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How do players know how much an item is worth?


Chrystophilax

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I've played Runescape on and off for eons, but something I've never been able to get my head around is how players knew the worth of an item before the Grand Exchange appeared. I made my first 100k at a point when I had loads of coal in the bank that I was going to smelt into steel stuff, smith, and finally sell to a General Store: the only way back then that I knew of making decent amounts of money. Obviously smithing was a hopelessly slow way of making money, but I would have carried on in a similar vein had it not been for this random guy who appeared in the bank one day, saying he'd buy coal for 200 gp each. I thought Christmas had come early. Thing is, though, that if he had offered 125 gp or something, I'd probably have sold the coal to him anyway because I had no idea what it was worth. I genuinely had no clue about pricing. I think with my earnings I bought a rune hatchet from someone for 30k, only to be told by one of the onlookers (after the deal was done >_>) that I'd been scammed.

 

So how do people know what items are worth? Obviously their price in shops is a guideline, and the price to buy the ingredients is always going to be greater than the amount the items will fetch (excepting when the price has been pushed through the floor, like with maple logs), but what happens with items that sell in shops for less than people are prepared to pay for them -- party hats for instance, or crackers, masks and so on, even more mundane items like flax? How does a player without a vast amount of data about how many of each item there is, how many people want it and so on know the price of a given item? When GE fixed pricing goes out the window (as I'm sure its about to do soon ...) and the vast computing power of the Runescape team is gone, who says what items are worth?

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Odds are given all the systems in place even with free trade the ge will remain and have set item values which jagex will try and match to street value.

So knowing item value won't be a huge issue.

 

Though it will mean price variance exists again

 

eg like the old days coal and ore sells cheap at banks by mining sites since theres few buyers and many miners; then ore sells high near furnaces as there are few sellers and many buyers.

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I really hope G.E prices won't be leading prices as it makes proper old time merchanting, not necesarrily scamming, a lot harder!

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I really hope G.E prices won't be leading prices as it makes proper old time merchanting, not necesarrily scamming, a lot harder!

Merchanting in any form is a form of scamming.

 

If you mean by old time merchanting: standing in w2 (when you eventually get in this world) shouting the same message over and over again for hours (competing with autotalkers)...

I sincerely hope I never have to do this again.

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Merchanting in any form is a form of scamming.

 

 

 

So...buying 1k feathers from a store for 7 gp each and then selling via the ge for 16 or 17 gp is scamming? Uhh what.

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Merchanting in any form is a form of scamming.

 

 

 

So...buying 1k feathers from a store for 7 gp each and then selling via the ge for 16 or 17 gp is scamming? Uhh what.

If that is what you meant by old time merchanting, I apologise.

 

Don't be daft. It's hardly a scam if both parties consent with no intent to deceive the other. It may be unbalanced, and it may be advantageous to one player or another, but it isn't a scam.

 

"A fraudulent or deceptive act or operation"

'both parties consent' you say, but can anyone escape from deceptively being forced to pay a higher price.

It is not like you have a "I want to buy this item but not from a merchanter"-button in the GE.

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If the standard price of an item pre-07 was 2m, and a merchanter sold it for 2.1m, that wasn't scamming. Some people want their items immediately, so they would be willing to pay a bit extra.

 

Selling spinach rolls or charcoal for 20m was scamming.

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In response to the OP...

 

It was just something that you picked up over time. If you were ever unsure, you could go to the forums and check out the average prices. After a little while, you'd be able to spot the difference between the mechanter's price and the average price of a given item. Some things stayed consistent enough that it just stuck with you, like full rune going for 190-210k, Rune Meds going for 10k, Sharks for 900-1k each (pre-bots killing the price), lobsters for 200 or 250 each... Ect.

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Merchanting in any form is a form of scamming.

 

 

 

So...buying 1k feathers from a store for 7 gp each and then selling via the ge for 16 or 17 gp is scamming? Uhh what.

If that is what you meant by old time merchanting, I apologise.

 

 

 

lol no, I never said that was old time merchanting...I thought you said any merchanting in any form is scamming, so I replied.

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If the standard price of an item pre-07 was 2m, and a merchanter sold it for 2.1m, that wasn't scamming. Some people want their items immediately, so they would be willing to pay a bit extra.

 

Selling spinach rolls or charcoal for 20m was scamming.

The unknowing mass might not know that standard price (or think that the standard price is rising and might rise even more) and pay the ammount the merchanter asks for.

How is that not some sort of scamming?

 

Only thing pre GE-merchanters were useful for imo was obtaining large quantities of items, taking away the hassle for other people who wanted to pay a tad more in exchange for huge ammounts.

 

I do this too, by item flipping in GE, but saying this isn's a form of scamming is a lie imo.

 

lol no, I never said that was old time merchanting...I thought you said any merchanting in any form is scamming, so I replied.

Didn't think of that when writing my previous post, that is idd a good thing. :wink:

So we agree the 'old time merchanting' you were talking about is idd scamming then. :smile:

 

To OP:

Odds are given all the systems in place even with free trade the ge will remain and have set item values which jagex will try and match to street value.

So knowing item value won't be a huge issue.

This would be the smartest imo.

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yup, if you stood in w1 varrok w2 fally for enough time you would see the patterns, there were basically 2 prices for everything and these really would not change. Price 1 was the bulk sales 1k and up, the other price was for anything lower than the bulk.

 

One popular form of scamming/merching was to do exactly as you said, walk into the bank non w1/w2, and buy up all the loose coal for x, hop to a few other worlds then sell at the bulk price.

 

If you never went to the markets w1/w2/forums then you probably had no idea on what the majority viewed as an items worth.

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Back in the day there was a sticky on the RSOF by a guy called "Tomisme" (don't ask me why i remember his name) in the items discussion forum.

It was updated regularly and generally correct, i referred to it whenever i bought something on the forums.

In fally park w2 you just looked at what people were buying/selling for.

 

Other general things were common knowledge though (ie food, jewellery, ore, bars, logs, bones)

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Back in the day there was a sticky on the RSOF by a guy called "Tomisme" (don't ask me why i remember his name) in the items discussion forum.

It was updated regularly and generally correct, i referred to it whenever i bought something on the forums.

In fally park w2 you just looked at what people were buying/selling for.

 

Other general things were common knowledge though (ie food, jewellery, ore, bars, logs, bones)

I used the Zybez price guide.

You could look up all items in their database and it gave a min-max price.

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You kept a watchful eye on the marketplace in the forums, as it was considerably more active than it is now. Alternatively, you could fight your way into world 2 and view what people were buying/selling for to get more immediate update. The one thing to keep in mind is that most prices, save for rares or new items, remained more stable and consistent than they are now.

 

I had a similar experience with bowstrings. When I first became a member, I had created a load of bowstrings while exploring, but thought them to be useless until I saw a guy buying all bowstrings. He bought them off of me for 100 gp each, and I thought I struck it rich....until I began studying the forums and saw they were selling consistently for 200gp each. That night I made my first 100k in an hour.

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Back in the day there was a sticky on the RSOF by a guy called "Tomisme" (don't ask me why i remember his name) in the items discussion forum.

It was updated regularly and generally correct, i referred to it whenever i bought something on the forums.

In fally park w2 you just looked at what people were buying/selling for.

 

Other general things were common knowledge though (ie food, jewellery, ore, bars, logs, bones)

I used the Zybez price guide.

You could look up all items in their database and it gave a min-max price.

 

Zybez too.

 

Other items were general knowledge : logs, ores, bars, etc.

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Supply and demand, forums. I used to keep all the prices of major items(there were alot less items back then) memorized, and as the prices didn't fluctuate much(coal was 200 ea for years, for example), it wasn't a major problem. If you wanted to buy items in bulk, you'd just add 5-10%, etc. It's actually just the same as street prices right now- look for deals that go trough and figure from there- if torva plate isn't sold for red, but people ask a white for it, you can expect the price to be somewhere between red and white(just an example).

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There are a number of things:

 

 

-----

 

Natural Demand/Supply meeting at a certain point (for items with utility).

 

High alch prices + stores will buy everything (mostly for items without much utility)

 

Elasticity of items

 

Shops, and their once a day stocks

 

Statuettes, coin drops, and other ways raw GP comes into game

 

Items leaving the game

 

Monopolistic activity

 

Amount of players

 

Updates (this is pretty much correlated to everything else here)

 

Since the advent of the Grand Exchange, Jagex on a few items from time to time

 

The Grand Exchange itself; some items such as edibles are/were merely bought out to be used as bargaining chips for higher-end items (due to GE's constraint of obtaining such higher-end items)

 

Bots / Gold farmers

 

Amount of GP each player has, who has it, and the ratio for which it is distributed

 

 

--------

 

I think this covers most basic ways items get their prices. I had to stop because I started listing too many things related to each other. But you get the idea.

 

Off topic: Merchanting, besides monopolistic activities (and sometimes monopolistic activity is needed for the best value for society e. g. utilities), churns the wheel for a healthy economy. In real life, a lot of jobs wouldn't exist. In Runescape, the end result is the same.

 

Pre-GE, they provided a hub for items. Post-GE, they can do the same on a number of occasions. I.E. Brews are bought out due to a new update (such as Nex). You may pay inflated prices to get such items.

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If the standard price of an item pre-07 was 2m, and a merchanter sold it for 2.1m, that wasn't scamming. Some people want their items immediately, so they would be willing to pay a bit extra.

 

Selling spinach rolls or charcoal for 20m was scamming. <-

 

 

selling spinach roll 20m <- not a scam

selling super rare spinach roll, only this one left in game <- scam

 

charging a price you want is not a scam, lying about its properties and such, is

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Easiest way for me was to go to w2 and listen for a few minutes. Go stand in the rares section if you were trying to sell rares and see what most people were selling for. I still use this to gauge when to sell stuff when flipping. Like yesterday i saw so many people dumping bandos chestplate, i dumped mine and didn't lose 700k per :ohnoes:

 

But be aware that certain merch clans are going to try and create panic when free trade comes: advertise a low sell price to make it seem like it's crashing, scoop up an item for cheap and resell for higher when panic passes. Yeah they're not even keeping the illusion of not price manipulating anymore.

This really gets down to the morals of cheating versus the morals of being forced to throw away your life [1000's of hours] to access content you enjoy

Isn't life about throwing away your life (a job) to access content you enjoy?

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