Patch 3.2 and Titanium

By now everyone and their grandma has heard about the changes that WoW's patch 3.2 will bring. One of these changes relates to Jewelcrafting, namely that Jewelcrafters will be able to prospect Titanium Ore for epic gems.

You can guess what the result of this announcement was. Everyone started buying Titanium Ore in the hopes of selling it post-patch 3.2 for a huge profit. Those who managed to do so very early, within a few hours of the patch notes, were lucky. They managed to buy the ore cheap (relatively speaking). After this initial buying spree, prices for Titanium Ore obviously skyrocketed. On my server, for example, they went up 300-400%. From 2G per Ore they jumped to 8+ per ore.

Now guess what an important side-effect was. The price of Titanium Bars also went up. True, it didn't triple or quadruple but on my server it doubled.

Many gold-making sites will advise that everyone should buy as much ore as possible. A similar situation happened with patch 3.1. Back then, a wider variety of mats was supposed to skyrocket in price after the patch. I, like many others, stocked up on 10 different types of mats and invested 9000 gold in the process.

Unfortunately, everyone had the same idea, spurred by the advice. After the patch, they all tried to sell their stuff, undercutting each other to the point where most of these mats could be bought for less than previous to the patch. Some people even panicked and flooded the market in an attempt to get rid of their excess stock.

Since I'm a very patient person, I didn't panic. Instead, I kept selling tiny amounts of my stock whenever the price indicated a profit. I'm still selling some of that stuff today, a few months after the patch. But you know what? I've gotten rid of most of my stock, at a profit.

So today, I will attempt to advise you in regards to the Titanium situation. Don't take my word for it. Study the market carefully and make a decision. Knowing the prices of Titanium Ore and Bars before the patch 3.2 notes were announced would be very helpful. I might be wrong. This time, the situation could be slightly different because the Ore will be used for Prospecting. It might be that Jewelcrafters will snap all the ore regardless of the price, provided that the gems obtained from it are worth it.

My advice is to move against the flow. If you have Titanium Ore, try to sell it now at a premium. Or hang on to it in the hopes that it will be worth even more after patch 3.2. In the meantime, there's big bucks that can be made with Titanium Bars.

It so happens that the supply of Titanium Bars has shrunk considerably and that was to be expected. No one wants to convert Ore to bars anymore when they can sell the Ore for a big profit, or hang on to it until the patch. So only a few people are selling Bars now. Furthermore, I've noticed that most people sell these Bars in big stacks, usually 20. Why? I can't imagine.

My strategy here is first of all to sell the bars that I have for a premium, in singles only. Since I bought a lot of Titanium before 3.1, I still have some of that. Heck, now I'm regretting selling it previously for 7G a pop! Now, these bars are going for around 15G each. The thing is, people still need single Bars for various purposes and they would much rather buy an overpriced single Bar than a stack of lower priced Bars.

And that's where I fit in. I will watch the market and whenever I spot cheaper Bars posted in large stacks, I will buy them and relist a few Bars at a time. So far I've made a few hundred gold in 2-3 days by doing this. They sell like hotcakes because demand hasn't dropped, while supply has drastically fallen.

So give this a try. The whole business might be server dependent but I'm guessing higher population servers should share the same pattern. Good luck and drop me a line if this works for you!