Looking Back
If you plan on playing during WoD, now is a particularly good time to look back on some of MoP's most wanted mats and products on The Undermine Journal to understand how life cycles work throughout a WoW expansion. One favorite of mine is one I like to call "The Batman". See if you can guess what this is a graph of without me telling you (global graph).
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While you might not have been able to pinpoint the exact trinket from this graph, this is the overall trend for none other than the Relic of Chi-Ji, here's the TUJ page if you want to play along at home.
The "Batman" looking spikes (particularly in the EU graph) show that the quantity (and hand ins) spike during the first and last day of the Darkmoon Faire. So what can we take away from looking at this? Well the trinkets are worth a LOT if you happened to get one completed by the first DMF. In this case the expansion was released roughly 2.5 weeks before the final day of a Darkmoon Faire, so unless RNG was friendly, you either needed a boatload of Scribes (as well as a boatload of then expensive herbs), or to pay an arm and a leg for the cards you were missing. If you got it done though, you were in an elite club, with only 1/3rd of the overall created by the next DMF, and almost all selling.
Anything else you notice? In the time between Faires, especially during the first ~8 months the supply decreased and prices went up. Let's take a look at Dec 2012 - Jan 2013:
So what do you notice here? During the Faire, prices decline linearly, but after the end of the Faire, prices rise until the next fair as supply dwindles down. In general I would start selling my trinkets about 1.5-2 weeks after the end of the faire, and I'm glad that there's graphical evidence to support my madness.
There's probably even more you can glean from this graph, but take the time and look back on markets that are going to have big impacts in WoD, and see how they develop and change throughout the expansion. I may do more analyses, but I highly suggest taking looks yourself and thinking about what you can do with that information. Drawing your own conclusions is essential to becoming a top level gold maker in WoW!
Cheers,
Phat Lewts