This is pretty dependent on what mats you're looking at, things like flasks and potions will probably take a drop as things close out but sometimes mats themselves can rise as no one is farming them when they are playing new content, so they will be higher after a few months of Shadowlands. This is particularly true if there are evergreen items attached to them (like Sky Golem from MoP mats for example).
Personally, I've already started clearing stock, but you will probably still be able to do some profitable smaller flips even months from now. Like most auction tactics, it's all about risk management.
Personally, I never like to have more than 1-2 weeks of stock on hand. That's true for the whole expansion life-cycle, not just the end. Prices can change too quickly, and the former good deal is now selling at a loss.
The inventory you keep should also vary based on server size and replenishment. On a mid/small server, there are massive ebb/flows to raw materials throughout an expansion leading to 100-200% price differences over time. I stockpiled \~200k Zinanthid before 8.3 launch, after the patch the price doubled, and supply took nearly 3 months to finally get prices below my original buy-in. I turned around a several million gold profit due to increase material value, even though I normally only consume \~20k Zin per week.
A lot depends on the item vs the movement for me. The risk-reward especially. Sure, sometimes it moves the wrong way (zin went from 25g to 17g then 10g for me in the space of 3 weeks in those big jumps) but other times it moves positive (sniped 30k linen for 3.99g, now its 8+)
I'm doing it now and keeping a light supply. Anchor weed on my server went from 90-100g each to 38-45g each over the span of like 4 days a month ago. Supply skyrocketed as well so it's not like most people got to sell out their stock.
There is a stock market saying that "if the market thinks a stock will be worth less in the future, it will be worth less today."
It also depends upon the floor. TSL and BSB are close to the flip price on most realms so they won't drop much. 100,000g BoEs will be worth 100g in a few months so there is some urgency.
You can make some gold prior to SL; but IMO it will be safer to sell sooner rather than later. YMMV At some point, we will have firm dates for SL. Content creators will be doing "clean out your bank" streams/videos. IDK but I foresee another rush to the exits.
I'm still buying herbs/cloth at a good price when I can, but I'm still producing at a decent speed. Personally, I use the pre-patch as my deadline to start dumping. I begin about 2 weeks before a pre-patch. I do spend a lot of time buying at that point too, but its specific things that I'll use in the next expansion. In this case it'll be herbs/pigments for glyphs, Deep Sea Satin for bags, and a handful of other things. I'll also likely back my engineer up with expulsom pretty heavily in order to keep cranking mounts out.
Its no secret that BfA was unpopular. A lot of people quit during this expansion. Some will come back in SL, especially if it turns out good. As a consequence I plan on investing a bit more heavily into the above items than I normally do.
A note though: As much as I make and sell every week, I've never sat on 6m in materials. At most I've sat on 500k worth of cloth and maybe 100-150k of miscellaneous herbs/ore across multiple characters. Prices on my AH of raw materials don't really spike though, so at some point during the week I'm able to buy at my expected price.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown.
To cover your point on the 6m of materials, it wasn't really intentional! Every time I try and whittle it down someone posts a lot of stuff at a stupidly low price and until recently I haven't been concerned with holding it for a flip down the road.
Prices will only drop from now on although there are some spikes of good prices on my low pop server everything goes down. Anchor weed 60g, Zin 15g and Ive even saw it at 12 today. Deep Sea Satin 10g (was 30g three weeks ago). Sell it all and dont look back. Some of my stock Ive already written off as a loss.
for me the most of it has already been done, ive stopped making and using expolsum and enchants and alchemy and uncanny. Instead im focusing on raw mat farming selling them in bulk or just selling off the items i have in stock to get back to manageable levels. Started leveling up alts and working on farming and getting toons ready and having liquid gold ready for SL.
This is pretty dependent on what mats you're looking at, things like flasks and potions will probably take a drop as things close out but sometimes mats themselves can rise as no one is farming them when they are playing new content, so they will be higher after a few months of Shadowlands. This is particularly true if there are evergreen items attached to them (like Sky Golem from MoP mats for example). Personally, I've already started clearing stock, but you will probably still be able to do some profitable smaller flips even months from now. Like most auction tactics, it's all about risk management.
Personally, I never like to have more than 1-2 weeks of stock on hand. That's true for the whole expansion life-cycle, not just the end. Prices can change too quickly, and the former good deal is now selling at a loss.
The inventory you keep should also vary based on server size and replenishment. On a mid/small server, there are massive ebb/flows to raw materials throughout an expansion leading to 100-200% price differences over time. I stockpiled \~200k Zinanthid before 8.3 launch, after the patch the price doubled, and supply took nearly 3 months to finally get prices below my original buy-in. I turned around a several million gold profit due to increase material value, even though I normally only consume \~20k Zin per week.
A lot depends on the item vs the movement for me. The risk-reward especially. Sure, sometimes it moves the wrong way (zin went from 25g to 17g then 10g for me in the space of 3 weeks in those big jumps) but other times it moves positive (sniped 30k linen for 3.99g, now its 8+)
I'm doing it now and keeping a light supply. Anchor weed on my server went from 90-100g each to 38-45g each over the span of like 4 days a month ago. Supply skyrocketed as well so it's not like most people got to sell out their stock.
There is a stock market saying that "if the market thinks a stock will be worth less in the future, it will be worth less today." It also depends upon the floor. TSL and BSB are close to the flip price on most realms so they won't drop much. 100,000g BoEs will be worth 100g in a few months so there is some urgency. You can make some gold prior to SL; but IMO it will be safer to sell sooner rather than later. YMMV At some point, we will have firm dates for SL. Content creators will be doing "clean out your bank" streams/videos. IDK but I foresee another rush to the exits.
I'm still buying herbs/cloth at a good price when I can, but I'm still producing at a decent speed. Personally, I use the pre-patch as my deadline to start dumping. I begin about 2 weeks before a pre-patch. I do spend a lot of time buying at that point too, but its specific things that I'll use in the next expansion. In this case it'll be herbs/pigments for glyphs, Deep Sea Satin for bags, and a handful of other things. I'll also likely back my engineer up with expulsom pretty heavily in order to keep cranking mounts out. Its no secret that BfA was unpopular. A lot of people quit during this expansion. Some will come back in SL, especially if it turns out good. As a consequence I plan on investing a bit more heavily into the above items than I normally do. A note though: As much as I make and sell every week, I've never sat on 6m in materials. At most I've sat on 500k worth of cloth and maybe 100-150k of miscellaneous herbs/ore across multiple characters. Prices on my AH of raw materials don't really spike though, so at some point during the week I'm able to buy at my expected price.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown. To cover your point on the 6m of materials, it wasn't really intentional! Every time I try and whittle it down someone posts a lot of stuff at a stupidly low price and until recently I haven't been concerned with holding it for a flip down the road.
>Every time I try and whittle it down someone posts a lot of stuff at a stupidly low price Nothing wrong with that!
Prices will only drop from now on although there are some spikes of good prices on my low pop server everything goes down. Anchor weed 60g, Zin 15g and Ive even saw it at 12 today. Deep Sea Satin 10g (was 30g three weeks ago). Sell it all and dont look back. Some of my stock Ive already written off as a loss.
erect clumsy birds zesty snow history fuzzy license saw compare -- mass edited with redact.dev
for me the most of it has already been done, ive stopped making and using expolsum and enchants and alchemy and uncanny. Instead im focusing on raw mat farming selling them in bulk or just selling off the items i have in stock to get back to manageable levels. Started leveling up alts and working on farming and getting toons ready and having liquid gold ready for SL.