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Grand Exchange rules
Without knowing the basic Grand Exchange rules, you wont be a good merchant, so better get studying:
1§
If you buy an item, you can NOT sell it within the next 4 hours.
2§
When selling/buying an item for the EXACTLY same price as others, the items or money will be split between you.
There is a way to take advantage of that rule, example:
Here I'm selling 20 dragon hatchets for minimum. As there haven't been a GE-Update (4§ for more info) within 20 hours and these axes is crashing like hell - I'm trying to sell them as soon as possible. Therefore, to speed up the process - I've split up my offer in two slots, which will result in selling my items double as fast.
3§
The person who offers most for the item he is buying, will obviously get the item first.
3.1§
This rule is a tiny bit complicated, but its a rule nevertheless. It is possible to buy an item for lowest price even if other players cant get the item sold for max at the same time - this is also called "sniping" among merchanters.
Reason to why this happen: If a player have chosen to sell their item before their 4-hour span have elapsed, they will as stated in 1§ not get to sell their item. However, after those 4 hours have elapsed, any other player who puts up an offer will get the item. As some noobs know nothing about the 4-hour rule, they think their item is crashing and therefore put the item at minimum, which results in most people getting their "snipes" at minimum.
4§
GE gets updated aprox 1 time per day. It is different from day to day when the exact time of the update will take place - no one knows exactly when the next update is going to be. Also, not all item prices gets updated at every update.
5§
There is a limit on how many you can buy of one item. The limit prevents people from 'buying out' an item thus creating an unnatural demand which makes the price go up a lot(although it doesn't prevent a big amount of people doing this at same time, sadly). In early 2009, an update resulted in lot of weapons and armors limits getting decreased due to the big amount of price manipulators. Today, most armory and weaponry has a limit of 10 per four hours.
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The merchanting process
Ok... This is going to be hard without an example - so imagine GE just got updated and you look for some item to merch, a good place is http://itemdb-rs.runescape.com/top100.ws?list=1&scale=0 here. Note, this link is no longer official (can not be find by looking around on RS-website), but can still be entered - epic, I know tongue.gif
First step: Finding the item I want to merchant
Example:
I USUALLY merch items that is going down a fair amount (for example, I wouldn't merch verac helms because they only dropped with -7k, which means I cant get them much below trade price - which again means that I won't make good profit) - except if the item is crashing, for example the master wand on the picture (I know its crashing because the master wand is dropping with (-62k) which is a lot compared to what the master wand cost) - then 4 hours later I sell the item for Medium.
Ok, lets say you decide to (try) merchant Dark bows. I set my offer for 1 Dark bow (-22k) @ ~50k below medium price
ow all I have to do is to wait - Meanwhile, I try finding other good items to merchant.
Now, see the guthans helm? Lets try to merch it. I set my offer for 1 Guthan's Helm (-14.7k) @ ~50k below medium price
Keep doing this till' all your 6 slots in Grand Exchange is in use, this is just an example:
Now go to toilet or make a cup of coffee and come back in 10 minutes. If you've gotten any of the items, then focus on the that item - cancel the offer on the other items. If you havnt gotten any item, try to raise all offers with 10k - wait 10 minutes and see if you've gotten anything (With more expensive items like gw armour/weapons, you should raise with 50-100k instead of 10k).
Step two: Buying a lot of the same item.
Lets say Dark bows bought and nothing else, now I'm going to cancel the offer on all my other items and focus on Dark Bows only.
Now that you know that you can get dark bows for 50k below, why not try 60k below? Wait 10 minutes, if you get a dark bow, then decrease your offer with another 10k - keep decreasing your offer untill you dont get the item within 10 minutes. Now say you have 10m and dark bows cost 1.501k each, meaning you can merch with additional 6 dark bows. Put an offer for 6 Dark Bows @ the price you just found out was the lowest price you could get the item for.
Step Three: Selling the item (four hours later)
Now, try to sell only 1 of the items you're merchanting for medium:
- if it sells instant - try selling your chosen merch item for a little above medium (In most cases you wont sell instant here!) and keep raising the price until you dont sell, then lower again and sell.
- If the item doesnt sell instant, then put all of your chosen merch item for medium, or a tiny bit under medium.
- If the item doesnt sell at all for medium (after waiting ~30-60 mins), then try to lower the price with a few gp's untill you get it sold. If you can't sell it at all, this probably means that your item is crashing. Here, rule 2§ becomes handy.
General Merchanting Tips
- Generally, you get most out of your merch if you can afford the "limit" on the item you're merchanting. So if you have 150m, items that is limited to 10 and costing around 15m would be ideal!
- The first times you try merchanting you will most likely fail, at least thats what happened to me. But, dont give up! Keep trying, and once you hit make a successful merch, you'll get the hang of it: and believe me - merchanting IS worth it.
FAQ
- When can I call my merch a good merch?
When you have 102% of what you invest, so 2m profit+ per 100m is a good merch.
To find out the exact number when a merch becomes "good" - simply divide your merched item with 50 and you get what you SHOULD make in profit - but remember, profit>no profit at all wink.gif
*REMINDER*
I can NOT gurantee that your merch will make you profit - merchanting is your own risk, dont blame me for misleading you or something - I'm only trying to help.
Suggestions/ideas/corrections/criticism please
Happy merchanting
Written by: Anas O Thone
Posted by 
