Ladies and Gentlegoblins:

Welcome to The Occasional Goldbug, my soapbox for the gold-challenged.  As the name implies, this will be probably be an infrequently-updated, mostly stream-of consciousness blog.  I am hopeful that the reader will find an odd bit of useful information amidst my verbosity and fluff.  There are many sites offering information, but few of my musings are available on other blogs.  Where I find something useful elsewhere I will link rather than parrot or plagiarize anything that I find helpful elsewhere. 

About Me

I have a wife (just had our 28th anniversary!), four kids (all of which have played WoW at one time or another), a programming job, a church volunteer position, and six cats who think they're ninjas.  As a result, I am a simple, non-hardcore WoW Player who finds the game-within-a-game of making gold to be an entertaining pastime when real life will not allow me long blocks of time to raid.  I am more interested sometimes in coming up with obvious groan-inducing toon names than actually doing something profitable -- among my alts: Volksworgen (for Cata) and Pandamoneyum (held until MoP releases).  However, for the time being my real-life profession allows me to check the Auction House frequently (All hail Remote Desktop and the Mobile Armory!) and scour for deals.

My first dabbling in Gold-making came when the Darkmoon trinket cards suddenly became BoE, and few people noticed -- many were the catcalls I endured when offering the DM trinkets in Trade -- "You can't sell BoP!" --  allowing me to build up (and sell) a considerable stockpile of these trinkets just by looking for bargains on the individual deck cards via the Auction House, getting up to around 50k gold before competition set in.  Even afterward, those trinkets continued to be a source of income until the end of the LK xpac.  Without any assisting add-ons.


Now I use Auctioneer, TSM, and Altoholic in my toolbox, plus a few specially developed private spreadsheets (more for listing and arranging mats in guild bank tabs than for calculating).  I do some transmog flipping, but have not found it nearly as profitable as I had hoped -- probably because I came late to the transmog game, not really checking it out until several months after it became available.  Most of my gold has come from finding epic items (not transmog) early in a release or a patch that are listed for way below their market value, and flipping them for large profits, though it's an inconsistent income.


I have yet to venture outside the comfortable refuge of Vek'nilash, a medium-population realm that always places in the Top 5 Least-Important Servers Ever.  My biggest bank alt is a dwarf named Spitzenspark, a name lifted from an old programmer humor page:

• Sign on a German mainframe computer: Das Machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken...

 My main is Thenamir, a human Holy/Ret Paladin of moderate healing skill and questionable DPS, but you can't be denyin' he's stylin' and profilin':


Thenamir in his Pimpin' Style

My Niche

My special niche has become assembling and selling what I call "Profession Kits" -- A complete package of materials needed to level a profession from 1 to 525, usually in a couple of hours.  (I would credit the idea to its source if I could just *remember* the source, but whoever you are, thanks for a great idea!)  The originality I bring to this party is mostly in streamlining and perfecting the concept of profession kits, and tips and tricks for making them as easy and profitable as possible. 

My first few blog entries will be dedicated to detailing how to assemble, store, and sell these kits, but the main idea is that people will pay a premium for the convenience of getting eveything at one time, in one location, and without having to travel, farm, or wait for items to appear on the Auction House.

Everything I Know I Learned From...

I have to give special credit to The Consortium and The Undermine Journal, for providing so much good data and timely commentary. 

Next Time...

Profession Kits -- A Nuts-and-Bolts Introduction