Ore: Sell or prospect?

[Ready To Die]

I leveled up an alt with Herbalism and Mining. Herbalism to supply mats to my guild for flasks, pots etc. Mining to help my main level up JC.

I'm at 490 JC and felt like I'm throwing tons of money down the drain by prospecting. No one buys green gems except for perfects so the imperfect gems get vendored.

Now I've got dozens of stacks of Obsidium and Elementium and I'm wondering if I should just sell these stacks or prospect them for the rare chance at blue gems. Saving all my Pyrite ore till they introduce epic gems and I'll prospect it then

[takolin]

Step 1: go to wowhead and check the prospect averages for the ores you have.
Step 2: calculate the estimated amount of what gems you'll receive after you prospected all of them.
Step 3: go to the AH and check the price of the green gems, blue gems and ores.
Step 4: calculate the price of the ores if you sold them.
Step 5: calculate the price of the gems that you would've gotten if you prospected.
Step 6: see what nets the most gold.

TL;DR: Do some math because we don't know the prices on your realm.

On a side note:

People buy uncut green gems to level JC'ing and don't forget that you can transmute green to blue gems which may or may not increase your profit.

[Alenko]

buy obsidium at 120 per stack or elementium at 140 per stack (my realms b/o prices), prospect, sell greens uncut and blues cut. best way I've found to go.

[Flabb]

buy obsidium at 120 per stack or elementium at 140 per stack (my realms b/o prices), prospect, sell greens uncut and blues cut. best way I've found to go.

This post is completley and utterly off-topic.

Slightly more On Topic; I would suggest prospecting. Level your jewelcrafting, sell uncuts you don't need, and cuts you don't need. Sell them cheap!

[Naposim1337]

depends on your server. on mine im selling ore

[muto]

Nightstones go for 100g each on my server
Hessonites for 40g each
Every other color for about 25g,

Prospecting is the way to go on my server.

[Simca]

The Professions forum needs some love. Moved.

[carsontl]

personally I found that prospecting obsidium ore isn't worth it now that I have superior cuts on hand... Obsidium ore does not yield as many superior gems as elementium (from what i've seen) and so I would just sell the Obsidium ore if it's a good price... if the price isn't that great then it may be better to smelt the ore to bars (if that's lucrative) or just prospect and cut. I prospect primarily elementium ore with the rare stack of pyrite ore when it is cheap (was really cheap for a couple of days) and then leave the uncommons in my bags for when prices are good for them and also for the dailies. I have about 60 or so superior gems in my bank, don't wanna flood the market... couple at a time!

tl;dr:

check prices on AH, if avg_ore$>avg_gem$ then sell else prospect==true.

[Tsudots]

I've been using all of my alts together to sell meta gems and make a pretty good bit of gold so far.

-Mine ore on my pally
- Prospect on lock
- Transmute meta gems on rogue
- Cut on lock
...and finally sell

[KazKat]

Either sell the obsiduim ore or better yet, smelt it into bars & sell on AH (Blacksmiths & Engineers need a ton of it)
prospect all the elementium
transmute a few shadowspirit diamonds and sell uncut on AH
save some blue, green & purple uncommons for the dailies
sell the orange uncommons on AH (they're needed for leveling and should get a good price)
transmute the yellow and red uncommons into rares
get cuts for red (bold, delicate & brilliant sell the fastest - but at a lower price) and yellow gems (quick sells fastest - go figure)
then get 1 cut for each colour over the next few days
don't bother cutting uncommons - they can AH for lower than they vendor

[MalooTakant]

buy obsidium at 120 per stack or elementium at 140 per stack (my realms b/o prices), prospect, sell greens uncut and blues cut. best way I've found to go.

ore prices are double that on my server so I'd say sell. But that just goes to show that when the OP is vague with their questions they get a wide variety of answers that fail to help them.

[iatavalanche]

Sell high, wait a little bit and buy low.