Thread: Continue making Darkmoon trinkets?

As Darkmoon Fair 3 has ended I am undecided whether to continue making darkmoon trinkets. Yes, I know that I can just make scrolls and not actually make cards until later. But as a practical matter I need to know now as I will need vastly more herbs if I plan to make cards than I would if I don't plan to make cards.

Situation - I have 12 scribes. For the past fair 11 of them made cards for trinkets (one of them made only a few cards as I was keeping scrolls for an epic BOA stave. I will probably have that one continue making one of the other staves this time).

Darkmoon cards have been very good to me. The cards/trinkets I made for/during Fair 1 ended up netting me (after costs) about 900k gold. The trinkets I made for Fair 2 netted me about 618k gold (note that the last few of those trinkets I actually sold during Fair 3 but I consider them part of my Fair 2 analysis).

For Fair 3, made 37 trinkets. I've sold 10 of them, leaving 27 left to sell.

My cost for the first 24 trinkets I made was 2400g per trinket. The last few trinkets were made using herbs after 5.1 so the cost was closer to 4300g per trinket.

At current herb prices, it will cost me about 3600g per trinket. Herb prices have come down since the end of the fair. Because of the quantity of herbs that I need to make that many cards I have to buy all lower price herbs that I see throughout the next 3 weeks or my costs will rise. That is, herb prices tend to be their lowest in the 2 1/2 weeks right after the end of the fair. So if I want to make cards I must buy herbs now.

Right now, trinkets are still profitable. As of today, I would say sell prices of trinkets (these are net of AH fees) are:

Strength - 17k
Agility - 16k
Caster - 13k
Healing - 16k
Tank - 11k

After Fair 2, the healing trinket actually went up in price about a week after fair end, the other stayed either the same as at end of fair or went down maybe 10%.

My perception is that I am selling trinkets much more briskly now that prices are down. Based upon what I have sold thus far from Fair 3 I've covered my costs for all the trinkets/cards that I made and am at 60k profit thus far. I expect to make another 300-350k for the trinkets that I have left so my net profit for Fair 3 will probably be in the 360k to 400k range which while less than before is still quite profitable.

The question is whether to continue on for the next fair. I'm sure prices will come back some. Tank trinket was briefly under 10k (I didn't offer mine for sale at that point) and caster has gotten near 10k a couple of time. There are several people selling trinkets but I believe that I am the highest volume seller on my realm.

I am thinking that so long as I can make trinkets for under 5k a trinket that I will likely keep making a profit on these and should just carry on. Any thoughts?

It seems like you would still almost tripling your investment with every trinket. I'm new to the trinket market this xpac but I seem to remember them always being for sale at decent prices. I think I would continue until the next tier of raiding starts. People will always need fast gear to get into LFR/raids and trinkets are typically harder to replace, even with valor. If I had your infrastructure in place I think I would continue until I was seeing profits of something more like 2000g/trinket. At that point I would start to reconsider whether the time spent selling them was still worth it. That is, unless you find something more profitable to do with your 11 scrolls/day. Or if you see the market just completlely dry up, but i don't see that happening for at least another fair or three.

VP trinkets used to be pretty bad and DMF trinkets as an entry level trinket for alts kept their profitability through whole expansion (though there was a question of GPH as milling is pretty time consuming). New 5.1 VP trinkets are very nice (and they are 496), I think alt market for DMF trinkets will be less active than it used to be, so GPH will drop faster then in previous xpacks. Plus MoP is very alt unfriendly in general, and a lot of players reduced number of actively playing toons.

I would think that due to a lot of free time around xMas and school break next DMF should be more or less good for trinks with significant drop soon after it.

I think it's pretty much a no brainer. As long as they continue to sell, and you are turning a profit keep with it. I would imagine that in some form they should be viable until at least the 496 valor trinkets are bumped down to justice points. As with everything though it all depends on the demand of your server. As long as you can sell them keep making them.

Originally Posted by Eladmiri

That is, unless you find something more profitable to do with your 11 scrolls/day. Or if you see the market just completlely dry up, but i don't see that happening for at least another fair or three.

That's the thing. There really is nothing more profitable to do with scrolls. You can make cards. You can make off-hands. However, they have been way less profitable than trinkets (I've made a couple) and they go down in value faster than trinkets. Otherwise, you can use to make the 3 BOA staves (I'm making one today and will probably make at least one other). The only other use of scrolls is to sell the CD.

Therefore, it doesn't seem likely that there were ever be any more profitable use of scrolls unless some new use of scrolls is created. However, there could come a time when herbs could be used more profitably or the profit from the trinkets wasn't worth the time (the time investment is not in selling the trinkets but in buying and milling the herbs).

I still find trinkets to be extremely profitable. Over the last two faires the prices seemed to hold pretty steady, but with this last one I found that supply dropped dramatically.

I ended up with 32 trinkets this time around, and I'll probably wait about a week to sell them. Even if they go at the current prices on my server (hoping to see a small increase as supply dwindles) I'm still looking at pulling in around 400k, off a roughly 75k investment. (assuming 30g/stack * 10 stacks per card) Can't complain about that.

Don't know what it is like on other servers but with mine I just sell shoulder enchants for about 900g each, they are selling faster, and I sell them when it's not the DMF, the price per ink is about what I would get if I sold cards or decks.

I would be careful making DM cards, on my realm i struggle to sell them for 6k per deck, and my realm is a low pop one.

These last 2 posts are good examples of how you have to look at your individual realm. While I occasionally make inscriptions if I have spare ink inscriptions here typically sell in the 200s, sometimes dipping lower or briefly higher.

And Aestysu if trinkets start going for 6k I would have to look very closely at costs and alternatives before deciding whether to keep doing trinkets.