profession advice: jewelcrafting ?s

[hung]

I've been considering picking up a new profession on Calycemett for a while now. He is currently Mining/Skinning, but that was a financial decision while leveling (could never have afforded epic flight otherwise). He is now established as both my main and a tank, so I've been playing with the idea of dropping skinning. I'm probably not gonna go for engineering, and i already have a blacksmith at 450 (amarillian), so that leaves JC as a prime candidate. I've stocked up a whole bank alt with mats which i think should be enough to carry me to the 300's.

Some questions:
-Prospecting: i understand there's a random element to it, but on average, how many gems do you get per stack?
-Time Investment: I know i'll have to do dailies to get high end recipes, are they painful? I'm really only concerned with getting 2 of the dragon eye recipes (solid & bold)
-financial return (if any): do any of you manage to make any money on JC, or is the market pretty saturated?

thanks,
Hung

[Daewen]

I think if you wowhead the ores, it'll have a prospecting tab of data, but for most prospecting it's like 1.4 gems per 5-stack. For Thorium, Adamantium, Saronite, it's more like 1.8 - 2. A short tour of sholazar, icecrown, or stormpeaks will net you stacks of saronite to prospect, so there's hardly a shortage. The JC dailies in dalaran are pretty easy once you have a stock of northrend gems. I've only bought the recipes I need, and left the completionism for the main guild JCs. As such I also have full stacks of the 6 northrend greens that I can donate you. Between that and crafting 2 E.earth into rings for denching, I've gotten to 430 without buying recipes or even cutting blue gems. Market is pretty full, as far as making money from JC, at least as my auctioneer sees when I try to sell my non-perfect gem attempts. Auctioneer recommends me more to sell the uncut gems.

[Camyu]

The JC dailies are really easy actually.

[Pocky]

I've been considering picking up a new profession on Calycemett for a while now. He is currently Mining/Skinning, but that was a financial decision while leveling (could never have afforded epic flight otherwise). He is now established as both my main and a tank, so I've been playing with the idea of dropping skinning. I'm probably not gonna go for engineering, and i already have a blacksmith at 450 (amarillian), so that leaves JC as a prime candidate. I've stocked up a whole bank alt with mats which i think should be enough to carry me to the 300's.

Some questions:
-Prospecting: i understand there's a random element to it, but on average, how many gems do you get per stack?
-Time Investment: I know i'll have to do dailies to get high end recipes, are they painful? I'm really only concerned with getting 2 of the dragon eye recipes (solid & bold)
-financial return (if any): do any of you manage to make any money on JC, or is the market pretty saturated?

thanks,
Hung

Prospecting: On average, you get 1.25 gems per prospect. You'll often see a jag of "1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1" type runs. Plan to mine a LOT.

Time Investment: It takes about five minutes on average to do the JC dailies, if you have a stock of green gems in stock. Go out, kill mobs until the quest item drops, combine with two green-level gems, turn in. To get the D.E. recipes you want, you need four days worth of dailies, plus three more for the D.E.'s themselves, so a week. I can loan you a couple of D.E.s if you need. (They're also on the AH for... 125ish? these days.)

Financial return: I save all of my gems for guild use, so I can't speak to this too much, but the gem market isn't THE money maker on Uldum. You get a reasonable amount of cash for raw gems, and more for certain cuts (bold, delicate, and runed, mainly).