Stockpile or fire sale on gems?

[Seraphena]

Forgive me if there is a post like this, but I am currently on my phone and searching through numerous threads one by one can be tedious. ^_^;

At any rate, I am quite new to the ah game (playing the ah, that is) and might want to make it a big part of my gaming time. I just wanted some advice on what others thought was best; keep my blue quality WoTLK gems to cut/save for after the patch hits, sell them all now uncut or sell them cut? I've never been good with economics so any advice or advice for the future is extremely appreciated. As an addition, I have an engineer, transmute master alchemist and herbalist with which I can make gold. Any tips and tricks you have found useful with these professions that you are willing to share are appreciated as well.

[Penguirrel]

Personally, I'm stockpiling blue gems and buying them off the AH at or below 4.50 each. They vendor for that much after cut. Once the patch hits I'm gonna transmute the red/orange/purple ones into the epic version (as the transmute CD is being removed last I knew) and have an abundance of somewhat cheap epic gems to either cut myself or sell on the market for a hopefully hungry market when regemming takes place.

[Ach]

I'm still unsure if the CD on epic gem transmutes is really going away or not. There hasn't been any official word from Blizzard on the subject. The only source is the datamined patch notes from mmo-champ, but realize that was from a previous build. In the most recent build, the CD is present, but instead of being one transmute every 20 hours, the cooldown resets at midnight, kind of like your heroic instances resetting. I, too, have plenty of raw rare gems ready to transmute if it's removed, but I'm not counting on it. I think Penguirrel has the right idea, buying 'riskless' gems in case the cooldown doesn't go away, in which case, you just cut them and vendor.

I think there will be a ton of regemming after the patch. Look for DKs, warriors, feral druids, hunters and rogues to buy lots of AGI and STR gems and to a lesser extent, casters buying hit gems (which will be blue after the patch) as hit talents and buffs are going away. Also, I think a bunch of alts will be getting T10, as you'll essentially be able to buy T10 with Triumph emblems (as their worth is equivalent to Frost emblems in terms of Justice Points). There will be lots of gem demand, or that's what I'm betting on.