stack up mats (gems) till 3.5 (ruby sanct) or sell what you can sell?

As the title says ... over the last 2 weeks my gem (transmute / cut) business is really slow. I manage to sell everything, but still it takes way too much effort (way too much on the AH so they undercut for mad, means there is less selling volume). Now I'm more or less sitting on a decent pile of gold, but i want to maximize every opportunity to make more gold. Since I'm not playing long enough I'd like to hear your plans.

Will you guys stock mats to make a big sell when the ruby sanctum goes live and people will change gear again. Or do you sell what you can in a quite period like now. Or is the risk kinda big that the ruby sanct won't influence the market at all. Basically how was it in the (recent) past?

Ya gems is getting cutthroat for sure. I put out 20-30 different cuts and 80 percent or so get undercut within 15 mintues.

I don't know I have a lot of gems with 8 alka and cause I buy titanium ore by the ton to prospect for the powder to get more recipies-spent over 30K easy just for the ore but you can get a lot of stuffs from it pospecting. I have most all the higher priced cuts now and am buying the high end titanium jewlery recipies (6 tokens) now.

I just cut the ones that sell for the most and put them out to undercut the market and sell what I can.

I'd still sell what you can, rather then stockpile.

You're better off with a pile of gold, then a bunch of previous expansion gems and such.
I'm not saying Cataclysm will be next week or anything like that, but it's coming.

If you want to play the Undercut game, get Quick Auctions.
I've got it set, very simply:
a) My max price is 237g, which I list at if no one else is listing the cut.
b) My undercut value is 1c.
c) My minimum price is 125g, so it will not list anything under that value, gems below 125g get listed at 237g.
d) Auctions are listed for 12h, for the minimum listing fee.

I then periodically while questing, heroic'ing or pvping, in between dungeons/battles etc, log the auction toon on.
Hit Cancel, to cancel anything on which I've been undercut, that I can also relist for somewhere in the 125-237 range.
Visit the mailbox and pick stuff up.
Return to the auction house and hit Post.
Then log the previous toon back on, and resume whatever I was doing.

I have no suggestion on how to make more gold right now but I think that no mather what it's very important to sell all blue or epic stuff before Cataclysm is out : value of epic gems or epic crafts is only going to decrease now until the point nobody wants them anymore. Who will want a Wolt epic gem when a Cataclysm gem will give more stats ?

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure (currently) common reagents like uncut green or blue gems will see their value increase a lot in a few months when people will be willing to powerlevel professions to the new cap according to the new lvl 85 benefits. So I've stopped selling them now the price is so low and I have started to stockpile them until the day people will pay a fortune just to get their rerolls ready without having to farm all the mats :P So I don't know who to make more money now but hope to be planning well for within a few months.

I'm pretty much doing the same cashing out any stockpiles of WOTLK mats. Market has bottomed out as people eagerly await Cataclysm. Many players right now are saving up gold for the expansion.

It's a recession I tell ya! :D

You'll be making a ton of Cataclysm stuff right off I imagine. We all know how expensive things are right when an expansion hits. Frostweave was like 20g a stack or so day 1 of WOTLK. I vendor frostweave now.

Bags will always sell, save your cloth for frostweave bags! Lol I make a lot of gold off just selling orbs and titansteel bars, I buy cheap ores and make a ton of them via transmutes and smelting and such. My gem market on my server fluctuates so much in one day to day that I just stock my gems now, saving them for my other teams that I level up lol. Off spec gear for all my pallys and stuff. I'd say save what gems you know you'll use and try to find someone to buy your stock, make a deal with someone who's willing to take large chunks of gems even if it means taking a cut your still makin profit instead of sitting on stock :)

Thanks for the advice. Few random things:

- about gem market fluctuating from day to day: same on my realm. Lately i didn't really bother to list all my gems cuts during the week, since saturday and def. sunday afternoon were the most profitable (in terms of volume and price). But this weekend was disastrous. So this morning at 6am before i logged off i listed 40 cuts, and this afternoon all were sold, but ... i listed them with another (new) AH toon. It seems like my competitors one way or another recognized my toon and undercut it right away.

- so far i only used 4 cuts: runed & bolt cardinal ruby (+sp & +str), the orange +12sp/10 haste and the solid mz (+30sta). Mostly cause i forget to do the daily jc quests, or can't be bothered with it. Seems like i'll extend my portfolio a bit to remain competitive. The titanium powder is way too expensive before i have a return of investment. 3-4 extra cuts might do it for me.

- creating 245 gear is something i gave up. I only make the tailoring & LW enchants, as they still sell very fast

- berserking enchant sells always

- glyphs: i can no longer be bothered with that, one way or another they never sell overhere

- scrolls of fortitude, stamina & sp flasks sell relatively well

- bags ... so much competition and margin is so small ..; i use my cloth only for leveling extra tailors
- belt buckles sell once in a while

- the biggest profit for me is now either crafting a few ICC pieces from prim sar i can buy for cheap, and list them relatively cheap, still a 1-2k profit per craft , ... or transferring ICC drops to the other faction to resell it

Now my idea was that with the release of the new raid soon, people gonna need new gems. So thats why i'm saving up about 30% of my daily transmutes till it's release. Obviously i'll try to be out of stock when cata will be released.

Not really sure how well Inscription stuff will sell.
My JC toon has every glyph, so decided to mess around with it.

Converted the left over herbs from alchemy into assorted inks.
And then made one each of the most expensive glyphs on the AH.

And set QA to undercut by 1cp, max price 49g and min price 19g.
Have sold a few, like maybe 10 of the 100 or so glyphs.

Gems are still around 4.5k to 5k for 35-40 gems a day.
Have 34 transmute spec alchemists.