I went to retrieve a stolen "moon neclace" for a kajiit caravan guard, and found a spell tome called Transmute...it allows the user to change iron ore into silver ore and silver ore to gold ore!!! ...while I was listening in on the bandits conversation, I heard the familiar rant about wizards that can turn wood into gold...now that I've found this one, I'm wondering if there's actually a wood-to-gold transmute somewhere...

Nope

I found the Transmute book fairly early in my character's life. For my early levels, every time I went to Whiterun to sell/buy stuff, I would buy all of the Iron Ore the blacksmith had. As I would run around Whiterun, I would be constantly popping the Transmute spell. Then I would stop back at the blacksmith's on my way back out of town to sell all of my freshly minted Gold Ore back to him.

Now, at level 41, I have so much cash laying around that it is no longer worth the trouble.

why not turn the gold ore into ingots and then smith jewelry? Its more of a process but it boosts smithing and your wallet

That would have been a good idea, if I had thought of it at the time.

Just found this same tome within sight of Whiterun's walls...

Halted Stream Camp [G4 on this map] http://www.gamebanshee.com/skyrim/mapofskyrim.php#null


edit: wow... I'm dufus. I didn't see the spoiler in the original post. How do you make a spoiler code?

(spoiler) text (/spoiler) Replace () with []

Love this Transmute spell! One of the many awesome surprises one can find wandering Skyrim.

This is important to note. You will get enough money, with or without Transmute, for the price of Gold Ingots to be not worth picking up.

LOL.. this reminds me of an anecdote I heard about Bill Gates. Supposedly, if you work out his worth/salary/earnings to the minute then, as the saying goes, if he actually stopped to pick up a $100 bill, he'd be losing money.

yeah, I'm almost to my goal of 200 gold and 100 silver ingots stashed at each of my homes.