Grand Exchange


 * For the RuneScape Wiki price guide, see Grand Exchange Price Guide.



The Grand Exchange (GE) is a trading system for players to buy and sell almost every tradeable item (currently 6,032 items) with any other player from any world. Traders don't need to meet up with each other, and they don't need to wait at the GE for their trade to complete. All coins and items from partially and fully completed trades are collectible at any bank, but not at bank chests or deposit boxes. This trading system is similar to modern real-life stock exchanges.

The GE also refers to the location of this trading system: a large official market area north-west of Varrock.

It was released on 26 November 2007 and has since completely replaced the older market areas in Varrock and Falador.

Location
The Grand Exchange is located in Northwest Varrock. Players may enter the Grand Exchange using one of its five entrances.


 * The South gate to the Varrock west bank.
 * The East gate to the Varrock Palace.
 * The Spirit Tree to the north-east of the Grand Exchange. (Completion of at least The Grand Tree to enter, and Tree Gnome Village for full access.)
 * The Underwall Tunnel to the north-west of the Grand Exchange from Edgeville (21 Agility required).
 * The Mine cart from White Wolf Mountain, Ice Mountain, or Keldagrim.

Using the Grand Exchange

 * Jagex's Official Grand Exchange Guide

Before using the Grand Exchange, players need to go through a tutorial. Players can receive one by speaking to either the GE Tutor or Brugsen Bursen, both of whom can be found in the south of the GE. Bursen is the founder of the GE and he provides a long and interesting tutorial that cover its history. The Tutor provides a brief and concise tutorial. Reading wikipedia doesn't count as completing a tutorial.

Members can have up to six buy and sell offers running, while free players can only have two offers running.



Players can collect the items in noted or unnoted form. Left-click to collect the items as notes, or right-click the items and selects the "item" option.

NPCs
In addition to Brugsen Bursen and the GE tutor, there are five other NPCs who specialises in five different areas. Each specialist gives players the current market price for the items in their area of expertise. Brugsen Bursen also fulfils this role, although he comments that it would be quicker to ask the specialists.

In the centre are bankers and GE clerks. The bankers function like any other banker, and the clerks allow players to access the GE.

Item sets

 * Jagex's Official Grand Exchange Guide: Item Sets

Some items, typically armour, can be converted into a single item 'set' to make it easier to purchase or sell them as a whole, rather than having to wait for someone buying or selling each separate part. There is no charge for converting armour into sets. This also has the advantage that you can then sell the whole set and only use one of your trading 'slots'. To convert armour into a set, talk to a Grand Exchange clerk.

Pricing Mechanics
Prices are automatically updated depending on their trading volume and prices. For items that trade with low volume, such as rares, their prices may only be adjusted every few days or even once a week. Jagex has not published the GE's algorithms.

The market price of every item is automatically recalculated roughly once per day. 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 GE, though direct trade between players is now subject to strictly balanced trade restrictions.

The GE prioritises earlier offers over later offers (other things being equal).

By observing the price at which transactions are completed, it is possible to estimate 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 the market price of an item is the same as the minimum price of the item, then that item will be extremely difficult to sell. On the other hand, when you buy the item, it will nearly always buy instantly. An example of this is willow logs. If the market price of an item is the same as the maximum price of an item, then that item has an extremely large demand but with low supply. That item well be difficult to buy, but will sell almost instantly. Charcoal is a good example of this.

If a player plans on selling an item, he or she can test the market by trying to sell the item for the maximum allowed price. In the event that the item's price is rising rapidly, this item will sell immediately, and the player should usually wait a few days before trying to sell the rest of the items in order to get a better price.



On the other hand, if a price is falling rapidly, this can be determined by attempting to buy the item at the lowest possible price on the Exchange. If the item is purchased 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. This situation may be difficult for players who craft or smith items, as waiting to sell the item will only lower the sale price. Some comfort can be found in the fact that the GE uses a queue in which the first offers to buy or sell an item are filled first. It may be possible that the item simply sells slowly. In other words, it may still be valuable, but is only occasionally traded.

Tips

 * You can bargain at the GE by waiting to see whether a trade goes through and adjusting your price if it doesn't. You should make fires, cook, alchemise, or superheat while waiting. This way only a tiny amount of time is purely used for bargaining.


 * If you're buying an item at a low price, try buying it for a few coins higher; this way, if someone sells at lowest, you will get the item at the cost of a few coins, compared to at lowest, where there might be a few to a lot of offers. This works better on single items, rather than a lot of cheaper items.
 * Some processed materials are cheaper than raw materials, i.e. cut gems are cheaper than uncut gems. This is partly because processing the raw materials give experience, i.e. 50 experience for cutting an uncut sapphire.
 * For bank sales involving many items, just try for quick sales on items by placing items up, and if they do not sell immediately, then remove and try another item. After trying all items, then just leave up items that have not sold.


 * Check your offer occasionally and raise or lower your price if it has moved out of the ±5% price range.
 * Find an item that is steady in price by referring to the GE graphs on the RuneScape website and buy a little above the minimum price then resell a little above the average price. Give the buy trade about 24 hours to complete and another 24 hours for the sell. This can create a very consistent way to create cash flow.
 * One unchanging pattern in the GE prices involves the North American School Schedule. Read almost all item graphs on the GE Beta Database, and you will see that in mid-June, prices spike when school gets out. Price stay high and steady throughout the summer, and drop in late September when everyone's back in school. Prices then rise slightly throughout the winter (more snowy/rainy days, and school cancellations), and stay at a consistent price. In Spring, prices generally stay the same or drop, since many North American students begin to play outside in the nice weather. Item prices begin to rise when long-term investors begin to prepare for the "Summer Spike", and rise drastically in mid June.Players can capitalise on this by buying much of any commodity in mid-winter/spring. Don't be tempted to sell it off when prices rise as much as 25 percent- wait until the peak of the summer spike (around mid June). The best bet to place is investing in commodities, especially raw materials, like gold ore- perfect example, look at the item 180 day graph! In other words, anything that is a major asset to the RuneScape economy will do.)

Trade Restrictions
All trade restrictions are intended to regulate price manipulation, real world trading, and competition or cooperation between low level and high level players.

On the issue of price manipulation, Jagex said that they "are keen to keep a player-driven economy, so the prices are worked out using the supply and demand rules above. [They] will only intervene as a last resort, and only if [they] think price manipulation is going on, although the system has lots of safeguards to prevent that."

Restriction on absolute prices: ceilings & floors.
Some items cannot be traded above or below certain prices. The maximum price allowed is called a "ceiling," and the minimum price allowed is called a "floor".

Jagex has never published a list of items displaying each item's ceiling and floor.

This restriction seem to apply somewhat more consistently across most of the items, although some updates have changed the situation since the introduction of the GE. For example, the price ceilings of team capes are 150 coins. However, discontinued items never had price ceilings, as there were no shops in the game that offered them for sale. With the 17 January 2008 GE update, price ceilings were raised significantly for many items, effectively removing many price ceilings from the game. This was applied to non-stackable items, or items that would take up multiple slots in the player's inventory. Stackable items, such as arrows, runes, and herbs continued to be regulated with price ceilings, with some craftible runes being the items most impacted with this policy.

Most items have their floor set at either the amount a player can earn by casting the high alchemy spell on the item, or for 280 coins above or below this value. The value of 280 coins is presumably the cost of a nature rune, and this price floor is set in an attempt to avoid having players purchase large numbers of items on the GE and gain easy experience by casting the high alchemy for a modest profit.

An item's price will never rise above a shop's price, or fall below the price a shop will pay for it. Note that shops will adjust their prices according to the GE, so it is extraordinarily difficult to make a quick profit by buying from the shops and selling on the GE or vice versa.

No official explanation has been given in terms of why there are discrepancies for this pricing from one item to the next in terms of being higher or lower than the High Alchemy spell value. Jagex has, in some cases such as the price floor of gold bars, lowered the price of these items after the opening of the GE. Jagex said that the "algorithm used to generate minimum prices" was modified on 17 January 2008.

Spirit shards has a fixed price, which means it has identical floor and ceiling.

Restriction on relative prices ±5% limit.
You must buy and sell all items within ±5% of its current market price, unless there is a floor or ceiling, in which case the floor or ceiling takes priority. Any offer outside of this ±5% range is inactive. This restriction is entirely intended to fight price manipulation and real world trading.

Restrictions on buying & selling rates
The following trade restrictions are entirely intended to fight price manipulation.


 * 1) You cannot sell any quantity of some item using the GE if you previously bought the same item using the GE, unless 4 hours has passed.
 * 2) You cannot buy more than some quantity of the same item every 4 hours. The exact quantity is shown in the following table:


 * {|class="wikitable"

!Item !Max quantity per 4 hours !Item !Max quantity per 4 hours !Item !Max quantity per 4 hours
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"| Woodcutting
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"| Fishing & Cooking
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"| Fletching
 * Log
 * 25,000
 * Fish
 * 20,000
 * Arrow
 * 10,000
 * Ashes
 * 10,000
 * Food
 * 10,000
 * Arrowtip
 * 10,000
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Mining & Smithing
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Herblore
 * Bow
 * 5,000
 * Ore
 * 25,000
 * Herb
 * 10,000
 * Bow string
 * 10,000
 * Bar
 * 10,000
 * Potion
 * 10,000
 * Unstrung bow
 * 10,000
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Crafting
 * Vial
 * 10,000
 * Feather
 * 10,000
 * Soft clay
 * 10,000
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Runecrafting
 * Flax
 * 25,000
 * Cowhide
 * 10,000
 * Rune
 * 25,000
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Armour & Weapon
 * Gem
 * 5,000
 * Talisman
 * 5,000
 * Armour
 * 100
 * Jewellery
 * 5,000
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Summoning
 * Barrow equipment
 * 10
 * Battlestaff
 * 100
 * Spirit shard
 * 10,000
 * God Wars equipment
 * 10
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Prayer
 * Proboscis
 * 100
 * Treasure Trail armour
 * 2
 * Bone
 * 10,000
 * Discontinued item
 * 2
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Construction
 * Flatpack
 * 100
 * }
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Prayer
 * Proboscis
 * 100
 * Treasure Trail armour
 * 2
 * Bone
 * 10,000
 * Discontinued item
 * 2
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Construction
 * Flatpack
 * 100
 * }
 * bgcolor="#ffffcc" align="left" valign="middle" colspan="2"|Construction
 * Flatpack
 * 100
 * }
 * Flatpack
 * 100
 * }
 * 100
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }

Notes:(a) The buying restriction on any armour applies to all armours of the same set, i.e. maximum of 51 bronze platebodies and 49 bronze platelegs every 4 hours. This includes armour from Treasure Trails. (b) If you cannot buy or sell something, it is possibly because of these trade restrictions rather than because nobody is selling or buying.

Tradeable items not listed on the GE
Some items are not tradeable using the GE but are still tradeable using the traditional player-to-player trade. A short list:


 * Burnt foods
 * Items from the quest Shield of Arrav: Half certificate, Phoenix crossbow, and Weapon store key.
 * Items from the quest Heroes' Quest: Miscellaneous key and Pete's Candlestick.
 * Ogleroot from the mini-game Vinesweeper.
 * Cursed magic logs from the Spirit Realm.
 * Ancient artefacts from PvP Worlds and Bounty Worlds.
 * Partially charged items: Amulet of glory (1-3), Games necklace (2-7), and Black Masks (1-9). Mucky Matt can combine these items into their full charges, which is similar to potion decanting.

Purposes of the GE
Before the GE was implemented, Jagex had several legal issues due to gold selling sites, or so-called "real-world trading organisations". These organisations would use bots or sweatshop labour to gain gold through harvesting raw materials, and then sell them at a general store or collect these items in a "farm system" for sale to players in bulk for real world currency(pounds, euros, yen, etc.) In some cases these were openly criminal organisations using this trade as fund-raising and money laundering. This would happen on both member worlds and free worlds, and Jagex claims that the characters on the member worlds were often using stolen credit card numbers.

To effectively funnel people to the GE, Jagex implemented a 3k trade value difference limit that applied to all players. This limit was later modified on subsequent updates due to player feedback and complaints. The trade limit supposedly prevents gold sellers from trading, but it acts as double edged sword and hurt player to player sales. It has been theorised that Jagex wants people to play for longer by collecting large quantities of raw materials and then selling them, rather than making large amounts of money from smaller amounts in short periods of time then logging off (this was only made possible through traditional merchanting, and it was easily possible to make large amounts of money this way on non-member worlds).

Players' reactions
Many players reacted positively to the release of the GE because it was a quicker and easier way to trade items. Using the GE, players no longer need to search the forums or trading areas for someone who will buy or sell the goods they need. Some, however, criticised its implementation, particularly the control of prices to within a 5% range of the previous day's average price. Merchanting has become far less popular since the GE's release, and it was previously considered one of the best ways to make considerable amounts of money fast. Other concerns have been raised regarding the lack of transparency provided by the GE.

Despite Jagex's claims that the GE was actually a step to increase players' control of the RuneScape economy, some players argued that the GE itself is proof that Jagex is pursuing a centralised economy.

Also, some players have connected the GE to a form of totalitarianism - an economic in which a central power controls the economy. Though Jagex claims that the economy is player-controlled, many times they have stepped in and raised the prices of items that were significantly below their alchemy values, as well as adjusting the prices of similar items (i.e.: dragon hatchet and dragon hatchet head) even though their relative supply and demand are different. Though this may appear harmless, this has significantly discouraged players from using alchemy as a means of training, which has cut off a large amount of the game's influx of coins. This led to a major deflation throughout the economy, or the 2008 Market Dip.

Initial economic effects
Some players criticised the GE's release as it caused many items to drop in price. At one point, some commonly traded raw materials such as sharks and lobsters dropped in price from 800 coins and 250 coins each to about 650 coins each and 220 coins each, respectively. Abyssal whips dropped from 1.3 million coins to about 1.2 million, and the prices of rune weapons and armour as of several months after the update fell significantly:


 * Rune scimitar: Approx. 25,000 coins before the Exchange to 15,000 coins (due to PvP worlds, the demand for Rune scimitars have caused the price to increase to about 30,000 coins)
 * Rune battleaxe: Approx. 40,000 to 25,000
 * Rune platebody: Approx. 55,000 to 40,000 (due to people buying rune platebody, the price has gone up to 60,000 coins)
 * Dragon hatchet: Approx. 2.7 million to 1.8 million

Many discontinued items, especially Party hats and Christmas crackers, have dropped their price significantly after the introduction of GE due to low demand, however this is mainly because the removal of staking which happened at the same time as the GE was introduced, Party hats were mainly used for staking.

A few items, however, rose in price due to the release. Bones, for example, were previously considered not worth the effort of collecting and trading, but their price quickly rose to about 100 coins.

Most of these changes were actually due to perceptions of players who were unaware of the most recent changes in prices. For example, although some players would pay 25,000 coins for a rune scimitar before the update, most players would only pay 20,000 coins or less. Since the update removed these perceptions and made players aware of the current average prices, items which were sometimes traded for above or below their street price were being traded for values much closer to their actual street price.

Because the GE also averages the prices of items traded in both free-to-play and pay-to-play, the prices of raw materials dropped. For example, lobsters - which are the best fish available in free-to-play besides swordfish (which are much harder to catch in bulk) - were often traded for 250 coins each in free-to-play because of high demand before the update, but only 200 coins each in pay-to-play. After the update, players in free-to-play noticed that the market price of lobsters shown in the GE was only about 220 coins, and began to offer less money for the lobsters. As a result, the price of lobsters fell, as the players in free-to-play were all that kept the price up.

However, the GE's release was followed shortly after by a series of updates on 10 December 2007 which largely eliminated macroing as a viable source of cheap raw materials. As such, the prices for raw materials that were previously gathered by macros, such as yew logs and raw lobsters, rose to a level higher than their pre-GE level. A few months after these updates, yew logs were trading at roughly 400 coins, sometimes as high as 450, while their price was usually closer to 350 coins prior to the GE. Raw fish are generally now worth more than their cooked counterparts with the exception of the manta ray and sea turtles. Their prices for the most part were similar to those of several years before, when macroing was not a major problem

The GE replacing genuine merchants.
The GE has made genuine merchants almost obsolete. The list below outlines the only legitimate role of every genuine merchant, and then show that the GE has fulfilled this role almost perfectly—far better than every human merchant.
 * 1) All genuine merchants have exactly one legitimate role: to decrease the overall transaction cost.
 * 2) Transaction cost is the cost of finding someone to trade with, bargaining and enforcing a trade agreement, and transferring the agreed goods and/or services.
 * 3) The GE finds someone to trade for us. It searches every trade, always and every world.
 * 4) The GE bargains for us. If the buyer bids higher or equal to the seller’s asking price, then the GE instantly completes the trade. If not, then it doesn’t—but in this case genuine merchants cannot profit anyway. If the buyer bids lower than the seller’s asking price, then genuine merchants cannot profit by buying from the seller at some price and later selling to the buyer at a lower price. Also, when a trader bargains at the GE by waiting to see whether a trade goes through, he or she can make fires, cook, alchemise, or superheat while waiting. This way only a tiny amount of time is purely used for bargaining.
 * 5) The GE enforces trade agreements for us. It guarantees that each person keeps his or her end of the bargain.
 * 6) The GE transfers the items halfway for us. We still have to bring the items to the marketplace, but the GE brings the items from the marketplace to our collection box. We can collect them at any bank, and all we had to do was teleport to Varrock and run to the GE once.
 * 7) In summary of 1 through 6, the GE has made genuine merchants almost obsolete.

History
Jagex's 26 August update changed the GE slightly. Previously, players got the items directly if four or less of the same items were bought and in noted form if more than five of the same items were bought. Items can be taken in noted form only if the item can be noted (for example, stackable items like arrows cannot be noted).

Manipulation of Runite Ore
In September 2008, the price of runite ore began to sky-rocket. It went up from 11k to around 18k per ore. This caused the price of rune bars to rise from 13k to over 20k in some cases. In October 2008 this caused a dramatic rise in the price of most rune items, except for rune medium helm and rune chainmail The price started to decrease in January 2009. The rise was caused by a group of players buying runite ores.

The 2008 Market Dip.

Trivia

 * If a player attempts to buy a quantity of items such that the total offer value exceeds 2,147,483,647 coins (231 − 1), They will be given the message "Too high!" as their total price and will be unable to complete it. This is because Java cannot handle numbers higher than that.


 * The hidden trapdoor North-west of the GE area was closed off from its release until 9 September 2009, when the release of Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf revealed a Mine cart station underneath.


 * or while, players were able to use the GE search box without being near the GE. This has been fixed with the RuneTek 5 engine.Grand_exchange_glitch.png
 * or while, players were able to use the GE search box without being near the GE. This has been fixed with the RuneTek 5 engine.Grand_exchange_glitch.png


 * Shortly after its release, players found that they could not withdraw items from the GE or cancel offers. This was due to the items being looked after by an older system which was not working correctly with the GE's system.


 * During the first day, players found that they could talk to various NPCs the same way they could to Grand Exchange clerks.


 * When the GE was first released, many items had starting prices much lower than their street prices, such as gnome scarfs (at 1,284 coins) and pirate's hats (at 127).


 * After the RuneScape HD Graphics Update on 1 July 2008, some players found the Progress Bar of the GE did not light up Red, Yellow, or Green whenever an item was successfully cancelled, bought or sold. This was allegedly fixed after the RuneTek 5 update.


 * For a long time after the GE's release, players could stand on any of the squares adjacent to the GE desk and use a bowstring with a strung Yew longbow, a message would appear in the players chat box saying "You can't light a fire here".


 * Players can make fires in the GE even though it's a bank, where fires are usually not allowed.


 * During the first few days of Stealing Creation's release, the sacred clay arrows from the minigame were listed in the GE even though it was not possible to bring the arrows outside of the minigame.


 * The 9 June 2009 game engine update glitch made it so you could not talk to the people behind the counter, though it was still possible to access the GE by using the desk.


 * There were originally four bankers and four clerks at the desk, but two of each were removed on 17 September 2009. The many bankers and clerks created duplicate right-click options, so Mod Alan 'fired' some of them. Some players were angry as it glitched for months after they left, and strangely the bankers all across RuneScape could not be talked to if they were behind a desk, although right clicking the desk allowed them the option 'Use Quickly'..


 * An unspecified bug makes the hands on the entrance pillars disappear.


 * The GE doesn't have a shadow, only the hands at the entrance have shadows.


 * A bug occurred in World 2 which made the bankers and clerks at the GE disappear for several minutes, along with their banking and trading functions on 8 November 2009
 * Grand_Exchange_Bug.gif


 * The desk had all its options removed except the 'examine' option since 10 November2009