Economy/Auction prices!

I dont know if someone wrote about this but this is something that i found strange in 2 months playing on Icecrown/Wotlk server.How is it possible that material(herbs,ores) are more expensive than the product you can make it with those materials???
For example stack of titanium not is about 400g or something close to it and the most expensive gem(Jewelcrafting) is near 230g or something,so how is making gems profitable?Some items(rings or necks) u get some profit but really small so i dont understand that...Other thing is herbalism and alchemy,how can a materials for most potions be more expensive than the product,so if u make something with lichbloom u will spend more on materials of making that item then just selling materials and not making that item at all...
So for someone who doesnt have that much time farming and because of the competition because there are 12.000 players on the server its pretty hard to make any money at all...
I used to play on Cata in 2013 and 2014 and for example ore price ratio to gem price ratio was profitable as it should be,like buying here 1 stack of titanium ore and prospecting it and if i dont get cardinal ruby or some epic gem i would lose so much money...

So my question is why are materials more expensive than products you can make using them??
That shouldnt be the case and its wrong and was it always like this,is it because of the number of the players on the server or lack of ores,herbs???

Recent gold squish might have some effect on it because people spent their gold on items that they are now trying to sell. Also, people often don't properly evaluate the materials if they farm everything themselves and just make the item even if selling materials would be more profitable.

Gems: prospecting is not the only way to obtain them so it's not what makes the price.
Rings/necks: don't seem very useful and are probably made just to level jewelcrafting.
Flasks: can be made cheaper if you have alchemy with the right mastery. But it never really seemed profitable to me. Probably because of people who farm everything themselves to make flasks.

It's still possible to make gold that way but you have to find the items that are profitable.

simple supply and demand. there's more demand for the raw matts than there is supply for them so they're expensive. if you want to make a big profit than collect the matts yourself.

Exactly as u said Skuddy,supply and demand and there is more demand for materials because there arent many of them so the problem is not enough herbs and ore nodes to farm because server has 12k players i guess...So this will never change even though its wrong and materials shouldnt be more expensive than the products...

What the hell are you all talking about.

it is very rare that reaqents cost more than product. There are some moments when stuff is bought-out or competition in very high on crafted products, so price is low.

99 of 100 times you will profit if you dont just buy first herb you see.

Trying to mine or gather the high level nodes or herbs in Storm peaks / Icecrown is pure cancer, there's so much people constantly trying to farm for gold so they can sell that gold for coins.
Basicly everyone who can is farming all kind of mats and items to sell to get some coins.

As Anyone said it's the recent gold squish that got everyone to buy up all mats and now they all hold on to it instead of re selling the mats.
As Skuddy said there's also a high demand of mats and a very very low supply.

All these people making threads about basicly, how Icecrown is so "endgame" that newer players have no chanse, Naxxramas and Ulduar is never made by low geared players cause the dungeons are not retail, they are much harder, and to even try Naxx with 3k gs is suicide not to forget Ulduar with 4k gs.

A big portion of the game, and the most annoying one, The gearing part is made even more annoying due to the fact there's no mats to farm for gear, and no raids to gear up in and even practise what the F*** a raid is all about.
All these people spam RDF 5 man HC, where everyone leaves like a suicidal teenage high school dropout, and then they take that on to ICC where they stay for 1 wipe then leave, causing a Raid over, cause that's how everyone does in RDF.

There's no room for progressing people, want into my Obsidian sanctum 25 raid? to bad your not 5,5k gs.