Sigh.....

[Aerinha]

Ok, I am a fletcher. It is the only skill I have above 200 and I am working on it with acrylia arrows and occasionally a nightmarewood bow attempt, or a darkwood bow, or shadewood, as they sell off my trader. I don't have a heck of a lot of cash to pour into it, but slowly and steadily my skill is rising(217 at the moment).
Nightmare arachnid silks have gotten really rare on my server in the bazaar. I haven't seen them in weeks. Any. At all. I need to get a group together to go hunt the Creeper spiders in Nightmare, but I always seem to be short a few intrepid explorers of the right level. I may have to wait until my husband's chanter gets up high enough, because he is always interested in doing the risky stuff, with only barely enough firepower.
But this is not why I am sighing...
I am sighing because the last time I went to look for the ever elusive Nightmare Arachnid Silks in the bazaar, I found only one nightmare arachnid silk....swatch. I had money, for once. I could have purchased the two silks he had used to make it at the price he was asking for the swatch, but it was in swatch form, and therefore useless for my purpose, though a tailor might have liked it. *sigh*

(For those that don't know, two nightmare arachnid silks+clump of wax from the fletching vendor in pok=nightmare bowstring for the nightmarewood bow)

[Reflan]

Perhaps he finds it more sellable as swatches, or more profitable, or both. Oh well.

Sometimes I have gone up to people camping mobs that drop what I need and offered to buy the drop I'm looking for on the spot and/or any future drops. Quite a few people will sell at real bargain prices because cash in the here and now is very easy to understand. And buying at really very fair prices could get people sending you tells for months that they have more items for you to buy.

Just a suggestion. It has happened to me a number of times. Get on people's good side and they'll often take the trouble to seek you out and even sell to you at a very reasonable price.

[Cigarskunk]

More then likely the guy just did his first reflex and hit combine when he found himself with two peices of silk.

[Aerinha]

That is entirely possible. I have done silly things myself and then kicked myself. Except that folks who had that sort of swatch reflex would, I think, be tailors themselves, and therefore more likely to hold on to the stuff to use in their own tailoring? Or maybe it was just someone used to farming regular silk and it was late at night?
Personally, I think the person was probably ignorant of the possible use of the silk to make bowstrings. Not everyone is aware of every tradeskill, and fletching is not the most common one out there, either. I make lists of tradeskill stuff that the people I know are looking for these days since there are so many that my memory on some things was failing(Or maybe it is just my memory that is going, unrelated to the sheer number of tradeskill items out there and their sometimes multiple uses).
The good news today was that I found 7 Nightmare Arachnid Silks today in the bazaar...However, they were priced rather higher than this guy's swatch was, and yes, I bought anyways.....ouch.
(I could blame myself for the prices going up, but if I hadn't purchased them I know they would have been purchased at that price by someone else(probably within the hour). I have seen them priced higher.)

[splunge]

For a while, the spiders that dropped the silks also dopped ethereal parchements moderately commonly. Terror Matriarchs guards dropped Spectrals, and a really good group could kill TM her/him/itsself, so that area was often farmed on my server, and i frequently got in on those groups. At one point i hada BAG full of silks (10 slots of 20 each). I made a boatload of bows, gave em all away, and now im out of silks, down to 2 bows to give away, and you cant get people to hunt those spiders for love nor money since they dont drop parchemtns harldy at all anymore.

(Yes, i give away Nightmarewoods.)

If youre high enough level and in a decent guild, get a Dire Charm druid or Enchanter, and a regular group and go hunt the spiders.

(Oh, one other tip, the Foreboding Guardians at the PoNb zoneline are lvl 65 and pushovers for their level, and amazing XP when they are up)