This guide was originally posted by Zarfot but he soon removed it. Dg Elites (#1 Dungeonnering clan on Rs) got a hold of it luckily b4 he deleted it. So here it is:

Zarfot:

Welcome to my merchanting guide. I started merchanting in July 2008 and I merchanted quite heavily until the early months of 2010, at which I felt I had all the cash I needed to get 200m xp in various skills and gradually stopped merchanting. I no longer do any merchanting since I feel that the cash is no longer needed. I have gained a lot of knowledge about how to merchant successfully and I would like to share this knowledge with others. I wrote most of this guide a few months ago, probably in January or February, but never posted it; I recently decided to finish it and post it.

Contents:
I. Types of Merchanting
II. Misconceptions about Merchanting
III. Mechanics of the Grand Exchange and Prices
IV. More detail on Flipping
V. Investing and Crashes
VI. Items
VII. Fitting merchanting into your RuneScape playing //Not included
VIII. Conclusion //Not included


I. Types of Merchanting

There are five types of merchanting I would recognize, although I only have used, and recommend using, the first two.

1. Flipping
2. Investing
3. Manipulation
4. Stores
5. Item modification

Flipping involves buying items and then selling them as soon as possible after the Grand Exchange timer has expired.

Investing involves buying items with the intention of holding onto them for a period of time, then selling for more after the price has risen.

Flipping and investing blur into each other at short time scales, but I'd generally consider a merch lasting multiple days to be investing.

Manipulation is when a player or group of players buys all of an item in the Grand Exchange, maxing out the price, and increasing the price for multiple days with the hope of selling the items for the higher price.

Items can also be bought from stores and sold on the Grand Exchange. After September 2009, this method received a boost because of the personalised shops. It is possible to do a daily round to a selection of shops and sell the items on the Grand Exchange for a decent profit.

Item modification involves modifying items after buying them - for example, making 3 dose potions into 4 dose, or making barrows items into barrows sets.


II. Misconceptions about Merchanting

There are many misconceptions that people often have about merchanting. One is that people sometimes equate "merchanting" and "manipulation." Personally I hate manipulation; I would almost equate it to scamming. But as you can see above, manipulation is just one of five categories of merchanting. Merchants do not necessarily manipulate prices, and in fact I strongly advise not being involved in price manipulation.

A distinction is also sometimes made between "solo" and "clan" merchanting, with solo merchanting including flipping and investing, and clan merchanting including manipulation. However, this distinction is not entirely accurate since it is possible for a single person to manipulate some items, and it is also possible to for a clan to give flipping or investing advice. In my opinion, however, such advice is not very useful.

I have conducted almost all my merchanting solo. This guide will focus on solo flipping and investing, which is what I have done and what I have been very successful in. I rarely did player to player trades or dealt with junk or antijunk (undervalued items such as edible rares), despite the popular perception that merchanting should involve these things.

Merchanting is also often associated with discontinued items or with very rare, expensive items such as spirit shields, but you do not need to merchant these items in order to be very successful in merchanting. I rarely have owned rares and never have made any significant profit from them.


III. Mechanics of the Grand Exchange and Prices

Everyone knows the basics of the Grand Exchange (GE), but not many people know exactly how it works.

A. Slots

Free players are allowed 2 slots, and members are allowed 6 slots. Each slot may be used for buying one or more of an item or for selling one or more of an item.

The largest buy offer that can be placed is for 2,147,483,647 gp (max cash) worth of an item, while the largest sell offer that can be placed is for slightly less (somewhere between 2000m and 2100m worth; I'm not sure of the exact number).

B. Buy limits

Only a certain amount of an item may be bought per 4 hours. This is called a buy limit. Some items, such as godswords, have connected buy limits (only 10 godswords total per 4 hours), while most items have their own individual buy limit. I will not list any specific buy limits right now since I will talk more about specific items later.

No items have a limit to how many you can sell in a given time.

C. Timer

The 4 hours mentioned above is a result of the Grand Exchange timer. The Grand Exchange timer measures how long you have to wait until you can sell after buying, or buy after selling; it also measures how long you have to wait to buy more of an item after buying the buy limit. The timer is exactly 4 hours and cannot be reset if it is already running. Most items have their own timer, while some items such as godswords are connected. The timer IS tied in to player to player trades.

Let's try an example. Suppose you were to buy a whip in the Grand Exchange at 6:21. You would be able to sell this whip again in the Grand Exchange after 10:21. However, you of course could sell it in a player to player trade earlier than that. Now, let's say that you decide to buy a second whip at 8:45. Instead of the timer being reset to the new, later time, and you being blocked from selling the whips until 12:45, the original timer stays in effect. At 10:21 you would regain the ability to sell whips in the Grand Exchange and could sell both of them.

Now, starting from scratch again, let's say you buy a whip at 6:21, then buy 9 more. After that, you will not be able to buy additional whips until 10:21, because whips have a buy limit of 10 per 4 hours.

D. Price ranges

Items in the Grand Exchange may be traded in the price range going from minimum price to median price to maximum price. The minimum and maximum prices are 5% from the median for most items; however, partyhats and Christmas crackers have only 1% from median to min or max, and also some items can have their min price cut high or max price cut low due to a price floor or price ceiling, respectively.

E. Price updates

Most prices in the Grand Exchange update, on average, once per day, in response to the prices that trades occur at.

The entire Grand Exchange updates at the same time; it is not done item by item. The price for an item changes to the average (mean) price of trades conducted through the Grand Exchange for that item since the last update. [Since I believe the “median price” is actually a mean, the term "median price" is a misnomer, but it doesn't really matter.]

The update time, however, is random. It is possible that the update time is a random time from 0:00 to 24:00 GMT, so updates could be anywhere from 0 to 48 hours apart, but it is also possible that the updates are more likely to fall into a narrower timeframe. In either case, it is not possible to predict exactly when the Grand Exchange will update. In general, when flipping you don’t really need to care when the Grand Exchange updates; however, when doing short-term investing in situations where prices are moving very quickly, it may be useful to know immediately when the Grand Exchange updates. This can be done in several ways, including being at the Grand Exchange yourself, having a friend tell you when it updates, checking the GE database every few minutes for changed prices, or being in an *** channel with a program that informs the channel when a GE update is detected. But again, detecting a Grand Exchange update as soon as possible is rarely a important.

Not every item updates in price every time the Grand Exchange updates. A common theory is that a certain quantity of an item must be traded for a price update to occur, but if this is true, it is unknown what quantity of any given item must be traded for the price to update. In general, rarely traded items do not update daily, while commonly traded items update daily. It is my opinion that Jagex should allow every item to update in price every day to allow more items to reach an equilibrium price, but oh well; Jagex has had plenty of time to fix this but they seem intent on keeping certain prices more controlled.


F. The best prices at which to buy or sell an item at a given time

For every commonly traded item, at any given time there is a "best bid" and a "best ask". These terms are not commonly used in RuneScape, but I think they would be helpful for explaining this. The best bid is the highest buy offer in the Grand Exchange at the time, and the best ask is the lowest sell offer in the Grand Exchange at the time. Logically, the best ask is always higher than the best bid.

If you want to buy an item, you would be able to buy it instantly for the best ask. If you put in a lower offer, it would be completed in time only if it is higher than the best bid.

If you want to sell an item, you would be able to sell it instantly for the best bid. If you put in a higher offer, it would be completed in time only if it is lower than the best ask.

In the case of merchanting, you would want to buy for just a bit over the best bid and sell for just a bit under the best ask. The best bid and best ask are usually around 1% to 3% apart. This is quite a bit! Theoretically, you can make this profit on all your cash at least twice every day, provided that you don’t have so much cash (multiple billions) that this is impractical.

However, you rarely will know exactly what the best bid and best ask prices are. There are ways to make a good guess though. It is extremely helpful to assume that every single item in the Grand Exchange is currently either rising in price or falling in price. For an item rising in price, the best bid will often be median or a tiny bit over median, and the beat ask will often be 1% to 5% over median. For an item falling in price, the best ask will often be median or a tiny bit under median, and the best bid will often be 1% to 5% under median. There often will be some trial and error involved. Let's try an example.

I try to buy a whip for median price, and it doesn't buy. This means that whips are rising in price. So I put a buy offer for 10 whips 5k over median. It doesn't buy after 1 minute, so I raise the price to 10k over median. The whips buy. Then, 4 hours later, it is time to sell the whips; as a guess, I try to sell for 100k over median. Not one sells after 1 minute, so I lower to 80k over median. They start to sell, but quickly I cancel the offer and try 90k over median instead. The rest of the whips then sell. Obviously this is just a hypothetical example, but it would be a typical case and I hope you can see my reasoning. In this case, there was someone buying whips between 5k and 10k over median (the best bid), and someone selling whips between 90k and 100k over median (the best ask).

Now suppose that I try to buy a whip for median price, and it buys instantly with 1k cash back! This means that whips are falling in price. So I try to buy close to minimum- maybe 150k under median- but no whips come in. I raise the price 25k, then another 25k, then another 25k as no more whips come. Then they start coming and I lower the price 15k to try to get a better price. After 4 hours, I sell the whips for 2k under median.

Of course, the best bid and best ask price will change over time. But often they will be from other mechants who will be dealing in bulk as well, so I find it very helpful to assume that the best bid and best ask prices are static over short periods of time. But sometimes your offer will be beaten by someone else dealing in bulk, so you will have to adjust your offer to compete with them.

How often will an item change from rising in price to falling in price? (I often call this a price reversal.) For commonly traded items, the answer is rarely. Whips may change just twice a week. However, less commonly traded items, especially items where one person can have a big effect on the market, can fluctuate from rising to falling multiple times each day. But in general, you can't just buy an item for min and sell for max. You have to both buy and sell on one side of the median unless there is a price reversal.

There are ways to guess if an item is rising or falling without putting in an offer for median. One way is to look at the Grand Exchange database and take a guess. Another is to check forums for recent threads trading that item. Another is to ask a friend who may be merchanting the same item. You also could look at general market trends. Some items tend to follow the same trends as other items. For example, Saradomin Godswords often rise and fall at the same time as Armadyl Godswords.

But the general market trends extend farther than this; often, almost all high level items such as bandos armor, godswords, dragonfire shields, dragon platebodies, dragon claws, whips, etc. are sometimes following similar price trends. One reason for this is that crashes synchronize the price trends; another reason is that many price trends have a weekly and daily patterns. For example, prices often fall early in the week (Monday and Tuesday especially) and rise later in the week (Friday and Saturday especially). Also, prices often seem to be higher around 19:00 to 21:00 GMT (afternoon in U.S./Canada) than night in U.S./Canada. These are just general observations though, and not always true. But in any case, as you become more experienced with merchanting, you will find that you will be able to make good guesses at what prices to buy and sell at.


IV. More detail on Flipping

As I mentioned near the beginning of the guide, flipping is one of the five types of merchanting I recognize, and one of the two I actually do. If you've understood the guide up to this point, you should already have a pretty good idea what flipping involves- basically just buying items for a bit over the best bid, and selling for a bit under the best ask as soon as possible (4 hours after buying the first item). Typical profit is 1% to 3% per flip. To maximize your profit, you want to flip all your available cash at every possible opportunity. One way to increase the number of flips you can do in a given time is by switching items. For example, if you have 400m available, you could buy 10 dragon claws for, say, 380m total, starting with the first claw buying at 8:30, then start selling them at 12:30 with the first selling at 12:37. But instead of waiting until 16:37 to buy 10 more claws, you could immediately start buying dragonfire shields before all your claws have even sold. As your claws sell, put the money into dragonfire shields. If you bought the first dragonfire shield at 12:43, then you could sell all 10 at 16:43- that's 2 complete flips in a little over 8 hours! If you were to make 1% profit, this would be around 7m profit.

But there actually is a way to flip your cash even more often than that! However, first I need to mention another trick. This takes advantage of the fact that the timer is exactly 4 hours and does not reset. Let's take the example in the previous paragraph but try something new. You buy the first dragon claw at 8:30 but then only buy 8 additional claws for a total of 9. Then, at 12:29, you instantly buy the final dragon claw. This allows you to know the EXACT best ask price so you can beat it by 1 gp when you begin selling your 10 claws 1 minute later! Obviously this means you don't profit on the last claw, but it is very convenient to know the exact price to sell at. You can sell for 1 gp under the best ask instead of guessing and maybe actually selling the claws for 100k each less than you could have gotten. However, this trick means that you need to be at the Grand Exchange at a specific time, so it is not useful if you are not able to be at the Grand Exchange at that time (or even on RuneScape). Also, with a large amount of items it is hard to keep track of the times each item was bought at; plus, maybe you could make more by profiting on all 10 items. But I feel that this trick is quite useful, even though it’s not best to use all the time. And of course, for an item with a buy limit of 100 or 10000 instead of 10, the one item you break even on doesn't affect your profit by much.

Now is time to describe the way to flip your cash faster that I mentioned in the beginning of the previous paragraph. This method could potentially be EXTREMELY good for players with small amounts of money (under 400m), allowing them to flip their cash as many as a dozen times in a day! However, this requires you to be on RuneScape regularly throughout the day.

This method is not very useful if you are extremely wealthy. This is because for it to work, you must have many different items to flip all your cash with. For example, if you have 60m, one item could be 10 berserker rings, and another item could be 100 ranging ammies. Or use combinations of items: 10k dragon bones and 10k sharks to make the 60m. Or 10 whips and 10 dark bows.

I will explain this method using a general example. In this example, the player wakes up at 7:00 and goes to bed at 23:00, and is able to be on RS most of the day (Saturday or Sunday maybe?), or at least for a little while each hour. In this example I am aiming for 1 flip per hour after the first 3 hours of nothing. "Starting timer" means buying just one of the item to get the timer going.

At 7:00, start timer for item A.
At 8:00, start timer for item B.
At 9:00, start timer for item C.
At 10:00, start timer for item D and buy all of item A.
At 11:00, start timer for item E, sell all of item A, and buy all of item B.
At 12:00, start timer for item F, sell all of item B and buy all of item C.
At 13:00, start timer for item G, sell all of item C and buy all of item D.
At 14:00, start timer for item H, sell all of item D and buy all of item E.
At 15:00, start timer for item A, sell all of item E and buy all of item F.
At 16:00, start timer for item B, sell all of item F and buy all of item G.
At 17:00, start timer for item C, sell all of item G and buy all of item H.
At 18:00, start timer for item D, sell all of item H and buy all of item A.
At 19:00, start timer for item E, sell all of item A and buy all of item B.
At 20:00, sell all of item B and buy all of item C.
At 21:00, sell all of item C and buy all of item D.
At 22:00, sell all of item D and buy all of item E.
At 23:00, sell all of item E.

In this hypothetical example, the player flipped his cash THIRTEEN times in the sixteen hours he was awake. However, this is a theoretical schedule of trades. In reality, he would fall slightly behind schedule. For example, when it is time to sell item A at 11:00, what if the right price isn't found via trial and error until 11:05 and the first sale doesn't occur until 11:07? Then this would have to be taken into consideration when it is time to start the timer for item A again. This delay in times could be avoided through instant trades. If the timer is always started via and instant trade and the first item is always sold instantly, then you can stay exactly on the hour schedule. However, instead of profiting on 10, 100, or 10000 items, you would profit on 9, 99, or 9999, respectively, and lose on 1. That is equivalent to profiting on 8, 98, or 9998 items. Obviously this matters less for items with the higher limits. But even for items with a 10 limit, I think it would be very useful to do th e instant trades to reduce the complexity of the merchanting significantly.

Of course, another big question is can you actually have 8 different items (or combinations of items) that add up to your cash? Well, let's say you have 60m. I'll try to come up with items that add up to about 60m:

A. 10 berserker rings
B. 10 whips and 10000 sharks
C. 20000 raw sharks and 10 dragon hatchets
D. 10000 dragon bones and 10 dark bows
E. 100 amulets of ranging
F. 10 mages books
G. 10 dharoks helms
H. 10 armadyl helmets

(Prices of course change and not all of these will be exactly 60m; they are just some ideas.)

So there we go. I think it would be possible for someone to actually perform this merchanting schedule. At the end of the day, that 60m maybe would be 70m! Obviously the profit would vary a lot, but 1% profit per flip is a good estimate.

But this is a pretty extreme type of merchanting. In a more realistic situation, perhaps the player would have to go to school or work for most of the day, and then do something else for some of the evening. In this case, the player would still have time to log on three times during the day, however: before school/work, after school/work, and before going to bed. So maybe they would put in an offer for items in the morning, then put then for sale after school/work. They then could try to buy additional items overnight. Despite not having much time to be online, at least 1% profit per day is very doable. 1% profit might not seem like a lot, but 1% profit per day for 3 months multiples your cash by 2.5. 100m would become 250m! A full year of 1% profit per day would turn that 100m into 3.78B. However, if you get *too* much money, it is difficult to flip all of it at once and you will not really be able to make 1% profit per day. That 100m maybe really could become 3.78B in a year but certainly not 142.8B after an additional year!!

Saying that the profit could be 1% per day is kind of misleading though, since it is an estimate based on flipping in a fairly stable market. Things can get a lot different sometimes, and that is what I will be getting into next.


V. Investing and Crashes

The second type of merchanting I recognized, in addition to flipping, was investing. Flipping is all about keeping the cash moving: selling the items you have and putting them into new items as soon as possible. But sometimes this doesn't quite work out.

Investing isn't something you can do anytime. If right this instant you wanted an item to invest in with a good chance of profit, I might not be able to tell you one without some searching. Investing isn't something I do everyday; that's what flipping is. Rather, investing is something I do when I recognize certain opportunities.

I give an example to illustrate this. On October 26, 2009, Jagex implemented some "anti-76k" measures. 76k-ing had long been considered a major cause of the inflation occurring since June 2009, and the anti-76k measures were very well announced, getting a post on the front page.

People like to panic, and an update like the one just mentioned was a great way to start a panic. If inflation was gone, shouldn't items go back to their prices from early 2009??? Z0mg sell sell sell!!! Omg everything is crashing, let's sell my stuff before I lose money!

But realistically, not all pkers did the 76k trick, so there were many people still pking and bringing coins into the game. In addition, the anti-76k measures were not 100% effective at preventing the abuse. Furthermore, inflation and deflation has to with the total amount of coins in the economy. If a source of coins is removed, trillions of coins do not suddenly disappear!

So really, if everyone saw the economy and the change this way, there would not have been a crash. But people DO panic, and because in fact panics are generally, well, panicking, this means that prices often right back up after a crash. Prices crash for several days, then rise at the maximum rate for several days back up to almost the initial price.

This brings me to the topic of buying into a crash. At some point, often several days after the start of a major crash, it can be extremely profitable to buy items. It can be very scary to be buying an item instantly for the minimum price, but after experience I have found that crashes are opportunities to make extreme profits. You buy the items when few people want them, and then you have the items when everyone wants to buy them back.

I will not mention every item I bought when buying into the crash started on October 26, 2009, but to show the potential profit, I will mention that I bought 31 Saradomin godswords for an average price of 70865k each and sold them for an average price of 75336k each just a few days later, for 138.6m profit. (I rarely kept a merchanting log, but in extraordinary situations such as crashes I did.)

The most frustrating part about crashes, however, is having items when the crash begins. You can try to sell them for minimum price, but it probably will be no use. My recommendation in this situation is to not be disturbed by the fact that your items are crashing. Do NOT recognize a loss until you actually the items! Be patient. Do not keep trying to sell the items for minimum after the first day; rather, wait for the rebound. Don't sell your items at the soonest chance people are buying in the GE. I made a mistake like this during a crash in May 2009. Dragonfire shields were worth 18m. I had 10 when the crash started, then bought 30 more for 15m or 16m, thinking they would rebound. Then the crash got worse and worse. Finally I was able to sell the shields but I had lost confidence and sold all 40 for 14m each. They then rebounded back up to well over 16m each. And, of course, these days they are worth like 35m each tongue.gif

So basically, just don't follow the crowd and panic.

If you are very careful, however, you can avoid having items at the start of a crash. Many crashes are started by updates to RuneScape. You can be careful by being 100% around update time on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. After the update, you're safe for the rest of the week.

Not all crashes are started by updates, however. You also should watch for crashes following periods of extreme inflation. Also, some crashes are started just by hype- for example, the infamous "summer crash" (really an "end of summer crash"). In 2008, deflation coupled with panic and hype about school starting caused a major crash starting August 20, 2008. Then, in 2009, it was very highly hyped that a crash would occur at around the same time. And indeed, one did, because of the hype, although it was a short crash because really the economy was in a state of inflation, unlike in 2008.

But in general, crashes that are not started by updates are slow to get going, so there is lots of time to get out. On the other hand, an update such as the removal of the “76k trick” can cause a crash in minutes.

How often do “crashes” happen? The ones I am talking about are general market crashes, not crahses in specific items. I am talking about crashes where the big non-discontinued flipping items, such as dragonfire shields, godswords, whips, and bandos armour, are at minimum price. On average there is probably a noteworthy crash every couple months or so. 2010 so far has been calmer than 2009, and no crash in 2009 stood up to the one in August 2008, but you can still profit a lot from a crash that isn’t very big.

I don't really have a whole lot to say about investing besides buying into crashes because I don't do much other investing. You can also invest in a small dip rather than a crash- often buying items on Tuesday and selling on Saturday or something. The dip could also just be in one item instead of a general market dip.

Rares are often connected with investing, and in hindsight it is clear that there have been opportunties for enormous profit s from investing in rares. However, rares are hard to predict and I stay away from them. I do not own any rares and I don’t plan to ever again. You can make huge profits from merchanting regular non-discontinued items.


VI. Items

There are a number of items that I have merchanted very often and found to be the most useful items. I'll go in a general listing from most expensive to least expensive. The numbers given at the start are the buy limits, and the price is the price per buy limit. The prices are only there to compare the prices of the different items and are not very accurate or updated frequently. I also try to give an indication of what I think of the item, and also how long they take to buy or sell.

10 of one type of godsword (Armadyl 900m, Saradomin 650m, Zamorak 270m, Bandos 250m).
It used to be possible to buy 10 of each godsword, but now the buy limits are combined. I usually use Armadyl since it is the most expensive option. The average trade time for godswords is around a few minutes a sword, although Bandos is faster than the other three. Zamorak godswords aren't traded too often; probably about the same as armadyl godwords despite their lower price.

100 amulets of fury (1300m)
It's nice having a 100 limit on these. Sometimes it feels like too many people are merching these and the profit margin is too small though. Still a great item though. These trade fast, maybe 2 per minute on average. These days furies are extremely expensive, so you really need to put in a lot of cash to merchant these.

10 dragon claws (380m)
Very good item. Average trade is probably a few minutes a claw, although a bit faster than armadyl godswords.

10 dragonfire shields (350m)
Very good item, pretty similar to dragon claws.

10 bandos chestplates (260m)
Very good item. One per 2-3 minutes.

10 dragon armor (full helms 250m, platebodies 140m, chainbodies 70m)
Dragon full helms can be very profitable but they are not traded very often and typically I would put money into bandos or dragonfire shields first. Dragon platebodies, however, are traded much more commonly, but are worth much less than dragon full helms. Maybe 1 dragon full per 5 minutes, or 1 dragon plate per 2 minutes. Dragon chainbodies I never do anymore because dragon plates are definitely better if you have the money. However, dragon chainbodies actually had a GE limit of 100 until around September 2009, which made them a very good item up until then. Dragon chains also trade at least 1 per minute.

10 bandos tassets (230m)
Very good item. One per 2-3 minutes. The timer is not connected to chestplates; you can buy 10 bandos chestplates AND 10 bandos tassets

10 armadyl chestplates (220m)
A bit less commonly traded than bandos, but can make the same profit.

10 armadyl plateskirts (210m)
A bit less commonly traded than bandos, but can make the same profit. You can buy 10 armadyl plateskirts AND 10 armadyl chestplates.

10 dragon pickaxes (160m)
One per 2-4 minutes. The timer does not interfere with dragon claws, perhaps because dragon pickaxes are considered to be a dragon tool, not a dragon weapon.

10 Saradomin swords (110m)
Good item; 1 per 2 minutes or so.

10 Dharoks sets (90m)
These seem pretty unstable but can make a lot of profit. 1 per 2 minutes or so.

100 amulets of ranging (63m)
Being an amulet, you can buy 100 of these, and they trade fast.

10 berserker rings (55m)
These trade a bit slower than whips but are also great for beginners.

10000 dragon bones (40m)
Pretty similar to sharks but a bit more expensive.

10 berserker rings (47m)
These trade a bit slower than whips but are also great for beginners.

10 whips (40m)
Whips are an extremely good item for beginning merchants, and even for me they are still great to do sometimes for 1m profit a flip pretty commonly. They come in extremely fast, maybe 5 per minute.

20000 raw sharks (20m)
These trade a bit slower than cooked sharks but you can buy twice as many.

10 dark bows (11m)
Not as good as whips, but dark bows also trade fast.

10000 sharks (10m)
These are one of the easiest items possible to merch. Very fast to trade, and 200-700k profit per flip. Perfect for beginners, and even I still do these sometimes.

That ends the list of items that I commonly merchant. Of course you can merchant other items besides these though. Here’s a less detailed list of items I don’t merch as often, if you’re looking for more ideas. No particular order. The limit is in parenthesis:

Runes (Each has a limit of 25000. Ess included)
Oak or Mahogany Planks (10000)
Kingly implings (100)
Other food- Swordfish, rockfish, cavefish, monkfish (10000 cooked, 20000 raw)
Infinity robes (10)
Mages books (10)
Dragon hatchets (10)
Uncut gems (5000)
Tree seeds (1000)
Discontinued items (2) – Very low limit makes flipping not work well
Spectral or Arcane shields (2) – Very expensive but trade VERY slowly!
3rd age (2) – Very expensive but trade VERY slowly!
Dragon boots (10)
Black masks (10) – was 100 up until September 2009
Archer, seer, or warrior rings (10)
Ranging amulets (10)- was 100 up until early 2010
Magic logs (25000)
Dragon leathers (10000)
Ourg bones (10000)
Red chinchompas (20000)
Herbs (10000)
Potions (3 dose 10000, 4 dose 5000)
Adamantite bars (10000)
Ranger boots (2)
Robin hood hats (2)
PvP armor/weapons (10)
Barrows besides dharoks (10)
Zamorakian spear (10)
Ring of stone (100)
Berserker necklace (100)
Regen bracelet (100)

I hope that list gives you some ideas. Again, these are items that I do NOT merchant commonly- just some extra items that could give you some ideas in addition to my own items I already mentioned.


VII. Fitting merchanting into your RuneScape playing

You can merchant successfully with a variety of different amounts of time put into merchanting. At the minimum you can just go to the Grand Exchange for a few minutes several times a day to put in offers. Naturally, if you merchant this way, you wouldn’t have much time to try putting in different prices, and therefore you would have to do a lot of guesswork. In this case you cannot guarantee that all of your trades will be completed in a timely fashion or at the optimal prices. However, you still can make a large amount of profit from doing this.

If you want to make even more profit, however, you need to spend more time at the Grand Exchange to try to find the best buy and sell prices for items. This will involve a lot of waiting as you often will need to wait several minutes or more to know if an offer is going to start trading or not. To pass the time there are plenty of skills that can be trained in a bank. I got 200m crafting, 200m cooking, and 200m herblore primarily while at the Grand Exchange.

Firemaking, fletching, and many other skills are other options. However, keep in mind that it’s best to save expensive skills for when you have a fairly large amount of cash because if your cash value is going up approximately exponentially from merchanting, spending money on skills will mean you lose potential profit in the future.


VIII. Conclusion

There are many ways to make money on RuneScape, including ways that can make 5m+ per hour (killing tormented demons or the Armadyl Boss, for example). However, I feel that the possible profit from merchanting is so great that you don’t really need to spend your time making money in any other way. It is difficult to assign a profit per hour to merchanting because it isn’t really a “per hour” thing. It is more of a “per day” or “per month” thing, like farming perhaps.

You just spend a little time on it each day but it can make a ton of money. Even if you spend, say, 5 hours at the Grand Exchange in 1 day, you could get 4 hours 25 minutes worth of experience in skills with just 35 minutes total spent on merchanting, probably distributed throughout the 5 hours. You really don’t need to spend very much time on merchanting in order to make tons of profit. When I was merchanting at my peak throughout most of 2009, I would make over 1 billion profit per month on average, and I don’t feel that I spent even close to an hour a day, on average, on merchanting.

I felt that merchanting was interesting and engaging gameplay, even if it was a bit stressful at times after making mistakes or poor judgments. My worst mistake cost me over 500m, but if something terrible like that happens, you just need to not be bothered too much by it, because before you know it, if you keep merchanting you will have more cash than you had before you made the mistake. On average, merchanting the right way is NOT very risky and you make consistent profit.

Well, at this point I can’t think of much more to say, so I wish you luck with your merchanting if you choose to pursue it. I hope you found the guide useful.

Kkthxbye


Note: I DID NOT write this guide but I do fully agree with it.