I’m way behind on retail as I’ve been going hard in wrath. That being said the final phase of an expansion offers some unprecedented opportunities. In fact the highest profit margin things I’ve ever done were done at the end of an expansion.
Island expedition gear – the most profitable flips I’ve ever done
I bought a ton of Island expedition transmog at the end of BfA. The logic was exceedingly simple, no one will do expeditions, but the gear will retain value as it still looks cool. The only mistake I made was not buying a lot more gear. I also invested in some of the world drop mounts, and that was also quite profitable, even if I didn’t reach the insane profit margins I did on expedition gear.
Characteristics
So we are looking for items that are generated by content that players won’t do once Dragonflight is out, and that will still be in demand. Demand for old expansion items pretty much only comes from cosmetic value. It needs to look cool. Mounts, pets and transmog are the three categories of items. I generally prefer mounts and transmog, as pets can be resold for ever, which limits the potential a little bit.
Mounts
Sadly Shadowlands has been deeply lacking in terms of tradable mounts. There’s not much in terms of world drop mounts, the closest is really the lattices used in mount and pet crafting in Zereth Mortis. The mount lattices are some of the best bets in my personal opinion, but crafting the mounts still requires copious amounts of famring, which will limit demand.
Transmog
One market that would have been great are the Korthia Shoulders. Sadly, at least on EU we know that Kaychak has already manipulated the market on all EU realms, and holds a disproportionate amount of stock. We can still see movement upwards of course, but we are already in space where Korthia is seeing comparitively little activity.
Anything that drops from Zereth Mortis probably is a better opportunity. There’s a good chunk of BoE zone drops here, including some highly sought after looks like Varruth’s Guilloutine.
Pets
Pets usually see less increases in price than transmog or mounts. I’ve never focused on investing in pets, outside of just buying cheap ones in general for the long term. There can be opportunities, but due to the ability to always just re-cage and trade pets again they are less important.
Materials?
Some times investing in materials from past expansions has been a good idea. Right now I don’t see too much long term demand for SL materials. Outside of power increasing recipes the overall output of professions is not that exciting. There’s few interesting cosmetics, including a complete lack of mounts. There’s nothing on the order of expulsom for ATVs or anything similar to that to invest in this time around.
So in short, there’s nothing to invest in?
Pretty much what I’m taking from this too 😂