What's Going on With Rare Gems?

If your server is anything like mine (and from what I've been hearing, it probably is), rare gems are going for next to nothing, as are the rare gem cuts. While some still hold decent value (Delicate Inferno Ruby), others (Solid Ocean Sapphire) are selling for laughably small amounts. Thankfully, profit can be made because plenty of the cuts still sell for more than the raw mats, but profit margins can be quite slim at times, even to the point where it really doesn't seem worth it.

So what's going on? Given that the stats on these are significantly better than even epic LK gems, one would expect them to sell for a lot more too. But that doesn't seem to be the case, as prices just keep dropping and dropping. The funny thing is, I don't think the prices have anything to do with what players are willing to pay for the gems. My guess is that a combination of over-prospecting and the "I farmed it, so it's free" mentality are causing sellers to severely undervalue what these gems are worth.



Even someone who casually prospects ore will quickly realize that Obsidium gives more greens, and Elementium gives more rares. And since prospecting for the greens is by itself amazingly profitable, if you prospect enough ore, you're going to wind up with a lot of extra blue gems. Mining also gives you a chance to pick up some rare gems from nodes, so if you mine a lot of ore (and this certainly seems to be the case for a lot of people), you're also going to get a decent amount of blue gems. This explains why most of the raw gems are so cheap; high supply, people dump them in the AH, and they're gradually undercut down because not enough people are buying gems off the AH, seeing as they have so many left over from prospecting.

Theoretically, this should also explain the low prices for rare cuts in the AH. Lower mat costs means lower threshold where you can still make profit, so people can keep undercutting each other while waiting for the gems to sell, and if they don't sell fast enough, the undercutting will cascade toward the bottom. The strange thing is, at least on my server this does not seem to be the case. Gems sell quite quickly for me, sometimes even selling out of a cut before I have time to cut more to replace them! The problem is, people on my server do not undercut smartly. I can go to almost any cut, look at the prices, and guarantee you that someone has undercut their next highest seller by 20g or more. And it's not uncommon to see someone undercut that price by an equally large margin! So what might start as a 150g cut has been reduced to 70g by just a few sellers. And this is where I get lost trying to figure out what people are thinking.

To be fair, undercutting your competition by just a few silver isn't always the best plan if your competition has her goods priced way above market value and what reasonable people normally pay. In that case, it is necessary to undercut somewhat severely so you can actually sell your stuff. But the thing is, people are willing to pay quite a bit for these gems! On a few occasions, I have pounced on some rare cuts markets that had only a few gems listed, bought them out, and re-listed at much more than the were. For example, I bought out four Ember Shadowspirit Diamonds at 250g each, and re-listed at 500g. Same with Reckless Ember Topaz: bought for 60g, put up for 200g. And you know what? They sold, and they sold rather quickly. And less than twelve hours later, people had crashed the market right back down to where it was before.

So again, what is going through these people's heads? Why undercut by such a huge margin when a slight undercut will do just as well and get you, and everyone else, more gold? Why limit your own earning potential? My guess is that to these guys any gold is good. They probably also farm and prospect their own ore, and just really don't care about making what the gems are really worth. They probably think, quite wrongly, that farming it makes it free, so they can price it at whatever they want with no repercussions. Or maybe, and this is the strangest of all, they're just not as greedy as I am.

And there you have it. My little rant and theory on why the gem market is so messed up right now. Unfortunately, while I can complain about it, I'm not sure what to do about it. Gaining absolute control could work, but I fear that more will be posted than one can reasonably hope to flip for profit. Maybe we just have to take it as it is, and do what we can. And meanwhile make gold hand-over-fist through the shuffle :)