Gems in the 2.4 Marketplace

The profession that was probably most directly affected by the 2.4 patch was Jewelcrafting. The introduction of the Shattered Sun Offensive gave jewelcrafters access to a number of new recipes - for figurines, epic versions of 'regular' gems and a few new meta gems. Combined with the large number of people replacing and upgrading gear, it looked like a large opportunity was being opened for jewelcrafters to make some money.

Some people had predicted that the influx of the new epic gem recipes would decrease the value of the existing blue gem recipes and the gems themselves. As of today this does not seem to have happened. Blue gem prices appear to have remained at fairly high levels, except for the green (talasite) gems. I am not sure why those gems are particularly cheap (~10g per gem as opposed to between 40 and 80g for any other color). I assume talasites are easier to come by than other blue gems.

There might be a number of reasons for blue gems to retain their value. Epic gems have begun to show up on the auctionhouse, but not in large numbers, and still at very high prices (hundreds of gold per gem). It would seem unlikely that most people would buy these gems, especially where they thought they might be upgrading their gear again reasonably soon.

Probably the most interesting part of the gem market at the moment is the meta-gem market. Immediately upon the release of the patch the meta-gem market soared by about fifty percent. This price hike affected all meta-gems, not just those released in the new patch, so i assume it was a result of rising cost of the ingredients as well as soaring level of demand for the finished product.

At the moment it looks like the most profitable aspect of the meta-gem market is probably supplying the base ingredients. Plain Earthstorm Diamonds and Skyfire Diamonds are selling for almost as much as the finished meta-gems are going for, whereas the ingredients for the base meta-gems are a good deal cheaper than the gems themselves. This seems, at least for the moment, to be a market wide open for exploitation by alchemists, particularly those specialising in transmuting.