Is Card Making Profitable?

In this guide I show you how to determine weather or not making card,
decks, and trinkets from the Inscription profession is profitable and
if so, How much profit you can expect. But first off, a little
background information on what you will need, and what I will be
showing you.

you will be using THIS
spell to make random card which when combined with the other 7 cards of
it's same deck, will form a deck(A total of 8 cards per deck). From
these decks you will be able to exchange them in for a trinket which
many consider BIS until ToC10 trinkets.

Requirements
*You
will need to be(or have access to) a level 400/450 or higher "Scribe"
(which is someone who has the "Inscription" profession)

*You will be using the spell: "Darkmoon Card of the North"

-Which(For each random card)requires you to have:

-Resilient Parchment x 1

-Snowfall Ink x 6

-Eternal Life x 3

-Ink of the Sea x 3

How does this spell work?
When
you use this spell, it will create 1 of 32 random Darkmoon Cards which,
when combined with the 7 other cads in the select deck(totaling 8 cards
per deck, ace through 8) it will create a complete deck. In the table
below, I will show you what Deck goes to what trinket.(***NOTE*** the
Darkmoon fair only comes once every 3 weeks. it appears in either
Goldshire(town outside of Stormwind), Outside the elevators leading to
Thunderbluff, or outside of Shatt(the neutral city in Outlands)

Deck ---> Trinket

Chaos Deck ---> Darkmoon Card: Berserk
Undeath Deck ---> Darkmoon Card: Death
Nobles Deck ---> (Pick one) Either Strength, Spirit, Agility, or Intellect
Prisms Deck ---> Darkmoon Card: Illusions

***MATH***
In
this section I will show you how to find out if making cards is
profitable on your realm, along with how to minimize the cost of your
materials to ensure maximum profit.

Your realm and You
first
check your realm and see how much each deck is going for, along with
it's corresponding trinket. Once you've figured that out, add them all
together and divide the sum by 32(to get the average amount of gold you
will sell your each card for).

i.e.

Nobles deck = 4.5k

Undeath deck = 1.5k

Chaos deck = 0.5k

prisms deck = 1k

total = 7.5k

divide "total" by 32, (7.5k/32 = 234.375gold per card)

now
figure out how much each card will cost to create. to do this, you will
need to find out the cost of your eternal life, snowfall ink, and sink
of the sea. Then add the appropriate amounts together to find out how
much each card will cost to create.

i.e.

Eternal life(x3) = 20g x 3 = 60g

snowfall ink(x6) = 10g x 6 = 60g

ink of the sea(x3) = 3g x 3 = 9g

Resilient Parchment(VENDER) = 0.5g
Total per card = 129.5g

Now take the average price of your cards and subtract it from the material cost.

i.e.
[234.375g] - [129.5g] = 104.875g

yep, that's right:
____________
| 100g profit |
which is almost double profit!!!

Alternative to buying Ink of the Sea and Snowfall ink from the AH

(To make it easy, refer to the groups below to find out which herbs are in which group)
***

High Northern Herbs: Adder's Tongue, Icethorn, Lichbloom

Low Northern Herbs: goldclover, deadnettle, talandra's rose, tiger lily

***
note:
High Northern Herbs, when milled and made into inks, make 6 Ink of the
Sea and 1 snowfall ink. Low Northern Herbs, when milled and made into
inks, make 5 ink of the sea and 0.5 snowfall ink. Also you can trade in
10 ink of the sea to Jessica Sellers for 1 snowfall ink.

High Northern Herbs

if you mill 4 stacks of High Northern Herbs, you will get 24 ink of the
sea and 4 snowfall ink. you can then exchange your 20 ink of the
sea(extra) for 2 snowfall ink, which will total you with 6 snowfall ink
and 4 ink of the sea.

Low Northern Herbs

if you mill 7 stacks of Low Northern Herbs, you will get 35 ink of the
sea and 3.5 snowfall ink. You can then exchange the 30(extra) ink of
the sea for 3 snowfall ink, which will leave you with 6.5 snowfall ink
and 5 ink of the sea.

You
will need to check with your server to see which way is cheaper, to buy
snowfall ink and ink of the sea off the AH, or to mill 4 High Northern
Herbs stacks or 7 Low Northern Herb stacks. so....:

if [cost
of snowfall ink] x 6 + [cost of ink of the sea] x 3 is greater than
[High Northern Herb stack] x 7 or [Low Northern Herb stack] x 7, then buy the inks form the AH, if the herbs are cheaper, buy the herbs and mill them.

***Tips and Tricks***

crafting

*Craft your cards in bulk*

some believe that it's better to craft all your cards at one time than
to do 2 here, 5there, 3 the next day... etc. They believe that it has
something to do with the RNG(or the Random Number Generator within the
game) which determines which random card you will make at any given
instant. The idea is that you will create one of each 32 cards(or close
to it) rather than getting 3 prisms in a row, stopping, then in an hour
you might get the same RNG and create 2 more prisms cards. so you could
try it.

Deck ---> Trinket conversion

*exchange the decks for trinkets when you can*

It's really hard to sell your decks for 100% of the going price during
the weeks between the darkmoon fair. You should ALWAYS trade your card
decks for trinkets at every chance you get because someone will always
need a trinket, whereas not everyone has the patience to wait 2-3weeks
to trade their deck in for the trinket they want now.

*Nobles trinkets: trade for the strength and agility trinkets*

many melee DPS consider the strength and agility versions of the Nobles
trinket to be BiS(Best in Slot) up until ToC10man, whereas many spell
casters would rather have +spell power, +mp5, or + crit rather than
+spirit or + intellect(especially when they're going for 4-5k)

selling

*Supply and Demand*

DON'T FLOOD THE MARKET WITH YOUR ITEMS. this is defiantly not one of
the markets you want to flood. we're dealing with items that go for
upwards of 4-6k! if you flood/play undercut wars with people, this
market can easily be cut down to 1/2 the normal price and you will get
BURNED. keep (at most) two of each card, deck, and trinket up, but no
more than 2 of each.

*If selling your cards/decks/trinkets in bulk, diversify*

It's easier to sell one trinket, one deck, and 5 nobles cards in one
day, than it is to sell 3 decks per day. So if you're trying to sell a
lot of your supplies at once, spread out how you will sell them.