Prospecting FTW!

Well friends, I decided to see whether ore is really overpriced or not. Here's what I did.

I went to the auction house and bought up all of the obsidium ore and elementium ore I considered to be decently priced. This, obviously, is an arbitrary quantity, but in the end I wound up with 17 stacks of obsidium and 12.25 stacks of elementium for the grand total of 5220g5s65c. That equates to approximately 178.5g per stack.

I prospected all of this and would up with the following gems:

Color (uncommon, rare)
Red (21, 3)
Orange (20, 2)
Yellow (31, 2)
Green (30, 3)
Blue (28, 2)
Purple (27, 3)

Hessonite and Nightstone (orange and purple) are the biggest sellers, being used to level up jewelcrafting, so naturally I got screwed on my hessonite prospects. That, though, is not the point. Then I commenced the cutting.

* All the Shadowspirit Diamonds became Austere metas (the cut I have)
* The three Dream Emeralds were cut to Regal and the two Ocean Sapphires to Rigids
* I then found someone with the Bold cut for Inferno Ruby and tipped him 90g total for three cuts

After that all gems were shipped off to my auctioneer.

* 2 diamonds were listed at an 800g buyout.
* The rigids were listed for 177g
* The regals were listed for 230g
* The bolds were listed for 225g
* 5 nightstone were listed for 90g
* 8 hessonite were listed for 69g

All told, I spent 5310g5s65c. I didn't do the math for deposit fees or AH cut; those are figured in when the money comes back in the mail.

When I logged in three hours later, I had 3022g63s10c in sales. The diamonds had both sold so I listed three more at 950g apiece. One of those sold almost instantly and in an hour that brought the entire total to 3949g99s65c.

When I logged in in the morning, more sales brought my total gold haul to 5185g39s95c. For those keeping count, that means I was down a total of ~125 out of ~5300 gold I'd spent 18 hours previously -- plus I had 5 more meta gems, and a pile of uncut uncommon red, yellow, green, and blue gems.

Prospecting is awesome. You should be doing it. A lot. Be careful how much you spend per stack of ore but when you find some at the right price, buy it ALL.