I see the transmute cooldown being removed for the trades where the materials are used to craft gear.
The logic seems to be, you can grind heroics over a weekend, and gear a toon out.
But you cannot get similar level gear from crafting your own stuff in the same time.

I honestly don't think they'll remove the cooldown on the epic gems.
But even if they do, we're towards the tail end of the WotLK expansion.
We'll have several toons at 450 skill levels, which is a short hop to the 525 skill cap (assuming +75 skill cap, in Cataclysm).
I'd expect there to be a cooldown on the Cataclysm cloth, metal and gems for the first 80% of that expansion.
So even if we're out of luck in this expansion (which remains to be seen), it is preparation for the next expansion which will be out relatively soon.



I was talking with my competition for gem sales.
There are two of them, but the one who agreed to not undercut me if I didn't undercut him, when either of us was the lowest price seller...

He's very interested in bulk purchases of uncut gems.
He seems to think the market can handle 30 additional transmutes daily, long term.
On my server, cutting a gem adds 30-40g to its sale price.
Selling in bulk, at 10-20g below market price, for non-Cardinal Rubies.... gets him a 50g profit per gem and makes me 100g profit per gem.
Cardinal Rubies are funny, in that the mats cost the most.. so this is the least profitable transmute, and then while the final cut sells better then any other gem, the profit on the cut (over the uncut epic gem) is also the lowest.
It also takes me off of the market, and I'm running a lot of gems at any given point, in competition with his.
Also, I don't need to manage inventory and worry about undercutting.

Not sure if I'll go for this, we haven't finalized anything yet.
Still, 5-10 mins to log the assorted teams in, and make cuts, then mail COD.
Sure beats running dailies on 3 teams... and will make a comparable amount per day.