[Alendria]

I've lost maybe 6 or 7k getting my JC from 0 to 197 (where it is today).

If you buy mats for 20 combines (a stack of metal bars and a stack of gems), enchant each bar, are successful on all 20 combines, and resell the 20 combines to the vendor you'll make a very small profit. If you only get 18 or 19 successes (depending on what you're making) though you'll have a small loss. If you don't enchant each bar you will always sell the combine for a loss afaik (at least that's the case on the things I skilled up on).

Ex. I'm making the Fire Emerald Golden Bracelet, it costs about 95pp per attempt and the combine sells for about 103pp. So about 1900pp or so for 20 combines and about 2060pp selling all 20 combines back. I usually only get 16-19 bracelets made per 20 attempts though so I take a small hit on those 20 attempts (hence the 6 or 7k I've lost so far getting to 197).

You need to be well into the 200's though before anything involving platinum bars becomes trivial, and probably 75%+ from what I can tell of jewelry people want involves platinum. I've sold some stuff that uses gold (+7 mr wrists, PR or DR earrings whichever, couple of the electrum+diamond resists masks, +4str +2int earrings) but you're not going to get rich with just gold jewelry.