Make hundreds of gold with Shadowgem

I will now reveal one of my biggest gold making secrets. Well, it's not that big. In fact, if taken by itself it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

However, I do believe strongly in diversification. What this means, in a nutshell, is that one should try to cover as many niches of the gold-making market as possible. Yes, you can certainly concentrate on the big money makers such as glyphs or gems but there's strong competition in those quarters and the stronger the competition, the lower your profits.

Thus, it's a good idea to spread your business to all reaches of the gold-making trade.

Playing the auction house is one of the big ways in which players make gold in World of Warcraft. Well, this technique is taken for granted by many, yet some still have trouble understanding how it works. One of the most obvious ways to play the auction house is to buy low and sell high. How does this apply to Shadowgem?

Many months ago I noticed that very often there were very cheap Shadowgem posted on the AH. On other occasions, the prices would be much higher by orders of magnitude. This disparity is what prompted me to keep a watchful eye on the Shadowgem market. From then on, I added this technique to my gold-making portfolio.

My technique is simple: I will buy any amount of Shadowgem under 1 gold and sell it for much more. I usually sell for 1.5 gold and up. Often I sell for over 2 gold and sometimes for upward of 4 gold. Each. Sometimes people are selling these for a few silver a piece and I cackle madly when I buy them. It's insane!

Over time I made hundreds of gold by selling Shadowgem. Sometimes there's a lot of supply and not much demand so the prices stay low for many days. Eventually they always jump up again. I've found that often I can safely create 48 hour auctions at a price of around 1.5 gold a piece because the deposit is extremely low and usually they sell in that period.

So why the hell do people need so much Shadowgem? It's a very low level item that should be very cheap, yet it isn't. I've puzzled over this for some time but I didn't bother to figure it out because I was too lazy and I didn't care a lot. One day I decided to check and it is as I suspected. The biggest use for Shadowgem is for leveling Jewelcrafting. People need about 40 of them to craft Gloom Band and another 20 to craft Ring of Twilight Shadows. That's at least 3 stacks of Shadowgem for every leveling jewelcrafter.

I'm selling these as singles but after realizing what they are used for, I am going to try to sell them in stacks of 10 and 20. Here's the trick though. Someone might buy a cheaper stack of 20 because they know they need 20 for leveling. After they use them, they might find out that they still need a few singles so they will generally pay any amount for those singles since they don't want to spend all the cash for another stack of 20. So generally you can get away with selling singles at a higher price than stacks of 10 or 20.

I'm predicting that in Cataclysm there will be high demand for Shadowgem, at least in the first few weeks, as people try to level their Jewelcrafting. You might want to stock up on a few stacks yourself. I've got plenty.