I had been making money using inscription before the break, but when I came back, there were so many scribes, and my glyphs were undercut so quickly, that it wasn't worth it (I do have a fairly large bet that when 4.0.1 hits I'll be able to sell lots of glyphs for massive profits, but that's another story.)

    Meanwhile, there's fairly little JC competition on my server, so when I say I make that much on the cut gems, I'm selling about 80% of the gems I post each day, even with a post and forget strategy. It really points out that you need to look at YOUR server, and see what works there at any given time, since each is very different.

