Market Mantipulation

Last year, Blizzard made a terrible mistake.  They removed the recipe for the mage armor glyph, but did not actually remove the glyph.  Thus, there was a limited supply of mage armor glyphs--those that had been previously created.  At the same time, Blizzard had buffed arcane mages significantly.  This created an insane rush on the limited supply of preexisting ones. 
    At the time glyphs went from 15 to 50 gold on my server.  I quadrupled the price to 200 gold and sold my entire stock over the first two weeks.  When I had just a handful left, I started radically increasing my price because I realized Blizzard wasn’t going to patch and fix this immediately.

    The screenshots I submit show selling a single glyph for both 2,000 and 1,000 gold.  It seemed absurd, but such was the situation that the shortage created.  It is the basic idea of supply and demand.
    During the start of Cataclysm, I sold glyphs at a very low rate.  I utterly drove out all my competitors.  Everyone thought it was the end of the world for glyphs.  With glyphs being permanent items, the age old competitors I’d competed against for 9 months…all vanished.  As I watched our server wide glyphs fall from 16,000 to 2,000, I realized that there was still money to be made.
    I began buying out glyphs at prices that were cheaper than I could craft them myself (as I always had done) and even those slightly above that price if I could clear the entire market out.  With the market cleared out, I reset it to the outrageous price of 275 gold a glyph.


    Some people balked I am sure, but the impatient would buy them up.  After all, they were less than a red gem and you’d never have to buy them again right?  Some competition came back and we’d bitterly go back and forth.  On my days off, I’d read a book and watch TV and every 20 minutes recycle all my glyphs from the AH to the mailbox, to undercut by another tiny amount.  At 275, gold, the glyphs would very slowly fall back down, to the point where I bought them again and continued the loop.  I could never win the market indefinitely, but I could take it over for 12 hours or so at a time.  This was plenty of time to see massive profits.
    This was great because most of the tedious work went out of the business.  I was reselling more than actually crafting.  I didn’t have to mill as much anymore.  Some glyphs like sap, lightening bolt, and void walker were poison pills and I avoided them at all costs, but most resold fairly quickly.
    The average person doesn’t want to find an inscription.  They don’t get mats like they do from enchanting from running dungeons.  And they feel they need glyphs to be effective.  Some glyphs are game changing like the unleashed lightening bolt glyph for elemental shamans.
    This full-scale market manipulation is a powerful way to generate cash at very low risk.  If you buy  30 glyphs for 10 gold each and sell but one of them, for 300, then you’ve broken even, plus 29 glyphs.  Those with massive gold backing can buy up mass quantities of low level herbs as well as high level to control the market.   It was impossible to hold the market forever, even doing this, but it often would create day long periods of wealth.
    This is a more advanced and risky technique, but certainly a way to generate revenue.

    On a side note, as I’ve gotten better with Trade Skill Master, the buying functionality basically works like Auctionsnatch.  Auctionsnatch still has usefulness in making large premade lists.