Trading and merchanting guide

Merchanting, or arbitrage, is the act of purchasing an item at a low price and then selling that item at a higher price, generating profit as the difference between the above unit prices. Merchanting was a popular method used by players to accumulate a significant amount of wealth in a relatively short time. The amount of time spent depends on the supply and demand of the item, similar to the situations in real-world economy. Prices of some items fluctuate rapidly. However, merchanting has became much less common since the addition of the grand exchange and the removal of unbalanced trade. This is due to the fact that many people believe that it is impossible to make large amounts of money any more. However, this is completely untrue. Merchanting is still a good way of making money for players that know how.

How to Merchant


Buy items in bulk at the Grand Exchange that are currently going up in price. Carefully watch the prices of the item and sell them when the price starts going down or stays even. Players may want to use the RuneScape Grand Exchange on the Runescape website. Players may find the Grand Exchange Market Watch helpful, although the Grand Exchange Database can be even more helpful, and the prices are always up to date.

Another good way is to just read the Runescape news found in the homepage of the website, look for new updates; for example- the release of pvp worlds. People pking in pvp worlds will lose their items, and thus need more. This works out so that things like sharks, swordfish, runite items, and dragon daggers and Dragon scimitars are all in high demand. If, before the update, you had seen this coming and stocked up on these items, you would have made quite a substantial amount of cash from the items raising. Another good example is rares. Around the holidays, people like to buy Santa hats. They will almost always go up around Christmas. Richer people will buy some of these, and sell them once they go up.

Yet another way is buying things that are in high demand on the grand exchange for medium or lowest price. Players then can wait a few hours and they will be able to resell these at highest price because players want them so bad. Things that may work well for this are Mithril bolts or Rune arrows. Taking glory amulets and charging them can also prove a good source of money.

Suggestions for Grand Exchange Merchanting


Although it may seem impossible, Merchanting on the GE can actually earn you large amounts of money fairly quickly. In fact, many of the richest players in runescape have made most of their money from merchanting on the Grand exchange.

Things that players may find good to merchant:

1. Steel bars: buy them for the current medium price, then resell them at highest or wait for them to go up a bit. Do not sell them higher then 630 coins or they will probably not sell. Keep this up until you get rich enough to invest more expensive items to increase your profit.

2. Lobsters: buy them for the medium price, or lowest price, then sell them for the maximum price. This way can be more profitable than using runes, but you need at least 100,000 coins to start and it takes longer to do. Note that this also works well with swordfish, as they are in high demand for F2P pkers.

3. Barrows equipment: look at what's going up, and buy it. Then, sell it once the price seems to not be going up anymore. This can be done with any item, but the price of Barrows items often fluctuates greatly. This way can get you quick results, and will generally earn you a lot of money. The only problem for this is you need a few million coins to start it, and it can be very easy to mess up and lose a great deal of money.

4. Watch items of the Grand Exchange Database under the most price raise category, then buy them and once they stop going up sell them.


 * Using these methods, it is easy to get a lot of money in a very short period of time. However, if you are thinking of investing a large sum of your cash, it may be worth it to research the general price that most of the items will stop going up or going down at. If you don't you may be at risk to lose large sums of money.

Armour Set Merchanting
Note: to do this most effectively you may find it beneficial to have enough money for a few of the sets that you are thinking of merchanting. Please note that it can still work with one set, although you may not make as much money.
 * To start off, go to the Grand exchange database on.
 * Next, search for a few of the sets that interest you or are in your price range.
 * After that, you will want to find one that is going up. This will be your target set.

For F2P players or people with less than 700k:


 * Rune Armour sets


 * }
 * Adamant gold-trimmed armour sets


 * }
 * Adamant trimmed armour sets


 * }
 * Black gold-trimmed armour sets


 * }
 * Black trimmed armour set


 * }

For F2P players or people with more than 1m:


 * Guthix Armour Sets


 * }
 * Saradomin Sets


 * }
 * Zamorak Sets


 * }
 * Rune Gold-Trimmed armour sets


 * }
 * Rune Trimmed Sets


 * }

For P2P players with any amount of cash:


 * Any Barrows sets


 * }
 * Any F2p Armour Sets listed above
 * See above


 * Splitbark sets


 * }
 * Infinity Sets


 * }

Now this is where it gets tricky!
 * If all or most of the parts of the set are going up, then it is probably a good idea to continue along down this page. If the set you are going to choose looks mostly like this:


 * Ahrim's armour set went up 3000 coins
 * Ahrim's Hood went down 1000 coins
 * Ahrim's Robe skirt went up 2000 coins
 * Ahrim's Staff went down 500 coins
 * Ahrim's Robe top went up 1500 coins

Then do this:


 * 1) Buy the set and exchange at normal price it in the Grand Exchange.
 * 2) Exchange the box for components.
 * 3) Sell the items that went down 100 coins below the Normal price.
 * 4) Sell the items that went up 1000 coins below the highest price.
 * 5) Wait One - Four hours and buy them back. You should make a value of 5000 coins or higher depending on how much the set is.

You can also do this:


 * 1) Buy all the components at medium price on the Grand Exchange.
 * 2) Exchange the set for the component pieces.
 * 3) Sell all the pieces for medium or highest price, depending on which ones are going up.

Note: If F2P, then use your two Grand Exchange slots to sell the items that were going up in price first. Then sell the ones that went down in value.

Tips and tricks

 * Patience - Players must have patience if they want to merchant. It might be a long time before someone will buy or sell the item you are merchanting. Do not freak out if the item does not sell or buy instantly.
 * Also, note that you cannot resell/rebuy an item immediately after buying/selling it. They restrict this to reduce the chance for players to manipulate prices.  However, this waiting period seems to be only a few hours.


 * Merchant in world 2 (members only) for member items and worlds 1 and 3 for non-member items- Worlds 1, 2 and 3 at the Grand Exchange are the worlds where many players go to trade. Though if you do use this method, BE CAREFUL!!!, some people will take advantage of the hectic atmosphere to sell you an item that may be falling rapidly in price!


 * Its always better to merchant when you have back-up and constant advice of what to buy. Joining a merchanting Clan Chat can result in get free merchanting advice and help in finding out what to merchant.


 * Think of the Big Three. They are Mining, Woodcutting, and Fishing. Merchant these markets due to the fact they are always being bought and sold.


 * Try to exchange your goods for cash only, unless it is a good deal for you. If you always trade your goods for items, you have to sell the item you get, and sometimes in this process you lose money.


 * Plan what you are going to do. Knowledge is power.


 * While you are merchanting go and do a money making skill. This way way you can make money from merchanting and from the skill.


 * Make sure that you are observing the price of your chosen item. If the price suddenly dips, it can potentially cost thousands of coins if you were not aware until it was too late.

Potion Decanting
The Method Potion decanting is a great way of merchanting for the lower levels. In fact, you don't need any levels at all to use this method for making money! The basics of decanting is turning an item into another one which could sell for a greater value than its component parts e.g. Buying three potions of one dose tends to cost the same as buying one potion of three doses.

One example of a potion to decant would be the Antifire potion: Buy a set (at the mid price or lower) of, let's say 100 Antifire potion(3). Go to the Grand Exchange, and go to the South-west corner where Bob Barter is. Right click him, and select "decant". He will then turn all 1, 2, and 3 does potions into the 4 dose versions of each. This is essentially him using them all with each other, like players had to do before. Once you do this with several inventories of potions you will end up with 75 Antifire potion(4), which you then sell for a price higher than the component parts (in this example above the mid price). You don't make great profit out of this merchanting method in small amounts, but if the demand is there you will proportionally increase your profits the more you invest.

Suggested potions
 * Saradomin brews
 * Prayer potions
 * Antifire potions  PLEASE NOTE: the 'Smokin mils' merch' clan is advertising this item and its ingredients as 'buy' items as at 2 May 2009
 * Super restore potions
 * Super strength potions
 * Super energy potions

Clan "merchanting"
One of the easiest, and occasionally risky, "merchanting" strategies is called group- or clan-merchanting. This is not actually "merchanting", but rather collusion, which is illegal when done in the real world.

The way this works is that a large group of players conspire to buy as many of a single item as possible, causing the price to rise over the course of several days. The players then sell back the item at the artificially-inflated price, resulting in huge potential profits at the expense of all players that wish to simply buy/sell the item for its actual value.

While this collusion is a form of price manipulation and therefore may technically be against the rules, Jagex has not yet made a formal statement against it. In fact, with several players publicly advertising merchanting clans at the Grand Exchange every day, it appears that Jagex is ignoring this activity.

However, some of the upsides include:
 * The potential profits range into the millions.
 * This is relatively easy, requiring only patience and attention to prices.
 * Not much money is needed to start out with (only about 500k).
 * Clan merchanting raises prices far more than any player could ever possibly do alone, allowing for greater profits.

Risks, including possible punishment at some point by Jagex, include:
 * The player missing the right time to sell, thereby losing money as the item's price plummets
 * The clan leaders lying to their followers and selling out early, thus crashing the item before the others have a chance to sell it
 * Your group buying the item right before another group sells out, thus losing millions. (It should be noted that clan leaders usually check other merchanting clan chats, thus making this very unlikely.)
 * Price manipulation in Runescape fourms is against the rules and will get you banned from posting in the Runescape fourms.

In spite of these risks, clan merchanting can be an very good way to make money, especially if you already have a decent amount to invest. However, the risks can be potentially disastrous, so paying close attention to prices and playing Runescape regularly are important. Also, make sure that you can trust the merchanting clan you join. If the clan keeps "dumping" early, then never invest any money into that clan. Unfortunately, there are many clans that do just that. If you aren't sure, do not immediately invest all of your hard-earned cash.

Clans identified to be selling early
 * Grandmerch3r:

N.B. During April 09 the price of the Bunyip Pouch rose from c £1.7k to £3.9k only to drop to £1.8k