Monday (14 Mar) - Short Take

Monday (14 Mar) - Short Take

After the "tragic saga" (Lao's comment) of the computers I figured I'd go easy on ya today. It's short with only a little math involved. :P

Wild's plan to get the Best in slot (BiS) druid healing trinket called Darkmoon Card: Tsunami was for Philly to skill up to 525 in her Inscription profession and start making random darkmoon cards. At the same time Happy and Lost would be manning the Horde and Alliance Auction Houses hoping to get lucky on the price of cards being sold. Then Wild read that the typical cost to build a full set of eight cards by random crafting was usually far higher than just buying the Tsunami trinket off the AH. Last week the Tsunami trinket was listed on the AH at anywhere between 22k and 30k. That's in thousands of gold.

So, it wasn't cost feasible for Philly to try to make the cards. I wasn't going to pay over 20k gold for a single piece of gear, either. That left Happy and Lost trying to grab underpriced cards, and the set had to be put together by last Saturday or Wild would have to wait another month for the Darkmoon Fair to come back. Happy and Lost got to work.

Over 4-5 days I learned a lot about darkmoon cards - specifically the Waves set. I learned that the cheapest and most abundant waves cards were the three, four, five and seven. The most expensive were the ace and the eight (ie, the first and last cards in the deck). Wild was very strict with his directions - keep the price of each card under 1200g. Over a couple of days the two AH hounds came up with four cards that met that criteria. Pressed for time, Wild went slightly over 1200g for a fifth card. Then things got really tough. Wild had spent 5354g total on five cards, an average of 1071g per card. That gave Wild a little bit of a cushion, so he loosened the reins, asking for prices that were at least below market value. So far we had the three thru and seven cards. Lost turned up an ace that was 1500g under it's average selling price - the price was still high, but Wild went for it. The eight card was also bought at over a 100g less than the average price. And with time running out and Wild getting impatient he sucked it up and paid market price to get the only two card available. Wild had a full deck of waves cards.

Here are the final prices:

ace - 3500g
two - 1998g
three - 925g
four - 1100g
five - 1098g
six - 999g
seven - 1232g
eight - 2700g

Total cost - 13,552 gold

It's the most expensive thing I've ever bought, but at the same time I easily saved over 7000-10,000g had I just bought it off the AH.

That might get folks to thinking. If I can build a deck for 13-14k, and sell it for 20-25k, that would be a huge profit! Yes it would. But with huge profit comes huge risk. The Darkmoon Fair is only in town one week a month. It's the only time the cards can be turned in and the Tsunami trinket created. During that week I saw as many as six Tsunami trinkets for sale. Most I believe failed to sell, although I'm sure there were a lucky few sellers. There just aren't that many players out there with both the need and the gold to buy it. I think that eventually, over time, it would sell. The question is how long to take in getting the best bargain on individual cards, and then how patient can one be holding a trinket worth several thousands of gold for it to sell?

Wild, of course, equipped his. But Happy is still musing about the potential profit of building a second set.