Tip of the Day: Primal Might

At the end of The Burning Crusade we saw players dump their current stockpiles of BC mats in a frantic effort to sell before prices bottomed out. Primal_Mights were one of these. I didn't think much about stockpiling Primal Mights, in fact, i think i was actually part of this group that dumped them, thinking that these would become substantially less after the release of WotLK. I did, however, end up stockpiling tons of Primals which ended up making me a bit of a fortune months later after WotlK when the market had run out of many of these due to players powering their engineering. My mistake of dumping my primal mights probably cost me a good chunk of change. Valued at 100g during much of BC, i think i ended up dumping them for 35-45g. Now in WotLK they are back up to their 100g mark due to supply meets demand. This is a great example of how to shrug losses and go back to making profit. I lost a lot of money on primal mights, yet here I am investing in them again.

A lot of people cannot stomach losses. You saw that during the 2007-2009 stock market crash. Many dumped their stocks at the worst possible time, the bottom. I am not suggesting to sit on stocks that are falling in price. A loss is a loss. A potential reinvesting into a stock that would either maintain value or gain value would be a better choice, not just giving up and say "to hell with stocks."

What i am saying, is that many of these people who dumped their stocks after the latest resession, chose not to re-invest a few months later at one of best times in our stock market history. Some stocks like Palm Inc (the gadget company) have risen 10x their bottom price of 6-10 months ago. The inability of investors to stomach losses separates the average from the pro. This is an essential attribute you will need to posses to be an AH guru. If you cannot stomache massive losses, (I bet horribly wrong on void crystals post BC for example) then the AH is not for you. However, this is another post for another day.

Focusing back on Primal_Mights, on my server there aren't many suppliers of these. Even though the demand may not be very high (they are only used in one critical recipe), the demand is currently greater than the supply. I started making these again a few months ago when my girlfriend was powering her enchanting on her shaman. She noticed their were none in the AH (there were also no adamantite rods either, both used in making the runed adamantite rod). Fortunate for me, I already had two maxed alchemists. One was elixir specialist and the other was potion spec. Since i rarely use my elixir spec, (my server the flasks sell for less then the mats required to make them.... again the mentality of the average player confuses me, another post for another day) I decided to drop elixir and switch to transmute. I believe the proc rate for transmute is around 10%, so it was a substantial profit to switch. I began making these using the following prices for each material used to create the Primal Mights.

Primal Air 20g , Primal Fire 15g, Primal Water 10g, Primal Mana 10g, Primal Earth 2g = 57g
I decided at aiming for a 20g profit per item and settling at 79g 99s ( you should always put 9.99 instead of 10, look at the price of gas next time you are at the pump.

Within a week, my initial stock of 10 had sold at my first price. Since then i have toyed with increasing prices each time a lot of 5 or so sell to eventually come to the price where the consumer does not become unwilling to pay. I am currently selling them at 129.99g, which would have been a 70g profit if prices of the primals would have stayed the same. Currently each primal has gone up roughly 25-50%, airs being the most expensive at 30g. I still pull in 40-50g per Primal Might and sell 5-10 per week, which makes them a great addition to my WoW income.

Now, as with all my posts, I will attempt to analyze why these items perform well. As i mentioned before, the old suppliers of primal mights quit making them. They moved on to more popular transmutes that are used more frequently. The problem with this mentality is they aren't putting into consideration the supply vs demand. 1000 alchemists making skyflare diamonds might have a supply/demand curve at a less value than 3 alchemists making primal mights. The natural competetion in selling skyflare diamonds might bring down their profit margine extremely low, like 5%. Even if you were to sell 100 diamonds at 5g profit each that would = 500g - AH fees. Whereas the primal might supplier could sell 10 primal mights at a 50g profit and make the same profit as the diamond provider.

Secondly, the demand for primal mights is actually quit high. This is because every enchanter who wants to max enchanting must at least use 1 primal might in doing so by creating a Runed Adamantite Rod. Enchanting, being one of the most popular professions, will be pursued by a vast amount of players, making the demand for primal mights disproportionately high compared to the amount of alchemists supplying them. These are the exact deals you will need to find to be an Auction House Guru.

Adamantite Rod could be another potential money maker, unfortunately through my experience I have found the mats and ability to have this crafted much easier than Primal Might. This probably explains why my Primal Mights sell on much higher volumes than my rods do. It would be interesting to know where my primal mights were used. I wonder how many of them were actually used to make the lvl 70 gear for novelty players or those who are trying to level their 70 alts a little faster.