WOW:Profession Guide Mining

Mining is the art of finding rocks...and make boat-loads of money while doing it :)

Jewel crafting depends a lot on mining, so mining will be very hot the next few months, while people stockpile mats for leveling jewel-crafting. I suggest keeping most of your ore in ore-form and also hang on to every gem you mine. And then sell it all in the frenzy of jewel-crafting :)

It's not very hard to level mining, you just have to be patient. As with herbalism, the best way to do it, is to find a nice 10 minute route, run it, log, wait 30 mins and repeat. Mounts help a lot, so I recommend waiting until 60 before you start focusing on leveling it.

This is the skill needed to mine the nodes needed for leveling it:

Copper - 1
Tin - 65
Iron - 125
Mithril - 175
Dark Iron - 230
Small Thorium Veins - 250
Rich Thorium Veins - 275

1-65. Copper, 80s-1G/20 on AH: Run either Durotar or Westfall for this part. In Westfall just skirt the edges of the map and leveling should go quick. In Durotar, the Harpy Canyon outside OG is packed with Copper, so head there.

66-125. Tin, 60-80s/20 on AH: This is where a lot of people choke on mining. This is the hardest part, but go to Wetlands and you will be fine :) In wetlands there is an Alliance quest for something called Incendicite in a cave filled with spiders. Mining this gives you skill-ups in normal mining, as if it were tin. In addition to these spawns in the cave, there is also tin. About 15-20 nodes all in all.
Map: http://www.thottbot.com/?m=12253

126-175. Iron, 1.5G-3G/20 on AH: Head to East Arathi Highlands and move from the bottom to the top of the east side. About 3 caves (2 troll ones and one ogre) filled with nodes plus some out in the open as well.

176-230 (or to 250). Mithril, 2.5G-3.5G/20 on AH: Head to East Badlands where all the small whelps are. Ride through the canyon, log 30 minutes, ride back down, repeat. About 15 nodes here.

(231-275). Dark Iron, 5-10G EACH on AH (depends a lot on how far people are raid wise on your server, since people use a lot of Dark Iron early on in MC, but not really later on). You really need to be able to stealth or FD to do this, otherwise stick with mithril until 250 and Small Thorium veins. Farming Dark Iron requires someone to help reset an instance, and then you follow this guide to Dark Iron Farming in BRD: http://neckface-graffiti.blogspot.com/

250-275. Small Thorium vein, 3-4G/20 on AH: There are a few places to do this: Felwood: http://www.thottbot.com/?m=6356 or Burning Steppes: http://www.thottbot.com/?m=6548 or Un'Goro Crater: http://www.thottbot.com/?m=8721
Burning Steppes would probably be the best choice; head to the ogre mountain in the NE and mine here, log 30 mins, repeat.

276-300. Rich Thorium Vein, 3-4G/20 on AH: This is where it gets interesting. Winterspring is your best bet for this. Either do laps around the Demon Canyon in the south; You can lap all the valleys, except a small one, in 10 minutes flat. It used to not be camped, but word has gotten out. 2-5 spawns can be expected per run depeding on popularity :) Or you can lap the whole of WS, except the Demon Canyon: http://www.dreadlords.net/60miner.shtml

You can get Arcane Crystals from these veins. These are worth 20-30G each. There are also a few other gems you can get, but these only sell for around 3-5G each.
My suggestion is hanging on to all of the gems, since they will be needed for jewel-crafting. It's also better to keep these from an inflationary point of view, since TBC will cause a lot of inflation. 30G now is a decent amount of gold, but it won't be in TBC. Keeping your money in gems, ores and bars minimizes the effect of inflation on you, since they will sell for a lot more in TBC. Just a little crash course in economics :D