Trading

To get at better items or better prices, sooner or later trading with other players will be almost unavoidable. Here is the approximative values of some things.

Prices may vary daily, and some specific player profiles will pay much more for certain things.

World 1, Varrock marketplace
For some reason world 1 has more traders than any other world. Varrock's marketplace has the most traders in runescape.

World 1's varrock marketplace is hard to work with because messages fly by way too fast; even ignoring the users who don't trade in what you need as fast as possible you almost can't cope with the newcomers!

World 1 varrock marketplace at peek time is a dreadful place to trade but near it (or at 5 am) is the best trading in runescape.

The general store in varrock world 1 can have goodies worth buying and reselling every minute as people lose patience with the flood of messages and the inability to locate potential trades first. Much can be bought there if you're not picky about buying random goodies to resell when you have a good stack of a certain goodie.

Gems and enchantable jewelry
Diamonds are worth 5k. Enchanted diamond amulets 10 to 15k.

Ruby is worth 2.5k to 5k. Enchanted Ruby amulets are more popular than diamond ones because they increase the chance of killing someone in 3 rounds a bit more than diamond; because this is a PK need and players expect to lose some, you can sell 10 ruby amulets at once.

Emerald and sapphires are worth about 1 or 2 coal (directly from another miner) or 200 to 400 gp each. Uncut are worth more because of the potential for XP.

The sapphire amulet of magic is worth 500 to 1k to someone who wants to start training magic.

There is a good opportunity to raise your profit by selling a number of gold bars matching the number of gems you are selling, as well as balls of wool.

Shearing sheep
A newbie occupation, usually upon the request of a higher-level player. Unlike smiths, crafters have trouble coming up with enough gems to justify buying into balls of wool indefinitely so it's a one-day-only type job with no skill gain.

Begging
Mining is faster money, believe me!

About quantities
If you buy 12 coal from a fresh newbie for 1000 gold, you might have had an excellent price. But half the fresh newbies will expect you to walk a town and switch world every 3 minutes to buy another load of coal (mining it yourself is less hassle and faster). They also believe they can get anything they want from begging.

Experienced players trade most items in packs of 1000, it saves them tons of trading hassle. Reliable and hassle-free 1k traders quickly become popular and so can get somewhat better prices.

Patience is key.

About powerful players
A level 90+ smith may buy coal at up to double the market price if you sell in chunks of 10000. Very few players actually have the patience to accumulate that much, and the smith might be impressed. On the other hand they may have several mining clans already mining for them and ignore you as "one-time pocket change".

Smithing is the most gold per hour you can make as a free player, but it takes extremely long to actually turn a better-than-miner profit. Causal players should stick to something less demanding like mining iron.

Mining and smithing
If you're playing with close friends regularly, you can name one of them the smith and have everyone else be a specialist miner. This way the highly valuable smithing skill can raise to profit-making much faster! The smith however has a duty to share revenues with the clan so only close friends can be trusted for that; random clans met online may have the smith dropping the clan once he's rich and powerful.

Bronze, copper, tin, clay
Basically not worth the hassle of selling to players unless they ask for it (for quests).

Coal
100 each. The hassle of trading low quantities of coal can be staggeringly high.

125 each for 100 certificates

150 each for 1000 certificates.

The most common job in runescape is probably mining coal. There is no shortage of coal-buyers!

Steel bars
500 each 550 each in packs of 100+ 600 each in packs of 1000+

Steelmaker
A steelmaker is 2 coal and an iron ore; it's what's needed to make steel bars. Buying steelmakers avoid the buyer the hassle of having mismatching quantities of ores and having to chase two traders instead of one.

250 to 275 each 300 to 350 each in packs of 100+ 350 to 400 each in packs of 1000+

Iron ore
75 to 100 each. As a buyer it's to have a steady supply as iron miners soon do coal instead - despite the fact it doesn't improve the miner's income as coal is twice as long to get and won't give them as much XP per hour as iron.

Extremely patient players have been known to mine only iron from level 15 to level 60, and then mine only mining guild coal (it's much faster) until they can make steel of all their iron. This makes them so much money they could buy a party hat or not "work" and only PK for a year. This trick saves about half the work you'll ever do as a miner up to level 60, time that can be counted in months! Not to mention saving 90% of the trading hassle by selling all bars to a runite smith.

However as a smith you'll make less money from armor if you do this unless you hire a trustworthy friend to sell 1000+ steel armor plates for you. (-;

Iron ore remains as valuable as iron bars because of steel being the most cost-effective skill-raiser a rich player can afford.

Mithril ore
400 each. Varies a lot. You get a better price by trading the coal at the same time. This may have about the same value as bars because of the XP involved in making the bars being already taken away in bars.

Adamantium ore
600 each. Varies a lot. You get a better price by trading the coal at the same time. This may have about the same value as bars because of the XP involved in making the bars being already taken away in bars.

Runite ore
5k gold each. Varies a lot. Might be hard to find a buyer or a seller. Certainly worth buying when you see it in the general store!

Some runite miners pay very well for protection from other players when they are mining runite.

Other runite miners are taking chances that an archer/mage entire clan attacking all at once and taking all their runite (only to be killed themselves by others or even each other).

Weapons, armor
Steel 2-hander: nice gift to newbie - they can't get it from a store. Mithril 2-hander: about 3k each - if you can find a buyer adamantium 2 hander: about 6k - if you can find a buyer adamantium plates: about 15k

Free smithing
If you can't make your bars into the most money-making item possible, higher-level smiths might do it for you so they get the XP and you get extra gold (but no smithing XP).

Smelting
There is a living to be made by buying iron/coal to make steel bars and sell them. It's not certain of being more XP per hour than mining all and smithing all yourself, but the gold is better.

Rune essence
30 gp each. Members use it to make big expensive runes and may pay more if you sell them say next to where the law runes are made. If they run out of cash, try to trade their big expensive runes for 2 rune essences each. (-;

There is a cute trick of going to the store, selling (stackable) rune essence certificate, buying the rune essence, and going to make more runes. In some rune places, this saves half your work time at a minimal cost.

Leather
You can trade 25 cow hides for 12 to 15 ready-to-craft cow hide from someone high enough level to enter the crafting guild. Cows are nearby and you just have to pick cow hides off the ground. Both players will gain XP quicker this way.

Pottery
Rarely a cook will order 200 bowls or 200 pots or 200 dishes. If you have no crafting XP anyhow and no good income source this is a good deal since otherwise you won't make profit over the pottery you make and you'll have to make some anyhow to get to better crafts.

Jewelry
Players don't buy free player jewelry items unless they want something enchanted; that's because those items lack the quality of being rare. Don't waste time trading in those nonenchantable types with players.

Silver, gold ores and bars
Silver bars are worth a lot to someone who wants to raise his crafting skill. Crafters also need gold ores/bars so they can make jewelry. They won't however buy more than 100 or 200 gold bars at a time unless you have a matching number of gems with it!!

Food
Any food becomes more valuable when far from the bank and into dangerous areas. Players are literally dying to buy it, and in the wilderness they may kill you for your food as a survival strategy rather than buy so be careful!

Fishing
Raw or cooked lobster: 100 to 125 each. You might be able to trade 100 lobsters for 125 raw lobsters

You can also get 25 lobsters in echange for 15 to 20 lobster certificates as half the value of a lobster is because it's so long going to the bank!

Feathers
Feathers are worth about 10gp each because of fishing and arrow-making. If you're not needing them it's good to keep them for fishing later as it's faster to raise skill feather-fishing than any other way.

Bones
Bones - 10gp each. Big bones - 30 to 50 gp each (price varies a lot).

And yes, the bank can make certificates for 1000 bones. Ewwwww. More like a morgue than a bank!

Runes
Mixed low level: 10 gp each. Most people don't like curse-type runes unless they know of the training-on-ducks trick.

Law: 250 to 350 each. 1000 each if at port sarim prison someone needs a few for the quest. If you can't sell your law runes, you can always go to varrock bank downstairs and use a spell to grab gold bars or rings from a distance.

Nature: about 300 each. A timesaver for smithing high-end ores on the spot and high alchemy stuff rather than bother selling to players.

Chaos: about 50 to 100 each

Death: expensive?

Masks
I've seen them at 30000gp each once. However rare item with no use prices are inflationary and varying like mad so shop around. Buying such a useless item is a proof you are so rich you don't have to use money efficiently, and people who have been holding 5000+ coal back waiting for a good price will offer to trade.

When you're a runite smith, the mask is cost-effective because you'll suddenly be noticed by people who have 5000+ coal waiting for a high-end buyer; they would have otherwise assumed you wouldn't pay high-end prices for the convenience of very large quantities.

Party hats
They used to trade from 3 to 44 million in runescape classic, and will never be cost-effective. By buying one (extremely rare except on ebay) all you get is bragging rights and the ability to sell it again hoping to make a million more (which is why prices are high).

Clan leaders might try to derive more authority from wearing a party hat. This is more of an ego and psychological control thing than any genuine profit-making, but I can see the leader of a clan of 100 players actually needing to keep his clan members from wanting to trade elsewhere at the same price.

There are two party hats that used to be black, and are now pink(purple?) because Jagex couldn't stand them being traded for hundreds of real dollars. They can't be traded anymore and look like regular pink(purple?) hats.

Member items
Some items are so rare or long to make or both they are worth millions.

Quest items
If you have 10+ items an experienced player starting a new character might pay 1000 gp each for saving half the hassle of questing all at once. However waiting for such a player takes a long time and your bank tends to get annoyingly full with quest junk so it's not worth it if no one requested that in advance.

Woodcutting
Yew logs are worth a couple of hundreds each to members who make arrows.

Walking
There are a lot of situations a skilled player want to stay close to a skill-gaining or gold-gaining place and have newbies do all the walking for them.

Convenience
If you're quick, trade exactly the full list of what the other wants, and then never nag your income will increase marginally from people prefering to deal with you. At very high smithing levels the smith can afford to trade only with the nicest people when faced with equal prices and quantities - they might even have chat permanently turned off for people they didn't find nice during their skill acension! So be nice and convenient it pays.

Cooking
Buying cakes and adding chocolate powder to get chocolate cake is a very quick money maker for two cooks of uneven level to make.

Slavery
Some people will sell a specific number of hours of their work - at anything the buyer wants the slave to work - to fill gaps of hard to find items (i.e. get more iron for you when you mine the coal to make steel; gather cake ingredients; gather 10+ quest items for you; etc).

The jaw-dropping extreme is the members having newbie members buy potion containers full of water at 200k for 1k containers. You might even have the job of merely filling the containers with water!!

Novelties
Any new item introduced by jagex might become ridiculously overvalued for a short while as many players don't know where to buy/find/make it. For example I paid 2400 gp for a sleeping bag worth about 35 at the general store in my first ever runescape week. (-;

Slayer skill
The slayer skill makes very rare and extremely valuable items drop. This funnels more money in the member-to-member economy making the member-to-free economy noticably weaker. This is however a fad as those items are rarely destroyed (they become common and so less valuable) and the inflationary economy takes over again until Jagex hits us with the next "you must have it" as it happens all too often.

I can remember seeing an old post when they promised there would not be new item types above steel. I'm not sure it's a hoax, but it sure underlines what I'm seeing happening. (-;