Why not just google it?
I’m reading the framework of it right now so bear with me. I’m not arguing it logs data, it logs your static data which are things like it being dropped, by what, etc. The item itself in the DB has a set value. Nothing I’m reading so far has mentioned the set value is changed without an actual update on their end. But bear with me here, I’m looking into it. If I’m wrong, I’ll have learned something new.
It’s OK to be wrong.
It’s even excellent when we can have discussions and learn something.
This is a good question.
This is interesting as well. As for drop-rates, as far as I know, the way Wowhead works (which is a third-party, btw, and unrelated to Blizzard - i.e. just a site, not dissimilar to any site anybody, including you or I could make) is that it relies on people using the Wowhead Addon to upload data, and it then produces droprates based on that data, an example would be if only one person uploaded data for a particular dungeon boss, and an item dropped, that item would be listed as 100% drop rate.
As for how much a vendor will pay to sell materials, I’m not sure how wowhead determines this, but I imagine there is maybe an API call that returns the “Sell Price”, and that it isn’t manual (I’ll see if I can poke around to confirm that this is an API call, though that wouldn’t confirm how Wowhead does it, I’d imagine they would avoid manual updates where possible).
That’s what I’m saying. Each item has an ID number to it, this is a set, non dynamic variable that cannot be changed without doing so manually. The static values are drop logs. Like how many of this item in X kills of this mob it was recorded from drops it and such. Those are dynamic and can change and does not impact the static variable of the item itself. So each time they change something in the item itself, it should need refreshed on the end of the crew who actually maintains the DB itself on their page. Changing the sell value of an item for example is tinkering with the item information itself and has no impact on the dynamic values that are recorded. So while the DB is updated constantly with dynamic data, the actual information base of what each item is and does hasn’t been updated in ages outside of the SoD stuff. Though I suppose it would be possible in an SoD update if this bled through and we have items reading as SoD variants and not traditional.
I found that odd as well!
OK. I’m not sure what this has to do with much of anything though.
Let’s take Wool Cloth (id: 2592) and Heavy Wool Bandages (id: 3531) as examples. Blizzard has an API that can be used to get data for items. In this case, you could use the Item API endpoint /data/wow/item/{itemId}:
https://develop.battle.net/documentation/world-of-warcraft-classic/game-data-apis
These api calls return, among other things a sell_price. Knowing this, it’s at least conceivable that a change could have happened in game that Wowhead would automatically update, because it would be getting the information for that item from Blizzard’s API.
I’m not saying that this is the case, but just that it’s possible. Without additional information about how Wowhead actually manages its own data, like this for example, it’s difficult to know definitively.
In the language that I speak, those values change based on new data coming in, and are thus called dynamic values, rather than static (which tends to be used for values that do not change, when used for values, in my language).
I suppose this may just be a semantic misunderstanding, but I’d be curious what sort of design decisions lead to constant updating of static data.
Anyway, it appears that the vendor price (sell_price) for heavy wool bandages (57 copper) is less than that of the vendor price for wool cloth (33 copper) times 2.
And it’s a moot point how often what updates.
I just did a search and found this on Reddit: Mighty_K - 5y ago -
Linen and wool are worth more raw than as bandages though.
Note it’s five yars old 
Yeah I’ve flipped my terminology around. I couldn’t think of dynamic for the life of me and went with static as I think of “static noise” thanks for the correction. The long and short no matter what here is they are just remembering incorrectly here. Cataclysm classic still has the bandages both wool and linen selling as the same price and they have a separate client, updates, and DB than Era.
Awesome! Good to know that some cloth is worth more to vendor raw than to make into bandages.
… there were no sneaky changes going on.