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Item Flipping


Demoli

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With the rise of Grand Exchange, a the old merchanting, now known as item flipping has been super charged and made easier. People could now checkl the price tag rather easily as oposed to yesterday's, where we had to browse several forums just to get an idea of the deal.

 

This is done by buying a certain item either from G.E. or from another player, and selling it later for some profit.

 

Some people do the reverse, for example, someone feels a Godsword is crashing and sells it before the big crash, only to buy it later a lot cheaper.

 

Some embrace this technique, others hate it, so what are your thoughs on this subject?

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Paying attention to the ups and downs of the economy can make the average scaper millions off of nothing.

 

With items that fluctuate in price (several seeds, rune items, runes, fish, foods, expensive armours etc) regularly, you can benefit of market dynamics with little risk, buying and selling the same items the same day for millions of profit every day.

 

What amazes me is that merchanting manipulation teams remain, when flipping as a solo merchant is so easy, safe and secure. All it takes is patience, and a little time.

 

to all those who do not have the patience: you pay a fraction more, which I pocket. That's your choice and up to you. :)

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I find flipping verry good, you can do it by ur self, not much risk (even if an item crashes u'll be able to sell it) , its fair.

I can make an easy 1M / day flipping items.

If u watch the prices, its quite safe. Sometimes u make a loss yeah.. But at least its not as bad as the "Manipulation Clans".

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Its not new at all.

 

It was the basis of merchanting pre GE.

 

Buy an comodity or item, sell when it rises etc

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item flipping wasnt born through the ge, you have it the opposite

 

item flipping is the oldest form of merchanting in rs, its manipulation that was born through the ge, however flipping was made easier through the ge

 

and yea starting with 5m ive made probably 300-400m through item flipping so far, once i get more cash it will go faster to the point where i get 10m per day rather than 2-5 right now

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There isn't anything wrong with any form of buy then sell shenanigans (except perhaps those clans that were created only to fuel the top's coffers) Players are willing to pay the higher price for it and thats where it all muddles down.

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Quite a nice try at getting people to support you in your attempt to make money off krampell's staff :P

 

I couldn't care less about people flipping items though, I'd do it myself too if I could actually be bothered to do some research on g/e prices and trends.

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I expressed myself in a wrong way, what i meant is that with the trade limits, item flipping is easier and more populated.

 

Very wrong

 

"With the rise of Grand Exchange, a new merchanting technique was also born, item flipping."

 

Clearly says Item flipping was a new merchant technique resulting from the rise of the GE.

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I already fixed it Paw, and DJ, it's not that at all, no one has to right to judge other people, specially when it comes down as money making. I bought that staff so i had the right to do whatever i wanted with it, and that's a fact.

 

I made this topic because many people started discussing this in the image thread, so i guess a newtopic is betetr then going off topic in another thread.

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It's more the fact that you bought Krampells staff just to sell it. He was being generous selling them to people who need them. In a sense, you scammed him out of 300k. Bought medium, sold highest.

 

On topic, I solo merch with ge myself. Any other merchanting (manipulating) is bullcrap imo.

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I am going to quote soma2035 who posted this earlier today. It perfectly expresses my views on flipping:

 

(Backround story = Demo (op of this thread) had posted boasting about the fact that he had bought a SOL and had been able to sell it on for a 350k profit after only a couple of days. The problem was that he had bought it from another TIFer who has recently been generously selling SOL to other TIFers cheaply and without junk (unlike many other sellers))

 

It doesn't matter what they're intentions are - they are trying to take a share of the economic benefit provided through the actions of others. Using this scenario as an example, one player killed the Ice Strykewyrm for a Staff of Light. Players out there are willing to pay a certain amount.

 

By buying it from the slayer, and re-selling it, he is taking money that otherwise would belong to the slayer, or the buyer. What economic benefit has he provided in return? Absolutely nothing. Players should not make money from other players without providing some benefit in return, and as long as the Grand Exchange eradicates the need for a middleman, flipping items is as bad as manipulation in that sense. Also, as stated by the slayer in question, he could only cancel tasks for so many Staffs of Light. Now that it is no longer an option, the next buyer on his list won't be receiving the staff for quite a while...

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The GE, with its crude technical graphs, certainly made it a lot easier to make intelligent day trading decisions in Runescape.

 

Now, instead of looking at player-based (and manipulated) lists of item values, I can just look for a cyclical item whose price has fallen under its moving average.

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The way I see this whole merchanting subject is, that the overall category is Merchanting. Subcategories would be Item-flipping, manipulating and investing.

While manipulating would be on "the negative side", the two other would be on the positive. Flipping doesn't affect the system, as does investing neither.

 

I have no problem with flippers ([bleep] bathing sandals), I do it myself when I cba, lol. Manipulating though.. :thumbdown:

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Its not new at all.

 

It was the basis of merchanting pre GE.

 

Buy an comodity or item, sell when it rises etc

 

This isn't really true.

 

Before the Grand Exchange, trading with other players required effort. You had to find the player you wanted to sell the item to. You had to haggle over prices with the player. You have to meet up with the other player in the same location, on the same server, at the same time. And finally, you need to avoid scams of all sorts.

 

This is the job of a merchant. He finds those in a haste to sell their items, purchases the item from them, and re-sells the item to someone who wants the item. Some merchants frequented the more popular banks of Runescape, others went straight to the source (the woodcutting spots, the new slayer monsters, so on), and still others gathered in the city of Falador, on World 2.

 

I can't count the times I returned from a successful Dagannoth Kings trip and simply dumped the loot to a merchant, so I could split the gold and return to Waterbirth for another round. Or the times I found something in my bank useless to me, with value, that I couldn't be bothered spending half an hour to sell.

 

Before the Grand Exchange, merchants provided a benefit to those they earned their money from - they spend the time and effort to sell our items, and were rewarded.

 

This role has long since been usurped by the Grand Exchange. Now, merchants are just parasites - they don't provide any benefit to the players from whom the money flows. The effort and time they invest does not benefit other players in any way, they simply seek to make what belongs to others, theirs.

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The way I see this whole merchanting subject is, that the overall category is Merchanting. Subcategories would be Item-flipping, manipulating and investing.

While manipulating would be on "the negative side", the two other would be on the positive. Flipping doesn't affect the system, as does investing neither.

 

I have no problem with flippers ([bleep] bathing sandals), I do it myself when I cba, lol. Manipulating though.. :thumbdown:

 

Trading is a zero-sum game. For every 100K you make, someone else involved loses 100K. I don't know if it affects the system, it probably does on a much smaller scale. But you are taking from other players without giving them anything in return, that, in my opinion, is fairly negative.

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Item flipping is the purest form of merchanting in my opinion. The concept of merchanting is not based from hoarding items and then forcing the price up, rather, it is based off of charging people a 'convenience fee'.

In the days pre-GE, sure, you could go world hopping to buy gems off of miners, or you could go to W1 or W2 and buy gems from someone who has already done that for you and in doing so, pay an extra 10%. Similarily, now you could put an offer in the GE for an item at med and wait for hours, maybe days to get the item, or you could pay the med price + 2-3% from someone who has invested that time into buying the item.

That is the true spirit of merchanting. I find it say how people no longer are content with 2-3% profits and move into hoarding and manipulation.

 

Flip merchanting works to stabalize prices when done properly. Buying as it dips in price makes it rise and then selling as it rises makes it dip.

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The way I see this whole merchanting subject is, that the overall category is Merchanting. Subcategories would be Item-flipping, manipulating and investing.

While manipulating would be on "the negative side", the two other would be on the positive. Flipping doesn't affect the system, as does investing neither.

 

I have no problem with flippers ([bleep] bathing sandals), I do it myself when I cba, lol. Manipulating though.. :thumbdown:

 

Trading is a zero-sum game. For every 100K you make, someone else involved loses 100K. I don't know if it affects the system, it probably does on a much smaller scale. But you are taking from other players without giving them anything in return, that, in my opinion, is fairly negative.

That's not true. If I buy an item while it's crashing at 10.2m then sell it the next day when it starts to rise again for 10.3m did anyone actually lose money on that deal? No they just payed more for it because they bought it at different times. Now if you do that by buying the item for 10.2m and selling it for 10.3m to the exact same person a day later then yes it is negative.

 

Oh and the ge didn't really help flipping at all, if anything it made it less profitable. It was harder pre ge but you could flip upwards of 10 whips for 200-300k each an hour if you were good. Now you have to wait for a 4 hour limit using the ge to flip.

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Its not new at all.

 

It was the basis of merchanting pre GE.

 

Buy an comodity or item, sell when it rises etc

 

This isn't really true.

 

 

You reasoning is through, but irreverent. At the time of posting he had put (paraphrased see my earlier posts for exact quote) that Ge caused the birth of a NEW merchanting - item flipping

My comment was this was WRONG as all merchant has ALWAYS been item flipping. No matter how much item flipping methods have changed, it stands valid it is not new.

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I already fixed it Paw, and DJ, it's not that at all, no one has to right to judge other people, specially when it comes down as money making. I bought that staff so i had the right to do whatever i wanted with it, and that's a fact.

 

I made this topic because many people started discussing this in the image thread, so i guess a newtopic is better then going off topic in another thread.

 

There is nothing 'wrong' with what you did, just that the moral choice you made has annoyed others. I also in a sense, agree with them. Krampell was providing the staffs, without junk, at medium price for those who wanted them, under the assumption that they would be used, instead of a way to source the staffs cheaply. Anyway, this doesn't affect me, I'm just putting it out there.

 

I have no problem with 'item flipping', except for the fact that it's a process that has been going on since merchants existed. It's a new term for an old process, so is really irrelevant. The fact that large scale 'item flipping' is pretty much the basis for Price manipulation doesn't help my opinion of it either (Yes, I know that price manipulation forces the price up, whereas flipping is a different process).

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Its not new at all.

 

It was the basis of merchanting pre GE.

 

Buy an comodity or item, sell when it rises etc

 

This isn't really true.

 

 

You reasoning is through, but irreverent. At the time of posting he had put (paraphrased see my earlier posts for exact quote) that Ge caused the birth of a NEW merchanting - item flipping

My comment was this was WRONG as all merchant has ALWAYS been item flipping. No matter how much item flipping methods have changed, it stands valid it is not new.

 

Paw is right, i made an horrible first statement i already corrected, and item flipping is, in heart, old merchanting.

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The way I see this whole merchanting subject is, that the overall category is Merchanting. Subcategories would be Item-flipping, manipulating and investing.

While manipulating would be on "the negative side", the two other would be on the positive. Flipping doesn't affect the system, as does investing neither.

 

I have no problem with flippers ([bleep] bathing sandals), I do it myself when I cba, lol. Manipulating though.. :thumbdown:

 

Trading is a zero-sum game. For every 100K you make, someone else involved loses 100K. I don't know if it affects the system, it probably does on a much smaller scale. But you are taking from other players without giving them anything in return, that, in my opinion, is fairly negative.

That's not true. If I buy an item while it's crashing at 10.2m then sell it the next day when it starts to rise again for 10.3m did anyone actually lose money on that deal? No they just payed more for it because they bought it at different times. Now if you do that by buying the item for 10.2m and selling it for 10.3m to the exact same person a day later then yes it is negative.

 

Oh and the ge didn't really help flipping at all, if anything it made it less profitable. It was harder pre ge but you could flip upwards of 10 whips for 200-300k each an hour if you were good. Now you have to wait for a 4 hour limit using the ge to flip.

 

Yes, someone DID lose something. Do you not understand the concept of a zero-sum game? It means the amount of goods in the system hasn't changed.

 

Three people put their items into the GE for 10,200,000, and do not check again until tomorrow.

Three people tomorrow buy at 10,300,000. However, because of the way the GE works, they each have 100,000 returned to them.

 

Each person trying to sell the item receives 10,200,000. Each person trying to buy the item receives their item for 100,000 less than they were willing to pay.

 

Input yourself into this system. You buy one from one of the three people on day one, and quickly resell on day 2. Each supplier still gains only 10,200,000, but one of the three buyers spends an extra 100,000, that flows directly to you.

 

When you flip without the Grand Exchange, you are saving one person the time and effort involved in selling their product, and services such as this have value. With the Grand Exchange, where items simply sit and wait to be purchased and collected, you are not providing any service - just taking.

 

For every 100K you earn, either a buyer or seller would have lost 100K, because of your "flip." This should be obvious - your profit from flipping comes from other players. As long as you are not providing an actual service that the buyer/seller actually wants, you are essentially stealing.

 

At "heart", it may be the practice of a merchant before the Grand Exchange, but because of the design of the GE, you are no longer providing a benefit in return for the profits you receive. That is the key difference between the two.

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The way I see this whole merchanting subject is, that the overall category is Merchanting. Subcategories would be Item-flipping, manipulating and investing.

While manipulating would be on "the negative side", the two other would be on the positive. Flipping doesn't affect the system, as does investing neither.

 

I have no problem with flippers ([bleep] bathing sandals), I do it myself when I cba, lol. Manipulating though.. :thumbdown:

 

Trading is a zero-sum game. For every 100K you make, someone else involved loses 100K. I don't know if it affects the system, it probably does on a much smaller scale. But you are taking from other players without giving them anything in return, that, in my opinion, is fairly negative.

That's not true. If I buy an item while it's crashing at 10.2m then sell it the next day when it starts to rise again for 10.3m did anyone actually lose money on that deal? No they just payed more for it because they bought it at different times. Now if you do that by buying the item for 10.2m and selling it for 10.3m to the exact same person a day later then yes it is negative.

 

Oh and the ge didn't really help flipping at all, if anything it made it less profitable. It was harder pre ge but you could flip upwards of 10 whips for 200-300k each an hour if you were good. Now you have to wait for a 4 hour limit using the ge to flip.

 

Yes, someone DID lose something. Do you not understand the concept of a zero-sum game? It means the amount of goods in the system hasn't changed.

 

Three people put their items into the GE for 10,200,000, and do not check again until tomorrow.

Three people tomorrow buy at 10,300,000. However, because of the way the GE works, they each have 100,000 returned to them.

 

Each person trying to sell the item receives 10,200,000. Each person trying to buy the item receives their item for 100,000 less than they were willing to pay.

 

Input yourself into this system. You buy one from one of the three people on day one, and quickly resell on day 2. Each supplier still gains only 10,200,000, but one of the three buyers spends an extra 100,000, that flows directly to you.

 

When you flip without the Grand Exchange, you are saving one person the time and effort involved in selling their product, and services such as this have value. With the Grand Exchange, where items simply sit and wait to be purchased and collected, you are not providing any service - just taking.

 

For every 100K you earn, either a buyer or seller would have lost 100K, because of your "flip." This should be obvious - your profit from flipping comes from other players. As long as you are not providing an actual service that the buyer/seller actually wants, you are essentially stealing.

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The profit comes from other players but it doesn't mean they lose anything. It simply means they save less. There's difference between losing and saving. If someone is willing to put an offer in for 10.3m and you got yours for 10.2m the day before then they aren't losing anything. It's not losing just because you got something when the other person got it for less. If that was the case everyone single person in this game would lose something when they buy anything. And your little it about services at the end is flawed because you said they put the offer in for 10.3m therefore they want it..... Do you honestly go and DO something every time you sell an item? I guarantee you've "flipped" something simply by reselling it at a later date after using it without knowing (if you haven't that means you've never sold an item for more then you bought it for....). That's basically what flipping is, selling something at a later time for more because prices have changed.

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Sure, some people lose out on 100k, but I don't see this as 'scamming'. People sell for lower prices when they need the money and they buy for high when they need the item. Flippers meerly charge these people a few percent convenience fee. If you want something here and now, then you should be prepared to pay a small fee for that. That's why convenience stores in real life cost so much. They do the work in getting the goods and services there at all hours of the day, you shouldn't complain when youhave to pay an extra couple %.

 

When I was buying a SGS for slaying I knew that I wouldn't need it for several days because I was skilling. So I put the offer in for med -2%. It took 3 days for it to come in but since I didn't need it at that moment, I was OK with the extra time it took because I knew I was getting it at a good price. I could have just as easily put my offer into the GE for med +2% and gotten the SGS right away (probably from a flipper) and paid the convenience fee.

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