Reverse Shopping Lists

So as many of you out there that use shopping lists most likely use them as you would normally, to fill your lists with "like items", be that herbs, ore, enchanting mats, engineering mats etc. I have many of these myself.

Or for the crafter's out there, I have a shopping list for the engineering pet and all the mat's that make him up (I am pretty sure that bunny is a him - though I haven't checked) but you get the idea. Shopping lists consisting of 'one huge item' and all the ingredients to make that.

However have you considered the reverse?  Have you considered making a shopping list of All the Cata herbs and then adding on that list all the flasks, pots, pigments, inks, etc you could get from those? I touched on this a little with my post "Simple is Best", where I talked about seeing how far you could process leather from scraps and still make money. If you recall we stopped short of the Pristine Hides because it was more profitable to sell them Heavy Savage Leather.

So in that post we learned about using the Undermine Journal and excel to calculate our profits but what about a quick glance tool where its just 'obvious'? For that, I use the Auction Shopping Lists. A sample shopping list which I have is:

These are our ingredients:

Stormvine
Azshara's Veil
Twilight Jasmine
Cinderbloom
Heartblossom
Whiptail

Then I add on the items I frequently create from them:

Ashen Pigment
Blackfallow Ink
Inferno Ink
Elixir of Deep Earth
Elixir of Impossible Accuracy
Elixir of Mighty Speed
Elixir of the Cobra
Elixir of the Naga
Ghost Elixir
Prismatic Elixir
Flask of Flowing Water
Flask of Steelskin
Flask of Titanic Strength
Flask of the Draconic Mind
Flask of the Winds
Mysterious Fortune Card

I continue to utilize the Excel breakdown for these items. I basically have a spreadsheet that I have added in the costs of the herbs and it will auto calculate the # of items I could make of each of the following (on average) and then I just look at today's sell price to get my best plan of action.

I used a Cata list for this example but keep in mind, you should never abandon old world content because almost everyone does. That means a clear and open market for you. So make lists for each release if possible for your professions. I am sure some days when you check your shopping lists you are going to be pretty shocked at what you find some of the old world items are selling for or, that some huge demand items are not even available that day. That is where you get to swoop in and steal the market on that item!