The Vendor Trash Gold Guide (20,000g/week from Grays)

     Hey there, gold makers! Today I'm going to be sharing a little secret with you that I've had in my goldmaking routine for a while now, and have been using to bring in an extra 20,000g to 30,000g per week. I've had fun, but it's time to share the magic. Turns out, you can make gold, and a ton of it, just by selling vendor grays for ridiculous prices on the Auction House.

Farewell, Gnimo! We won't be needing you anymore.

      Initially, I just put everything into a 1,000 gold group, and things sold. But then, either on a whim or out of curiosity, I started testing and came up with the price discrimination setup you see below. Price discrimination is where charge more for the same thing, but if someone can pay more and is willing to, you might as well let them, right? (Think Airplane tickets, some people pay $400 while some pay $199. Same flight).  I'm sure the specific numbers would vary depending on the server size, but the whole point of this is capitalizing on curiosity and accidental purchases.

     Open world farming is awful for grays, so head to dungeons. If you're farming just for grays, then I only recommend doing 1 run of each of the following six instances, but if you're also going for cloth, mats, and transmog, then go ahead and do 3-5 of each of these, although be warned that multiple runs of six dungeons will take a while. Otherwise, it's pretty quick. The goal of this route is a shotgun approach; you're not going to get all of one kind, but you're going to get a few from each expansion's vendor list. (i.e. Most of the vendor greys from the Wrath of the Lich King have a "Frozen/Frigid/Frost XXX" theme)

Also, the Crochet Hat looks amazing if you're a fisherman.

     Each of the following dungeons will require at least 40 free bag slots, so have room. To start head off to Deadmines located in Southern Westfall, then run Uldaman in northern Badlands, and then head over to Zul'Farrak which you can get to easiest from the Uldum portal. After you mail your ZF stuff in Gadgetzan, MAKE SURE to do the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj located in Silithus. One run through there will usually net about 20 unique vendor greys! Follow that up with Tempest Keep: Botanica out in eastern Netherstorm (it's the northern ship) and Halls of Lighning in Storm peaks.

      I avoid Mist of Pandaria and Cata content just because the vendor loot there are things that people see or remember, and therefore recognize as trash, whereas some of this is less recognizable, and when you post it for 3,000g, has the same effect as things like the Ruby Shades, which sell regularly for 17,000g, despite being white items. It makes people wonder, "Is this something being taken out of the game? What the heck, I have 300k gold."

     One last thought before I share my TradeSkillMaster Import lists. If you're a terrible person, you can set the Codex of Greater Heal and similar items at the same prices as the corresponding glyphs on your realm and unfortunate newbies will buy them. [Go to the Crafting tab of TSM, the nuts and bolts icon, click on materials, scroll down until you find Codex of Greater Heal, and then right click and enter in dbmarket(item:21284) ] made a decent chunk off this until my conscience got the better of me. Better to just post them for 1,000g as "Memories of Yesteryear's Patches." People still buy. (meh, probably still newbie mistakes)

TSM 2.0 Import Group Items
1. Vendor 1000 gold
     This group is your run of the mill items. Wicked Claw, Troll Sweat, and Protective Pavise. Fun or good looking items, but nothing you would write home for. For all of these, keep a post cap of 1, a high minimum price 50% of each groups normal price, and have a maximum of about 50% over. So, for this group my setup is 595g min, 995g normal, 1595g max. It's still somewhat arbitrary, play around on your server's economy.

11384,11385,11391,11392,11394,11395,13824,1504,1506,1507,1520,18222,18223,18224,18512,19938,21222,21224,21225,21281,21284,21285,21287,21289,21297,21299,21302,21307,22525,25374,25375,25376,25377,25397,25399,25418,25421,25426,25428,33424,33426,36801,3779,3780,3784,3785,3793,3794,3800,3802,3804,3806,3950,39513,3962,3964,3966,3967,3968,3986,4017,4021,4022,4023,4093,4582,4784,4787,4867,5114,6293,7073,8146,8747,90792

2. Vendor 2000 gold
     Here, you have the same general level of mediocrity as group 1, but these are either a little bit cooler looking, a little bit cooler sounding, or they're rarer/harder to get.

11404,13819,21226,2215,25380,25403,25404,3300,33368,33370,33379,33382,33383,33398,33400,33401,33402,33414,33415,33417,33422,33423,33425,33428,33429,33434,33436,3809,3811,39209,39210,39512,4025,43852

3. Vendor 3000 gold
     I reserve this group for the best pieces - the quality junk that people will really go for, and even though the 2000 gold group is my largest, I get a higher percentage of sales from this group. This is mainly composed of items that would be great transmog gear if you could transmog grays. As such, they're mainly RP items. Things like the Red Defias Mask are fabulous sellers and I'll consistantly sell at least one of those a week. You can find it in Deadmines.

11386,11393,1495,1498,1513,1514,21223,25341,25345,25347,25348,25357,25360,25363,25391,25393,25400,25402,3782,3786,3787,3936,3938,3940,3941,4018,56035,67407,7997,8151,8749,8751,9242

     That's all, good luck in your farming and let me know how you do!

Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can follow me on Twitter here and Twitch here. My YouTube channel is growing and has lots of great guides over here. I recommend that all goldmakers download the TSM Suite and the UndermineJournalGE addon for all goldmakers. You can read my setup guide if you'd like. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

Yep, this was the best April Fools Day trick I could muster. Funny thing is, you'll still make 20,000g-50,000g from transmog, rare items, and battle pets if you do this run that I "made up" for this April Fools day gag, because it's actually what I use for farming a large of diverse gear from multiple ranges. (I try and take care of my readers even when I play a joke on em) Thanks for reading and good luck! 4-2

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Explaining Inscription Arbitrage (Glypher to 80!)

I think I can officially say that I'm an altoholic now. Funny thing is, I've only ever considered myself to have had one toon, my warrior. I leveled my bear when I found out about the JC/Enchanting shuffle, and he got raid geared somehow. And today, got my priest to 80 finally after discovering inscription arbitrage a while back. But I officially have 3 toons over 80! :)

C'mon...she's a Draenei, how was I supposed to xmog her?

Oh what was that, you ask? What is inscription arbitrage?

Well, arbitrage is just a fancy word for taking money and making more money with zero risk. Buying low and selling high on the AH (or the stock market) is not arbitrage because there is risk involved: prices can fall, people might not buy, or you might repost so many times that posting fees are more than your profit. However, an example of arbitrage is finding something on the AH that vendors for more that you could buy it for. In short, it means absolutely zero-risk profit, however minimal that profit is. Auctioneer has a search function for this (oddly it's not the one titled "Arbitrage;" that tool is for cross-faction trading, which is not true arbitrage. It's the "Vendor" one.) This is also a great way to get start-up cash for a fresh toon on a new server.

Arbitrage at its purest. Immaculate Scepter: Bid-23g. Vendor-26g.  

The Inscription arbitrage, the one I leveled my priest for, is pretty awesome, has been around since 5.0 launch day, and in essence, sets a price floor on the price of herbs. It keeps them in check and ensures that herbalism is always a profitable profession. It's not new, but it's a great tool if you aren't aware of it.

The way it works: any time herb prices drop below 1g 50s per herb, inscriptionists can mill the herbs, turn them into inks, and then craft any of the blue shoulder enchants. The cool thing is that rather than auctioning them, you vendor them since their vendor price is so high. You'll come out making a little bit or a decent amount more than you started with, depending on whether you're in a level 25 guild or not.
Note: As of 5.3 this strategy no longer works. Shoulder enchants vendor price have been reduced from 18g to 1.8g. Whamp whamp.
 Best thing is that you don't have to deal with the hassel of auctioning, so it's immediate profit. The gravy, or arguably the main course, is that you'll have several stacks of Starlight ink out of the deal. As you can tell from the link, these sell for between 50g and 150g each, so a stack is about 1000-3000g. Wowhead claims that the milling yield for misty pigment is a 25% chance at between 1-3 (24%, 0.6%, 0.6%, respectively). In short, blah blah blah "expect about 1 Starlight ink per stack you buy."

Shh. get on with it.

So, in order to do this, you need to have an inscriptionist at lvl 80 with inscription at lvl 540. 

My results:

Over the course of my leveling, I've scanned the AH while waiting on Tank queues and was able to buy 150 stacks of green tea leaves at between 1.5g and 2.0g. I use TradeSkillMaster Destroyer, with even stacks unchecked, it's a great search tool that puts all the herbs in one place. While, I had some rain poppy and other miscellaneous herbs, really, the green tea was exactly 150 stacks: 3000 herbs on the button. How perfect was that for testing?!

I did this in two milling sessions, and must have crafted something that required starlight ink out of boredom unfortunately, because the numbers there just seem off, but in all, the test was a success. She milled 107 misty pigments, which I split and posted half as ink and half as pigments, for a total of about 7500g. She also crafted 248 shoulder enchants, which vendored for 4,600g.

Revenue

     Pigment     7383g

     Enchant     4649g

     Total                   12032g

Cost         (150x40g)

                                (6000g)

Profit                        6032g

ROI= 101%

There's a really interesting lesson here though that I haven't read anywhere else. If I want to do this long term, and assuming I can find buyers/uses for starlight ink, I am willing to pay much much more than 1.5 for herbs. Granted, it's goes out of the realm or classic arbitrage beyond that price point, but call me a greedy risk taker. In fact, from the ROI above we know that, combined with the cost assumption that I paid 2g/herb (that's the "150x40g" thing), I'm willing to pay 100% more than that, or 4g per herb, which, although ridiculous sounding for green tea leaves makes sense when you consider the idea that, with this process, every stack of herbs gives you one free starlight ink. In short, the question everyone should be asking is, "how much more would I pay for a stack of herbs if every stack gives me a free rare Ink?"

Anyways, hope this helps and gives perspective, and when looking at my numbers, please remember that my pigment/rare ink numbers were about 50% less than what they should have been, for whatever reason. i.e. I was expecting an ROI of about 160%.

Don't level at 3AM. Your scribe eats your ink.