This hasn't made it into my column yet, but I heard the PTR has no cooldown for transmuting epic gems. If this goes live, that's actually a bad deal.

That's a bad deal, if and only if, you aren't cutting and re-selling them right now. Most people are already purchasing their Agility or Strength gems in preperation to 4.0.1 when Arm Pen converts to useless crit.

Yeah i saw that, its making my jewelcrafter cry.

Also i sell my bold and fractured gems for 120+ gold each.

Hey Basil, how about not mentioning that until I finish frantically selling all my gem stores? Thanks mate. ;)

@Darky

It makes my Alchemist /cheer

@A5 You're just lucky I don't have a biweekly column :P

Removing the transmute CD makes sense since the WotLK epic gems will become pretty much worthless as soon as the expansion releases and the new green level gems are an immediate upgrade (I assume that's the case as it was with TBC->WotLK).
I've pretty much liquidated my stock of uncut epic gems and am just buying them as I need now.
500G is still a great deal assuming you can shift them before the patch goes live.