Sunday 16 December 2012

Flasks - Testing the Market

Flasks & Potions
Just about a week ago, I posted about What to do with Golden Lotuses & came to the conclusion that I should dip my toe into the Flask market. The comments to that post seemed to confirm this so off I went to make some flasks!

Since I wrote that post however, my ever so slow moving Leatherworker finally made it to honoured with the Golden Lotus faction & gained access to the Epic armor recipes. It turns out that what I thought was a good stock of Spirits of Harmony wasn't anywhere near enough so this week, she's been planting Songbell Seeds again, thereby crimping my Golden Lotus herb production!

I thought I'd report back on my market test so far anyway, just so I don't forget.

Over 8 days of planting Enigma Seeds, I gained 47 Golden Lotus - that's almost 6 each day - I like this increased drop rate for sure! Enigma Seeds cost only 1g each so for a total outlay of just 128g & 2 stacks of Crystal Vials, I managed to make 35 flasks & still have 7 Golden Lotus left over. I also only used the other herbs I got from the farm produce - none were bought or herbed. I have quite a few of the other herbs still in my bags too.

I checked the Auction House prices manually & decided to make just 3 of the 5 types of flask to start with. As they sold, I made a few more & also added a few of the other 2 types. As of this morning, I have only 14 flasks left to sell.

I also made 5 Potions of Luck just to see if there was any interest there - not so far but I'll keep listing them as long as their price is above the cost of the Golden Lotuses.

Flasks & Potions Spreadsheet
You can see from the spreadsheet screenshot that so far, my gold made from flasks is over 2500g & as I said earlier, that's with just an initial investment of 128g. So I'd say this was a fairly successful market test but it is a small market & it has taken all week for these few flasks to sell.

To be fair though, I haven't been listing them just before raid time & when I have listed them, I've listed them for 48 hours & walked away. I'm pretty sure, if I had paid more attention to posting times & reposting when undercut, that I would have made that profit more quickly. But this is a side venture for me as I explore various markets to write about & with an eye for future profitable endeavours.

So now what to do? Flasks are showing themselves to be profitable for now but I also need Spirit of Harmony for my leatherworker to craft Epic armour! I guess I'll have to get my DK & Warrior to 90 so I can start expanding their farms! Arrrgghh! more dailies!


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10 comments:

  1. Not a bad extra bit of gold. I am leveling an alchemist myself so will do some flasks too.

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  2. Hmmmm, it's okay I guess, but I think other markets are definitely more profitable.

    What's more, I would definitely like to see a side by side comparison between selling flasks and just selling the raw herbs/lotus on the AH.

    I get a feeling that the latter option might have been more profitable.

    ~2500g for 8 day's farming isn't really knocking my socks off to be honest, but that said, look at the time of year and position in the xpac we're posting - not to mention the time of the week as well?

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    1. Don't forget tho, I still have flasks to sell so that's only 2.5k so far from those 8 days. But yes, I do see your point but if you think of it as 8 x 10 mins then it's pretty good - might be perfect bit of extra for a serious pvp'er for example.

      Golden Lotus are between 65-85g at the moment & most of the other herbs are 2-5g each. It is definitely a close call but I'm sure if I paid attention to raid times etc I could have upped the price received per flask too.

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    3. Perhaps if your Alch spec was flask master, the extra procs could get you over the line?

      The biggest drama on my server is the saturation of flasks.

      My current TUJ snapshot (US-Saurfang) :

      Flask of the Warm Sun (available : 106) (price : 124.97)
      Flask of Winter's Bite (available : 46) (price : 123.49)
      Flask of the Earth (available : 65) (price : 121.28)
      Flask of Spring Blossoms (available : 53) (price : 118.00)
      Flask of Falling Leaves (available : 60) (price : 95.00)

      Golden Lotus (available : 95) (price : 96.79)

      That's a LOT of competition in a small market to consider and whilst all of those listings (besides Falling Leaves) are still green, the margins are very, very small.

      I'd say your results are going to be server dependent, but for me, it's really not worth the effort to actually craft this stuff.

      Your 47 lotus for the week on my server is already at ~4500g and that's not even considering the extra herbs you can throw in on top.

      Any chance you could follow up with a week of just posting up herbs / GL alone and report the difference?

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    4. Hmmm yeah, I could do that for sure but I'm back to planting Songbell seeds for the moment - gotta get my next epic crafted! I'll do a mats selling week after I craft my next epic then :) Although I have to say, quantity of flasks available on my server are definitely lower than yours (30-50 maybe)& the Golden Lotus's are cheaper too

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  3. Forget flasks at the moment - make Invisibility Potions! :)

    Each potion takes 1xGhost Mushroom and 1xSungrass and I sell these in stacks of 5 for 39g PER POTION on my Server. My Alchemist isn't a Potion spec but at 39g per potion the lack of procs doesn't really make any difference.

    I find very little competition for these and they are picked up by Raid teams who are either raiding or, more importantly, running Challenge Mode dungeons.

    Sungrass and Ghost Mushrooms can both be farmed within close proximity of each other - Thousand Needles and Un'Goro Crater respectively. My gatherer Alt has his hearthstone set to Tanaris currently which makes for very easy access to both of the above zones.

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    Replies
    1. Oooh this is a great idea. Problem of course is that now you've said something, everyone will be all over this market in a flash!

      hehe

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  4. that is a great tip Robert! I had zero idea that potion had any real use! Luckily my herber is my unused rogue so I should probably take her to Tanaris & give this a try :) Thank you!

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  5. If your a LW I would look into leg armors. They a 1 spirit and a magnificent hide. On my server I can pull near 1000g for an leg armor. The hides run about 200g lately. That'd still 800g. 3 per 2 days means 2400 every 2 days.

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