Prices

RuneScape is an interesting and challenging game due, in no small part, to the complexity of its economy.

For a more complete discussion about that economy, refer to the Economy Guide. This article deals with the more limited question of how to relate the various pricing levels with the player's many buying, selling and bartering opportunities.

There are several ways and places in which players can buy, sell and barter goods. Where governed by the game itself, prices will be predictable, or even fixed. At the opposite extreme, when players are directly interacting the prices will be less predictable, and sometimes even irrational.

Prices from High to Low
Note that ordering prices in this way intermixes prices in which the player is buying or selling.

Store Price
The highest prices a player will typically see will be the selling price at the appropriate store. For some items, that will be the General Store, while in other cases the item's price is set in a specialty shop catering to that item type. General store items (for example, buckets) might occasionally show up in a specialist store, but the price and its behavior will remain the same. Specialty shop items can be sold to a General Store as well, but it will sell for a lower price.

The Store Price is listed in every item's infobox. This price will be at its highest when the store has precisely one item of this kind in stock. The price might drop if the quantity in stock is higher: whether it drops, how quickly it drops, and how many items must be in stock before it drops will depend on the item. Moreover, the store price might occasionally be lower than the street price if the latter is affected by extreme scarcity. It is worth noting that the Store Price is set within the game itself, and only crudely simulates supply and demand, whereas the street price is set by humans buying and selling (and, indirectly, by bartering) and can fluctuate erraticly.

Street Price
The next highest price will typically be the Street Price. This should vary somewhere between the store price and High Alchemy price if the trading players are acting rationally. The store price should place a ceiling on the street price because a buyer is unlikely to pay a substantially higher street price unless the item is so scarce in stores that the price is irrelevant, such as the Abyssal whip.

At the same time, a seller capable of the high alchemy spell has no reason to drop below that price when selling player-to-player — unless, of course, the value of the item is so low that the expenditure of the required runes makes the spell uneconomical. For the same reason, the alchemy prices might not even be relevant and thus provide no floor below the street price. That, in turn, means that players will seldom find the effort to find buyers worth the effort. Thus the curious problem that it is often easier to find a player selling a high value item than a lower value item.

Street prices are only roughly known, since there is no formal exchange in which these trades could be tabulated. The least formal exchanges are those that occur in or near banks or town squares in any world; somewhat more organized are those trades taking place in specially designated worlds; and trades that originate in external forums are the easiest to examine and compare.

High Alchemy
The "high alch" price is that which the appropriate store would purchase the item from the player if the store had none of that item in stock. In other words, the highest price at which the game itself would buy an item from a player. There are, however, exceptions: the specialist shop Grum's Gold Exchange in Port Sarim will buy gold jewellery at a higher price than high alchemy if none are in stock. The existence of the high alchemy spell also explains why many mid-range items are seldom traded player-to-player: they are often created in such numbers that searching for buyers would be futile, while the item is valuable enough to make the spell a worthwhile expense.

Low Alchemy
The associated "low alch" spell exchanges the item for the price that would be paid by a general store — usually around 1/2 of the price that High Alchemy would provide, but this can change depending on the initial value of the item.

Selling without Alchemy Spells
The worst case scenario — and the only one available to beginning and free-to-play players — is selling items directly to stores. In the best of circumstances, the price will be the same (or, as noted, higher) than high alchemy prices. But as a store's stock quickly rises, the price quickly falls, and often the location of an appropriate specialty shop is unknown or not worth reaching.