Successful Speculation

Did you take my advice in previous posts here and here? If you did, congratulations - you just doubled your money! How about that, and even with the addition of vendors who supply Watchwork Sprockets, the crafting material has more-than doubled in price after just a single day of the new patch being in effect. Meanwhile, the Mini Twisted Watchwork Moa shot up to a ridiculous 24 gold briefly on patch day, before coming back down, sitting about 3.5 gold above the value I invested in - that's already a small profit! So what can you do now? Well the new patch has added some interesting new prospects, including an evolving back item called Spinal Blade. If you want a fast few coins you can flip these right now for a decent profit.

What about Scarlet's armies? Did they destroy the bag and salvage item markets I said they would? Nope, because all the enemies found in Lion's Arch commonly drop Bag of Alliance Supplies, which is account bound, and also general trash loot and Champion Bags. Unfortunately, these bags do not contain many important speculative items that I can see thus far. Perhaps the endless tonics and the mini are worth a watch, but after just one day of the new patch, these items are already hitting very low prices. The most valuable tonic is sitting at just 20 gold and dropping fast and the mini is at a mere 1 gold. The problem with these items in particular is you can use them as much as you like without losing anything - really they should be soulbound on use to maintain market value. This is very similar to the Unbreakable Choir Bell and the Endless Toymaker Tonic that you can obtain at Wintersday, or all year round from gifts off of the trading post. These items are a bad investment because, even though they are a limited item as such, supply never diminishes as there is no way of removing it from the market. Someone buys it, has some fun and gets bored, then they sell it again.

So going back to the Watchwork Sprockets, lets analyze why they are going up in value and if they are worth investing in even now. The new patch added a new method of obtaining the sprockets in exchange for some of the new trophies at the camps setup by the orders outside Lion's Arch. However, it also added a huge new drain on sprockets through the crafting of the new ascended back piece. The Gift of Blades, needed to craft the Tempered Spinal Blades, require a massive 500 sprockets to craft. What's more, ArenaNet have cleverly made this new, popular backpiece very easily accessible as oppose to previous back items. As you play through this new release you will likely obtain the items necessary to craft the first tier of the back piece, and from there you are able to progress through each tier, and naturally players will want to finish this item into ascended quality. So are Watchwork Sprockets still a good invest even after they spiked yesterday? Absolutely. I predict the sprockets to shoot up even further while players scramble to finish the new shiny item, before capping off and then steadily declining. If you are investing or have invested, don't get too greedy!