Inferno items salvage vs vendor sell?

It's always better to salvage. You can vendor items for 400-1200, and can salvage and get at least 1 essence that sells for over 2k. You also have a chance to get a tear and fiery brimstone too.

Tears and Fiery Brimstones are % chance to salvage from blues. Fiery Brimstones are % chance to salvage from yellows.(tear and essence guaranteed.) And I have yet to salvage a level 60 legendary...

Oh and FYI, the gear you salvage is: Any level 60 blue or higher Any level 59 ring, amulet, or follower token.

Addition Essences were selling for 2400 last night, and appear to be going up every day...

The only legendary resource you can get is Fiery Brimstone, and yes its quite rare - it sells for around 150k on the AH. The recent patch (1.0.3) has lowered the chances of getting one from salvaging a magic (blue) item, and increased the brimstones needed for some popular crafting recipes.

Always salvage lvl 60 items, exquisite essence is worth around 1100 gold and could go up as demand increases. Most of these will sell to vendor for a pittance, and even the 'good' ones don't go for remotely close to 2k.

Note that lvl 59 blues will give you Hell resources and not Inferno level. The exception is rings & amulets; which have a different formula - don't know what, but I can confirm that you get exquisite essence (the Inferno version) and a chance of iridescent tear for lvl 59 rings.

Also, only a level 60 legendary is guaranteed to salvage into a Brimstone - even if you find a really crappy one, always remember its lowest worth is the going price of a Fiery Brimstone. One more thing to note: there is a thriving market in the Trading forum on battle.net, where you could potentially get a little more for your essences than listing on AH after 15% fee is considered. I suggest being careful and only selling to people with multiple vouches however, or even better just hoard the items for your own future use ;).

Edit: You can read fbueckert's post on salvage levels for more info. As mentioned by Tater596 and Dave, lvl 59 follower tokens also salvage to Inferno essence.

Short version: Sell any item that can be equipped below level 60, salvage any item that has level requirement 60.

Explanation: Although the advice you've been given is in the right direction, it's not completely correct. Here's why.

Items that will drop on inferno can be below level 60 as well. If the item is for a level below 60 it is very likely to be salvaged into Hell Materials. Hell Materials don't sell well, not at all, not even the rare ones. You'd be lucky if you get more than 60 gold for a Hell essence.

However, the very same item can often sell for 200-400 gold which is a few times more than it's essence cost. You won't become rich from this difference, considering 1 million of gold is not worth almost anything nowdays, but it's surely more profitable in theory.

So what is actually worth doing is salvaging any item that is for level 60 specifically, this guarantees the item will give you the Inferno Magic Essence and/or the Inferno Rare Essence and eventually the legendary one as well if you are lucky.