How to play the auction house between the Shattering and Cataclysm, part 3

As I predicted, we've been seeing a lot of price volatility. The ore and herb markets, in particular, have dramatically changed since the Shattering. We all know Cataclysm was going to bring a lot of rerolls and alts as people want to experience the new races and content, and we might even be seeing a larger chunk of those rerolls now than we will after the expansion itself. Anybody who doesn't want to roll a worgen or a goblin is rereolling now, and lots of people are trying to rush to 80 before Cataclysm with their new characters so they can jump right into the endgame content (perhaps with a race change). Here's the next round of tips for auction housing in the post-Shattering world:

• Azerothian ore and herbs are basically pure speculation at this point. We all knew demand was going to spike as lots of people rerolled new characters, but what I think most of us failed to anticipate was the huge increase of supply with the zone redesigns. Right now there are a ton of people leveling in Azeroth, and within a month or so of Cataclysm's release that will likely die down, so we might see a decrease in supply. On the other hand, flying mounts in Azeroth will make these supplies even easier to farm than they are now. It's just too hard to predict where the market will end up. To me, ore and herbs have become pure speculation, not investing, and I'm prettymuch staying away unless I see something at a price that is just way too good (i.e. lower than 50s/per on anything about the newbie zone stuff).
• Wrath herbs have come down in price as Ink of the Sea can no longer be traded. However, Ink of the Sea is still one of (if not the?) most used inks, so these herbs will retain value. Couple that with fewer people in Northrend farming them, and you have a solid investment opportunity on your hands.
• The BoE market is picking up quite a bit. In my last post I noted that I hadn't really sold much in the way of BoE gear, but maybe that was due to most of the rerolled population just being too low level. Well, that's changed, at least on my server, and I'm selling tons of low-level BoE gear. BoE blues tend to be expensive to buy and thus hard to flip, but there's a gold mine out there in low-level green-quality gear. There is a huge market of players who don't want to spend hundreds of gold on a piece of gear that they'll replace in 5 levels, but don't mind spending 10-20 gold on a nice green. I've been moving a lot of volume by buying up any good green gear (of the bear, the eagle, the monkey, etc.) that I can find for under 5g and relisting it for 10-20g. I try to only buy pieces that are less than or near their disenchant value, so if they don't sell I have a backup plan. I've been selling well over a hundred pieces of gear a day like this, so this is a great market to be in right now.
• The enchanting market is still great. If you're only listing vanilla enchants, now is a good time to start adding BC enchants to the mix as well, as new characters get up past level 35. Things like blasting/spellpower on gloves, surefooted, battlemaster, major intellect, mongoose, speed (cloak), and the like will sell well, and the margins are excellent. Enchanting is probably the most stable market to be in right now, and there doesn't seem to be too much competition, at least on my server.

With the market in flux, it's hard to spot investment opportunities, but they're still out there. Tomorrow I'll talk about what you can still stockpile between now and Cataclysm to make a profit after the expansion launches.