# Flipping Guide

## How do flippers make money? AKA ECON101

Flippers make money by buying things for slightly under what they're worth and selling things for slightly more than they're worth.

> Hold on. That's a bit much. Why should they be able to do that?

They can do that because people want *convenience*. When you go bossing and want a `Zamorakian Spear`, you want to be able to get it *right now*. You insta-buy the item and get it for a slightly higher price than if you had waited.

Conversely, lets say you just got a juicy 100 `Dragon Plateskirt`s at revenants and you CBF alching them or waiting around for them to sell because you need the money *right now*. You insta-sell them, and boom, some flipper just picked them up.

Flippers are what provides convenience in the RuneScape market, and they deserve compensation. They use money that they have (but don't need at the moment) to provide convenience to other players and are rewarded with a margin.

## How to flip

> Cool, I want to give that a go. I just spent a month's pay on bonds so I've got a huge stack of GP collecting dust. What do I do now?

Let's get to it - comprehensive flipping guide condensed into 5 minutes:
* Flippers make money from trading items that are volatile. Volatility = risk, and risk = return.

* You want to spread your cash stack among a group of items that have good margins. This is the concept of *diversity*. That way if you don't make money on one item, you'll make it up with gains on another item.

* You want to flip items that the masses (bots) won't immediately think of flipping. When it comes to making money, `Zulrah's Scales` don't scale and `Rune Scimitar`s don't cut it. This is why I made PlatinumTokens - to find items that have good margins (some volatility), that people won't immediately think to flip.

* Practice with high volume items. If you're new, don't use your whole cash stack straight away. Flip saplings, implings, anything ending with "plings". Do this until you're confident in your ability to land a margin.

* Practice flipping until you have it down to a *process*. Your process is a set of rules you follow that ensure that in a week's time you'll have more money than you do now.

### Process

Once you have a process, flipping is incredibly easy. You no longer need to think - you just log into your flipping alts and update your orders, then log in a little while later to repeat.

Here's my process:

* Log into my flipping alts and cancel all my orders. If I made a particularly impressive flip, I take a screenshot and post it in my discord because I crave attention.

* I go to PlatinumTokens and sell every item that I'm flipping for the recommended sell price.

* I turn off the `high volume` setting and look at the list of recommended flips.

* Until I have 2 GE slots remaining:
    - I distribute around 80% of my money evenly (diversified) among normal-volume flips. I aim to buy items with quantities traded between 100 and 1000, and returns above 3%.
    - Obsidian armor, infinity robes, black masks, barrows items all come to mind when looking at the list right now.

* Then, with my remaining money (and whatever money came through due to items selling), I turn `high volume` back on, and set offers to buy high volume items.
    - I just go down the list of recommended flips yet again
    - Recently this has involved sapplings, potions (finished/unfinished), ammo (bolts, javelins), bones, crushed nests, cactus spines, ensouled heads, jewelery, ...

* Then I log out for 4-8 hours, come back and repeat the process all over again.

### Things to note

* I buy and sell things for the recommended prices, like, always. Only unless an order insta-completes, do I change the price to match whatever it traded at.

* When I'm not sure whether or not to buy an item, I check the graph. If I find the price has recently surged or hasn't been traded for ages, I refrain from buying it.
    - If an item's price looks sketchy, I check the graph.
    - If I can't figure out why an item's being traded at its current price, I check the graph.
    - If I feel any uncertainty about an item, I skip it. There are so many items out there to flip, why waste time

* Buy limits
    - Buy limits aren't publicly available so I don't show them on my site.
    - Basically, buy limits aren't that big of a deal. If you find an item has a low limit, shrug and move on.
    - But I do figure them out as I'm going. When in doubt, buy 9. If you only pick up 8, the limit is probably 8. If I suspect the limit's 10, I try 11, and so on until I figure it out. I keep these in my head.
    - Don't get fixated on them!

* Losing money :(
    - Sometimes you break even, sometimes flips fail and you lose money
    - What do I do when an item I buy goes down? I sell it and move on to more profitable flips. Waiting around to break even on *one* trade is a waste of time. I could sell it at a loss, get my money, and proceed with making profit with other items.
    - It sucks to lose money, but that's why you diversify and move on quickly. It's seriously the fastest way to get your money back.

## That's like, it

I could go on and on for pages about all the intricacies (such as why volatility is good for flipping), but I'll save that for another day. I have a degree in finance, and I could probably write a dissertation at this point. But the whole reason why PlatinumTokens works is it takes sound theory and condenses it into a single page for anyone to use. Good luck out there!

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Flippers thrive on *volatility*. You want an item to be bouncing around just enough to capture a juicy margin,  -->