Grand Exchange

The Grand Exchange is a formal marketplace in northwest Varrock released on 26 November, 2007. Players can use the Exchange to buy or sell items while working on other activities in-game. Essentially, players post offers to buy or sell items with one of the Grand Exchange clerks, dressed in blue. Members are allowed to post six item slots' worth of offers at once, while free players are allowed two slots. The game will constantly try to match offers up to others made by players on every server, and when a transaction has been completed, players can collect the cash or items they received by selecting the new "collect" option at any bank, with the exceptions of the Burgh De Rott bank and bank chests.

Tutorial
Players must complete a tutorial before being allowed to use the Grand Exchange. Two tutorials are available: one from the Grand Exchange tutor, the other from Brugsen Bursen, the founder of the Exchange. The former will give a more concise tutorial, while the latter will explain in detail how the Grand Exchange was founded.

People
There are a variety of NPCs found in the Exchange, each of which play a role in its business.

Around the edges of the Exchange are the tutor and Brugsen Bursen, mentioned above, along with five other people, each specializing in a particular kind of goods. Any one of them will give players the current market price range for the items in their respective item categories. Bursen will also give players current market price ranges.

In the middle of the exchange four bankers, dressed in grey, and four Grand Exchange clerks, in blue, stand behind a counter. Players do not need to move next to these NPCs in order to talk to them. The bankers function as any others would; the clerks are used by players to place buy or sell offers on particular goods.

Usage
To use the exchange, players must first place offers either to buy or sell a specific quantity of an item at a specific price. Every day, the game calculates the average price at which each item was sold the previous day, and sets this as the new market value. Offers must be placed within 5% above or below this market value, allowing for some fluctuation in prices from day to day. If the street value of an item is outside of this relatively narrow price range, it will usually be traded in banks using the older trade system rather than at the Grand Exchange.



The main advantage of using the Grand Exchange for trading is that the game constantly tries to match player offers to corresponding ones from other players, allowing one to leave the Exchange while waiting for transactions to complete. If more than one offer for the same item at the same price is pending at the same time, an offer queue will form, and the oldest offers will be served first if any matching offers are made. In the case that a buyer offers a higher price than the seller is willing to sell for, then the price used will be that of whichever offer was placed first at the Exchange.



Price strategies
By observing the price at which transactions are completed, it is possible to determine whether an item's Exchange price is likely to rise or fall in the near future. This is especially useful for commodity items such as ores, runes, and food ingredients that are traded in large quantities.

If you plan on trying to sell something, you can try to sell the item for the maximum price possible on the exchange. If the price of the item is rising rapidly, you will be able to immediately sell the item at the highest possible price. It may be recommended to wait a few days to see if the price of that item may become more stable and keep testing the price over the next few days when this happens if you want to make the most amount of money off of your items. What this means is that so many people are trying to buy the item that they are bidding for the maximum price, and still not getting people to fill those requests.

On the other hand, if a price is falling rapidly, you can test this by trying to buy an item at the lowest possible price on the exchange. If you can buy the item immediately, that means there is a huge supply of items from many people wanting to sell the item, and nobody who is buying them up at nearly any price. If you are crafting or smithing items, this sort of situation is a bit more difficult, as waiting to sell the item is only going to see a lower price for the item. You can be somewhat comforted that there is a queue set up where the first bid to make a request for the item will be filled first when items are sold, and it may be possible that it simply is an item that is slow to sell. In other words, it may still be valuable, but people only occasionally buy it.

Bank
The Grand Exchange is also a bank, as there are bankers directly next to the exchange clerks. This is especially useful for cooking due to the proximity of the Grand Exchange to the Cooking Guild, however there are several other banks nearby, reducing the impact of this banking location for purposes other than using the exchange. Still, moving items from the bank to the exchange is very rapid and only an extra mouse click away in most cases.

Music

 * The Trade Parade

Tips

 * Try selling raw materials such as uncut gems,ore and pure essence sells very fast. Also, remember that just because something is for sale on the Grand Exchange doesn't mean someone will buy it right away.
 * For bank sales involving lots of items, just try for quick sales on items by placing items up, and if they don't sell immediately (no matching buyer), then remove and try another item. After trying all items, then just leave up items that have not sold.

Armour sets
The exchange clerks can also pack and unpack armour sets, allowing a full set of many armours to be traded or stored in a single space.

Examples:
 * All metal, trimmed, gilded and god armors, in sets of full helm, plate, kite and legs or skirt
 * Dragon armour, the set is medium helm, chain, legs or skirt
 * Dragonhide (ranged armour) has a 3 piece set of body, chaps and vambraces

You can create your own sets to sell by using the 'Sets Grand Exchange Clerk' option. Basic free player's wizard robes cannot be made into a set, but trimmed wizard robes can be made into a set. Many other armours can also be made into sets, though Barrows armour must be at 100% and complete with weapon. Only the blue mystic set can be turned into a set.

Economy
Some players have criticised the Grand Exchange as it caused a price drop in many items. Raw materials such as Sharks and lobsters have dropped in price from 800gp ea and 250gp ea to about 650gp ea and 220gp ea, and abyssal whips have dropped from 1.3mil to about 1.2mil. The prices of rune weapons and armour has also fallen since the release of the Grand Exchange.


 * Rune scimitar: Approx. 25 000 into less than 20 000
 * Rune battleaxe: Approx. 40 000 into less than 30 000
 * Rune platebody: Approx. 55 000 into less than 50 000

On the other hand, it also caused a rise in prices of some items, such as yew logs, which used to be 350 gp ea and are now about 380gp ea. It is not known if the prices will continue to drop or rise again.

Trivia

 * The Grand Exchange seems to have the same functions as the Auction House on World of Warcraft.


 * There was an easter egg where if players searched for "Thingy" in the item search pane, they would see many sapphire amulets listed with that same name. The item's description was simply be "Mabob", as in "thingymabob". This was later removed, in a system update.


 * If a player, who has completed Lunar Diplomacy, talks to the rune merchant Murky Matt, Murky will refer to how "pirates" were stuck for days and sailing around in circles.


 * There is a trapdoor north-west of the Grand Exchange area. It currently has no use and will not let players open it. It may have been put there for decortation purposes only.


 * On its first day, the Grand Exchange was temporary off-line for a short time "to fix a couple of bugs". An update Update:Grand Exchange temp offline was on the RuneScape main page until it was back on-line when the update was taken off the main page. No items were lost by players as "items are actually looked after by an older system that has been working fine for years, rather than the new system". (One particularly amusing bug was that players could talk to non-Grand Exchange NPCs(Eg; Rick Turpentine) the same way they could to Grand Exchange clerks, this was quickly fixed when the Exchange was offline)


 * When the exchange was released most prices weren't the same as the street prices at the time, now people estimate that the prices will even out in the next couple of months.


 * Varrock Bank was updated to have the bankers on both sides and a door in the back.


 * If one searches for any item that can be built in a study, save for bookcases and wall charts, they will find flatpacked versions of these items. While you can offer a price to buy these items, they are not released yet and thus cannot be purchased, implying that there will be construction update sometime in the future.