So I just started playing again (after like two years) and I noticed that "mints" are 5mil on the forums, and only sell in the G.E for like 26k.

 

So I guess i have a couple of questions:

 

1) how do you trade them for 5 mil when they are only valued at 26k

 

2) what is this "stable junk" etc people keep talking about

 

3) Are they really going to stay at 4-5 mil?

 

4) If I wanted to trade some for some weapons, how would I (safely) go about doing so?

 

Sorry for what must sound like very noob questions, I'm just a little out of the loop! :P

So I just started playing again (after like two years) and I noticed that "mints" are 5mil on the forums, and only sell in the G.E for like 26k.

 

So I guess i have a couple of questions:

 

1) how do you trade them for 5 mil when they are only valued at 26k

 

2) what is this "stable junk" etc people keep talking about

 

3) Are they really going to stay at 4-5 mil?

 

4) If I wanted to trade some for some weapons, how would I (safely) go about doing so?

 

Sorry for what must sound like very noob questions, I'm just a little out of the loop! :P

1. You add items to your side of the trade that have a higher GE price than what they're actually worth--for example, unstrung willow longbows are completely useless and worth nothing, but the GE considers them to be worth a handful of gold. So you might offer your mint cake along with some unstrung willow longbows, and the other person would buy the useless bows from you in exchange for the mint cake.

 

2. Junk is the name used for items whose Grand Exchange value is, for some reason, higher than the actual value. This could be because the item is useless, as in the unstrung longbow example, but it could also be because the item has recently risen dramatically in price far above its true worth due to manipulation of the Grand Exchange system. (Obsidian capes are a recent example.) In the second case, the item will quickly crash, and during the crash it will effectively be impossible to sell.

 

"Stable" junk is the first kind of junk, so called because it will hold its value and can be passed off to someone else later in a similar trade, so you can still end up breaking even on it. "Unstable" junk, the second kind, quickly loses its value as the price crashes; it may be possible to sell it back more easily than the first kind if the demand is high enough, but you're guaranteed to lose money if you accept it.

 

3. No, but nobody really knows how long they'll stay there. The trouble with commonly junk-traded items like mint cakes is that eventually the GE price starts catching up, people start collecting them to sell, and the increase in supply causes a crash.

 

4. You would need to trade your mint cake for other items that are undervalued on the GE, such as bronze knives or leaping sturgeon.

Here's the other mint cakes thread.