Herb Market Rising

As a Scribe and market speculator one of the things I check on regularly in the Auction House is herbs. Specifically the 3 highest varieties: Lichbloom, Icethorn and Adder's Tongue. I chose to limit myself to these although I'm sure there are others that can make you a lot of gold.

You might recall an article I wrote a short while back called Flippin' Lichbloom. The gist of it is that over the past few weeks I've been buying cheap Lichbloom and stocking up on it in the hopes of flipping it back for more "normal" prices.

You see, I have a certain idea of what a "normal" price is for these herbs as it applies to my particular server. This knowledge comes from months of watching prices ebb and flow. Here's what these 3 types of herbs usually sell for on my server.

Adder's Tongue and Icethorn are both the same as far as Inscription is concerned. I will always buy the cheapest of the two.
Low price: <= 14 gold a stack, sometimes (but not often and not for long) can go down to 10 gold a stack Normal price: 16 gold a stack
High price: > 17-18 gold a stack

As you can imagine, everything that goes for the "normal" price will be purchased instantly by Scribes. These days I only buy whatever goes at or below 14G/stack because sometimes there are simply too many stacks posted by farmers and I don't wanna buy a ton at 16G only to find a zillion other stacks at 12G later.

Lichbloom, being the highest level herb in the current expansion, sells for more. As a Scribe I don't use it because I can make more gold (and more importantly, guaranteed) by flipping it.
Low price: <= 20 gold a stack Normal price: around 22 gold a stack
High price: whatever's above 22-24 gold

As I was saying, for the past weeks I've been buying cheap (I mean really cheap) Lichbloom. Stacks and stacks of it. I've had to mail lots of it to alts due to lack of space in my banks. The price was so low that if it never went up again, I could still turn a profit just by using it for my Inscription needs.

My scheme here was to keep the Lichbloom until patch 3.3 hits and then sell it since I'm sure it will be in high demand once lots of people start raiding again.

All of a sudden, things have changed. Up until this morning these 3 types of herbs were going for the usual amounts, i.e. very cheap. When I got home from work I was surprised to see Adder's Tongue and Icethorn at 20 gold a stack and Lichbloom at 22 or over. I was like, WTF??

And then it hit me. MMO Champion just posted an article today which kinda-sorta hints that patch 3.3 will hit next week. As a result, the obvious happened: people started stocking up on herbs, the way the normally do: at the 11th hour.

What did I do? I started slowly selling my Lichbloom. It's currently moving nicely at around 22 gold per stack. Considering I bought it at not more than 17 gold a stack, that's a 5 gold profit. Not bad. I guess I could wait for the patch in the hopes of prices going up even farther but somehow I don't feel like risking it. If others have the same idea it will happen the way it always does: too much supply and not enough demand which will bring prices down again.

As for patch 3.3, I too believe it's gonna hit a week from today, on the 8th of December.