Grand Exchange


 * For the RuneScape Wiki price guide, see Grand Exchange Market Watch.



The Grand Exchange (often simply the Exchange, GE, or GX) is a formal marketplace in northwest Varrock that was released on 26 November 2007 in which players can buy or sell items while working on other activities in-game. It draws parallels to modern real-life stock exchanges, both through the method in which goods are traded and the design of the building itself. Members are capable of posting a maximum six item slots worth of offers at once, while free players are only allowed two slots. The Exchange matches requests with offers made by players on any game server. When a transaction is completed, players can collect the cash or items they received by either selecting the "collect" option at any bank, excluding bank chests, or they can return to the Grand Exchange and pick up their goods directly.

Tutorial
To begin, players must complete a tutorial before being allowed to use the Grand Exchange. Two tutorials are available: one from the Grand Exchange tutor, and the other from Brugsen Bursen, the founder of the Exchange. The former offers a more concise tutorial, including an elevated view of the Grand Exchange through a cut scene. The latter will explain in depth how the Grand Exchange was founded.

Inhabitants
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 NPCs, each specializing in a particular range of items. Any one of them will give players the current market price median for the items in their respective item categories, Bursen included.

In the middle of the Exchange are four bankers, dressed in grey, and four Grand Exchange clerks, in deep blue suits, standing 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 make 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. Members are allowed to maintain six offers at a time, while free-to-play players may make two offers simultaneously. After each 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, though direct trade between players is now subject to strictly balanced trade restrictions.



The main advantage of using the Grand Exchange for trading is the game's persistent attempts to matching players' requests to corresponding offers from other players on all servers, allowing players to leave the Exchange while waiting for transactions to complete. If several offers 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 requests 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 blocks
Every item in the Grand Exchange has the "current price" that is determined from the previous day's or week's trading history. This appears to be an "average" of the price of all items sold prior to updating the price. These prices will be updated usually between 11:00 UTC and 13:00 UTC (11:00 AM to 1:00 PM London time), and at other times which are done on occasion as the Jagex server operators may decide is necessary. For items that trade with relatively low numbers of items, their price may only be adjusted every few days or even once a week. For a few items, notably party hats, this price doesn't seem to be updating at all. There is no official explanation from Jagex as to why there are any differences for updating the prices from item to item.

In addition to the +/- 5% trading ranges that may change on a daily basis depending on the current price average, there are also "hard" price floors and ceilings on every item. According to the knowledge base, prices will never go below what shops will buy the items for, and they will never sell for more than the lowest price offered from a store's "main stock" which sells in infinite quantities.

As a practical matter, most items have their "hard price floor" set at either the amount a player can earn by casting the High Level 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 Grand Exchange and earn "free" experience by casting the High Alch spell for a modest profit. 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 Alch spell value. Jagex has, in some cases with a notable example being the hard price floor of Gold bars, lowered the price of these items after the opening of the Grand Exchange. Officially they claimed that the "algorithm used to generate minimum prices" was modified, during an update on January 17th, 2008.

It should be noted that there are some stores, notably Obli's General Store which buys items for approximately the high alchemy price when the player is wearing Karamja gloves and Grum's Gold Exchange which buys jewelry for higher than the high alchemy price, so the use of the high alchemy price may still be fitting in terms of a rough justification for the price floors. However, they seem to be applied very arbitrarily and inconsistently.

Price ceilings are also something that applies to every item on the Exchange as well. These seem to be applied somewhat more consistently across most of the items, although some updates have changed the situation since the introduction of the Grand Exchange. For example, the price ceilings of team capes is 150 coins. However, Rares in particular never had price ceilings, as there were no shops in the game that offered them for sale. With the January 17th, 2008 Grand Exchange update, price ceilings were raised significantly for many items, effectively removing most price ceilings from the game. This was applied to "non-stackable items", or items that would take up multiple spots in the player's backpack when he purchased them. "Stackable items", such as arrows, runes, and herbs continued to be regulated with the hard price ceilings, with some player crafted runes being the items most impacted with this policy.

It should be noted here that for F2P players, shop prices in member areas also impacted the Grand Exchange prices, even though F2P players couldn't directly access items in those shops.

Trading Restrictions
In an effort to curb Real world trading, Jagex has established volume trading restrictions on many items. This ranges from being able to buy 100 items at a time for most items, 1000 for more frequently traded items, and a larger limit of 25,000 items for the most commonly traded items. There is no official definition of what constitutes of "commonly traded item", nor is this volume trade restriction even officially acknowledged by Jagex.

This doesn't prevent the player from either buying or selling items on the Grand Exchange in larger quantities, but for those items that have this restriction players can only buy or sell at the volume trade limit once every couple of hours. If for some reason the price the player has chosen does not have enough buyers or sellers, the player will trade "normally" as if there were no restriction until you hit the volume limit.

In addition, if the player purchases an item on the Grand Exchange, there is a time limit imposed if he or she wants to turn around and sell the item right back at a profit or loss. While on the surface this appears to be an anti-merchanting viewpoint, the actual purpose is to help prevent another method for transferring coins between accounts due to "other considerations" such as real world trading, as well as preventing players from manipulating the prices.

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 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 Grand Exchange 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.

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

Examples:
 * All metal, trimmed, gilded and god armour, 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
 * Robes (magic armour) also has a 3 piece set of hat, top and bottoms.

Economic effects
Some players have criticised the Grand Exchange as it has caused many items to drop in price. The short World 1 riot on the 3rd Of March 2008 was related to this. At one point, some commonly traded raw materials such as sharks and lobsters have dropped in price from 800 coins and 250 coins each to about 650 coins each and 220 coins each, respectively. Abyssal whips have dropped from 1.3 million coins to about 1.2 million (but have now risen back up to around 1.6m because of the drop rate nerfing from Abyssal Demons), and the prices of rune weapons and armour have fallen since the release of the Grand Exchange:


 * Rune scimitar: Approx. 25 000 coins before the exchange to
 * Rune battleaxe: Approx. 40 000 to
 * Rune platebody: Approx. 55 000 to

Not all items have dropped in price. Some prices have risen, such as the ones of yew logs. Yew logs traded for around 350 coins each before the exchange, but were trading for about 450 coins each in December 2007 due to a sharp fall in supply due to mass banning of macroers. However, a market crash caused the price of yews to fall to about 350 gp each by mid-January 2008. Bones previously regarded to be not worth the effort to trade have risen to 100gp, and Raw Lobsters, along with other raw fish, are worth more than their cooked counterparts, fetching up to 250 coins each at market price for raw lobsters, and rising.

Most of these changes are 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 Grand Exchange 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 food 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 Grand Exchange 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 prices have slightly risen again recently. The prices of raw fish have sharply gone up as sharks are around more than 800 coins now, and raw lobsters are around more than 250 coins now. The raised prices are probably due to a recent update that eliminated nearly all of the macroers, which were the main suppliers of raw materials, with rising demand from players attempting to reach 99 cooking by cooking raw lobsters, fueling the increase in price.

Price modification
Jagex has modified the Exchange prices of certain items like the Abyssal whip to counter deflation. Although this has benefited the producers or collectors of these items, there has been criticism from players believing that this will hurt the economy because the players of RuneScape do not control it now.

Player reaction
Most players reacted positively to the release of the Grand Exchange, finding it a quicker and easier way to trade items. Using the Exchange, players no longer need to search the forums or trading areas for someone who will buy or sell the goods they need. Some, however, criticized 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 Exchange'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 Exchange system. Players are unable to see how many others are trading a particular item, and more importantly, the prices of the offers given.

Despite Jagex's claims that the Grand Exchange was actually a step to increase players' control of the RuneScape economy, most players argue that the Grand Exchange itself is proof that Jagex is after all the overall in charge of the RuneScape economy, as prices of items were adjusted accordingly by demand and supply rather than players' popularity with the item, making the Grand Exchange a method of centralised economy by Jagex.

Tips

 * Try selling raw materials such as uncut gems, ore and pure essence, which usually sell quickly. 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.

Trivia

 * 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 attempts to buy a large quantity of an expensive item (such as 500 party hats), in which the total offer value exceeds 231 - 1 (about 2.1 billion), the technical limit, they will be given the message "Too high!" as their total price. This is the same limit that applies to stackable items.


 * If a player who has completed Lunar Diplomacy talks to the rune merchant Murky Matt, he 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 players cannot open it. It may have been placed there for decoration 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. 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 bug was that players could talk to non-Grand Exchange NPC's (e.g., Rick Turpentine) the same way they could to Grand Exchange clerks; this was quickly fixed while the Exchange was offline.)


 * When the Exchange was released, many prices did not correspond to street prices at the time. Many prices have moved towards equilibrium since that time, however. An example was the gnome scarf costing around 1,284 coins on the first day, quickly rising to over 800,000 coins, expanding in value by nearly 680 times.


 * The western of Varrock's banks was updated to have the bankers on both sides of the building and a door in the back. The deposit box is now gone.


 * 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 players can offer a price to buy these items, they are not released yet and thus cannot be purchased, implying that there will be a construction update sometime in the future.


 * The name of the Exchange's herb merchant, Bob Barter, is a parody of Bob Barker, a millionaire and the past-host of the game show The Price is Right.