Item Feature: Gems; Stormjewels wide and varied

The assessments in this posts have become slightly dated with the introduction of the patch3.2 notes, for the latest updates, you might want to check here for epic gems in 3.2 titanium ores

If you're a hardcore raider, you would have probably heard of these.
And then subsequently gasped at the Auction House prices.

They go anywhere from 400 gold on some servers to 3000.
Generally, I find them hovering about 1000, with occasional fluctuations.

Here are the three gems you will be most interested in:
Runed, Bold, Delicate





And the next 3 runner ups:
Rigid, Brilliant, Solid

For those unaware, these are the best gems in their genre in the game at the moment. In general, they have an extra +4 stat.

I would hypothesize that these are unique-equipped version of 3.3 Icecrown epic gems, none of which you'll be seeing anytime soon!

You can only equip a single stormjewel in your gear at any one time.

This makes people more willing to spend the 4 digit sum, on a best in slot socketed item. In addition to the difficulty in obtaining them, they have a 6% chance of dropping from the ultra rare titanium lockbox, and a 0.2% chance of dropping from a bag of fishing treasures.

You won't be seeing more than a few of the stormjewels on the auction house at any one time.

Here's how to play the Auction House with these.
Time investment: 5 minutes scans over 7 days
Initial Capital: Quite hefty, anywhere from a few hundred gold to a few thousand
Risk: Scalable, go for higher margins if you're risk averse

Let Auctioneer run for a few days to get a rough gauge for the stormjewels. I recommend you stick with the safe gems, Runed, Bold or Delicate, as demand is always there for those gems...

Mainly from dedicated dpsers looking to squeeze every drop of damage output.

Just keep an eye out for those gems, and buy them if they drop about 200 gold or 35% away from the median price, whichever margin is greater to be safe.

For me, whenever I see a gem listed at 300 gold less than the next one available, I'll just buy it out and re-list it. Usually it sells in a few hours right after I re-list it.

My best mark so far has been to buy a Runed Stormjewel for 300 gold and sell it for 1600 gold 3 days later.

And before you ask, no, I think prices will still stay high for this period of time. There are many factors for these, but 0.2% loot rate is really very small for a daily quest.

If you happen to loot an epic gem from your fishing bag, I would recommend that you sell it whenever you can get a good price however. (Unless you just got a ilvl 239 epic that you can socket)