[90% DONE] Merchanting / Flipping guide

I see alot of questions about merching and flipping like "what items should i flip?" "what should I invest on?" and such. So, I decided to make a brief but still detailed basic guide to flipping and investing.
Merching is a nice way to make some extra cash while doing other activities in the game. Personally I tend to do something else while i wait for my offers to buy/sell, I'll be covering the topic of active/passive flipping later on.

You can start merching at any point, but the more money you have to work with, the faster you'll be able to make money. For those who want to get some starting cash I'd recommend doing High-Level PVM like Zulrah (1M+gp/h), profitable skilling such as black chin hunting, double nats rcing, dark crab fishing after elite diaries, motherlode mining, and more. Keep in mind merching is something you can do alongside all this and any activity in the game. If you're actively making money and merching at the same time then you'll find your bank quickly growing.

-=DISCLAIMER=-

You CAN lose money flipping, sometimes less, sometimes more. The leader of this clan or myself wont take any responsibility of your losses. These are just some basic guides and general information on how to flip. Risk is of course involved, and it's your own duty to value the risks you are willing to take when flipping.

Table of Contents:
Post1: Introduction
Post2: Flipping
Post3: Valuation
Post4: Investing
Post5: Investing part 2
Post6->: flipping examples and additional sources

Flipping​
The concept of flipping is simple, you buy low and sell high to make a profit but things get trickier since you're also competing with other players. For people trying to learn flipping for the first time I highly recommend you flip high volume items, and as you get more experienced to try medium and low volume items.

How do you get prices?
You can use https://rsbuddy.com/exchange to get an average buy/sell price from OSbuddy users. For cheaper items you can self-check by instant-buying and instant-selling 1x of the item. For more expensive items you can set offers below and above the average buy and sell prices and adjust prices depending on how long it takes to buy or sell.

Characteristics of High Volume Items:
These items generally have a high GE limit and since there is so much being traded it isn't necessary to under or overcut peoples offer. At the same time the items are traded for small margins so if your offer isn't close to the trading range then you could end up never getting any stock.

• faster transactions
  

• usually stable
  

• low risk
  

• smaller margins (low reward)
  

• usually cheap
  

Characteristics of Medium Volume Items:
Under and overcutting is important and depending on how many other people are trying to also flip your item at the same time it can take some time to get stock. If you're finding you're getting nothing for a long time or no sales (like half an hour) then you might want to adjust your prices but other than that it helps to be a little patient.

• in between high and low volume
  

Characteristics of Low Volume Items:
GE limits in OSRS are fairly generous in my opinion but these are much lower than the others. Since there is less of the items being traded it is important to over and undercut to get stock. I always try to apply at least 1gp over and undercuts, it doesn't eat into profits much but could be the difference between you completing the transaction or not. Depending on the item and how many others are trying to flip as well you could go hours or even days without a sale. Don't pressure yourself into feeling you need to get some stock because prices can change in the blink of an eye and that non-instant buy could end up a non-instant sell for a massive loss.

• slower transactions
  

• more volatile
  

• higher risk
  

• greater margins (higher reward)
  

• often times expensive
  

High Volume Markets:

• Runes & ammunition (any runes, arrows, bolts)
  

• Food & potions
  

• Skilling supplies (raw food, herbs, secondaries, ores, logs, etc)
  

• Skilling products (jewelry, teleport tabs, recoils, etc)
  

• Zulrah scales
  

Medium Volume Markets:

   

• Barrows equipment

• Unique slayer drops (whips, dark bows, smoke bstaves, etc)

• Unique rare PVM drops (GWD, DKS, Zulrah, Wildy bosses, etc)

Low Volume Markets:

   

• Treasure trail consumables (teleport scrolls, sweets)

   

• Unique treasure trail rewards

   

• 3rd age equipment

   

• Spirit shields

   

• Quest & achievement diary grocery lists

   

• Random and miscellaneous items (scarves, jars, yellow boots, etc)

Both high, medium, and low volume items have their pros and cons depending on your style of play. If you're the type that wants to sit at the GE and skill then you would find flipping high and medium volume items worthwhile since you're there so you may as well earn that fast and consistent money. For those who can't tend to GE often, low volume markets are far more attractive.

There is no best item to flip. Beside the trade volume you have to take into consideration how many people are flipping your item. The more people flipping, the less profit you should expect to make. You should also strive to make use of all your GE slots (possibly also using an alt to flip) so that you 1) minimize impact on margins, 2) complete transactions faster, and 3) minimize risk.

Release Day Flipping:
This is not for the faint-hearted. Release day flipping is some of the most profitable active flipping you can do because new item prices will be all over the place and with such volatility comes incredible profit potential but at the same time extraordinary loss potential. Seasoned flippers can make a killing here while amateurs will get their banks destroyed. The post below talks about valuation, a skill crucial in everything merching (this included).

​
Valuation is one of the most important skills to have as a mercher and it is something you can get a feel for from just playing the game and seeing how much GP people make for a variety of activities. The factors you need to look at to determine value are:

1. Enjoyability of activity
2. Risk
3. Effort required
4. Difficulty of activity
5. Accessibility of activity
6. Additional benefits
7. Level of farming
8. Usefulness
9. Alternatives
10. Luck

Enjoyability of activity: Things that are fun to do generally don't make big bucks since we'd be willing to do it even if there was no reward like pking, Clan Wars or Castle Wars. If however the activity is no fun then we expect to benefit be it monetary or other forms of compensation.

Risk: I'm sure we all know the saying risk vs reward. If we're taking risks and putting things on the line we expect to be compensated. This is very true for a number of activities in the Wilderness including the Abyss, hunting black chins, dark crab fishing, runite mining, but also some PVM.

Effort required: The more effort you put the more reward you deserve. Compare the gains of something like fishing sharks to killing Zulrah.

Difficulty of activity: The more difficult an activity the more you should make. Some of the best moneymakers can take some learning and practice to get good at like DKS, GWD, and Zulrah.

Accessibility of activity: For Runescape in most cases this comes down to level requirements or item requirements. One of the best moneymakers with skilling being double nats rcing and completion of achievement diaries giving great benefits in making money among other things.

Additional benefits: People don't just do things for the money, they may also get exp, untradeables, and other benefits which should be taken into account.

Level of farming: I'm not talking about the farming skill, I mean the camping and grinding of the activity. Any activity that is heavily farmed will have a greater supply which according to supply and demand would lower prices.

Usefulness: This pertains to the stats of the item, what it is used for, and its price relative to alternatives. If the item is useless then its price will reflect that with a low price. Take for instance jar drops from select bosses having a rather low price despite their rarity.

Alternatives: Always pay attention to alternatives, if prices get too high then they can substitute with a cheaper albeit weaker version. Alternatively if prices of the best-in-slot drops then it may be attractive for people to upgrade. The one that comes to mind for me is malediction, mages book, and arcanes.

Luck: Look to the lottery, you're likely to lose money but you have a miniscule chance of making it very big. This can be best applied to treasure trails and spirit shields, both completing clue scrolls and killing corp aren't very good gp/h but you have a chance of becoming filthy rich if you have luck on your side.

​
Why invest? Investing generally gives far better return for the effort managing GE offers but it also requires far more knowledge as explained below. For those who don't plan on playing much or have more money than they can flip with this kind of merching can be very rewarding as well as satisfying when successful. A prime example of an item good as a super long-term investment is bonds in my opinion as long as we don't enter deflation.

Investing is to buy undervalued items to sell at a future date for a profit. The time table of your investment could vary anywhere from a few days to weeks or even months but keep in mind what your profit potential is and if your money could be better put to use doing something else. You should understand why said item is the price it is and projections on what you think it'll be worth in the future to make good target buy and sell prices.

Investment opportunities primarily come from future updates but can also come from changes in player perception or changes in level of farming.

Future updates:
At least in OSRS you can expect many game changing updates to come. These changes can be nerfs (lowering value) but more often we see buffs (boost value). You can gather crucial information about upcoming changes from a variety of sources including dev blogs, newsposts, the weekly Q&A's, tweets from our lovely Jmods, Reddit, and more. The sooner you get wind of the information the sooner you can stock items before the masses.

Perception:
Discovery of new uses for an item and mentality shift of community from fun casuals to grinding out achievements are among many views that can impact item prices (such as spectral or skilling supplies if we ever get a max cape).

Level of farming:
This pertains mostly to bots and boss hunters. Mass bot bannings can cause a drastic change in supply and wherever boss hunters are camping you can expect those items to drop in value.

Investment examples from OSRS history

Godwars Update:
Prior to release we saw a major rise in PVM supplies such as sharks, brews, super restores, prayer pots, super sets, ranging pots, ruby bolt(e), diamond bolt(e) and more. This also affected the resources to make these products so raw sharks, all the herbs and secondaries for these potions, and material to make the bolts. Grapples were also quite expensive shortly after release.

Zamorakian hasta update:
The idea was pitched for zamorakian spear to be able to be turned into a hasta on the official RS forums for over a month, at the time spears were just a measily 700-1200k. When the idea was talked about on stream spears quickly shot up to ~5M and if my memory recalls correctly they got as high as 7M.

Corporeal beast update:
The obvious target for buyout: Zamorakian spears. Second item to buyout: Zamorakian hastas.
Third item to buyout: Bandos godswords. I think karil's also rose some, but I don't think it was anything spectacular. Combat potions, super sets, supplies for these potions and the relevant seeds had a nice rise. Torstols in particular got quite expensive, reaching as high as 11k, torstol seeds rose to 50k+.

Zul-andra teleports
Obviously not many people saw this coming, but they are still worth investing on. People will use the teleports to farm zulrah even if they are 30k+ ea.

Spectral spirit shield
I wasn't playing actively when this came out, but because of the mechanics how Cerberus work, spectral spirit shield is required. If I remember correctly they used to be about 30m ea, now they are about 55m ea. Lots of potential profit there.

Some of my flips, so you guys can see about how I do this. These pictures are kinda old so do not try these price margins, it may cost you.

Low volume + high volume
Medium volume
More medium
This is what your flips will look like in the beginning



(if i knew how to add images :3)

Res7

Res8

Reserved just in case, updating this as I can. More to come later today

Feel free to post questions or something I should add later on - will edit to final form

This isn't rs forums m8. Don't have to reserve

Not done yet, I need like 8 posts to get this done, thats why (And looks a lot nicer in the end)
Besides just can't finish this in one go, gotta take my time

Nice one Egee! Maybe I gonna try to flip someday and if I'll do, i'll use this guide!

YOUR SYSTEM IS TOO GOOD!!!

But no, it's looking great so far!

lol hailey......

I had a go (first time ever) and flipping yesterday.
started with 1M and after about 45-50 minutes I was up 52k!
I only did what you described as 'High Volume Items' but I was quite impressed

Egee, thought I'd attach this for you... Flipping, only in real life.. Look at the lovely spread

Been doing this some, but not much luck so far :/

OSRS Advice wrote:Egee, thought I'd attach this for you... Flipping, only in real life.. Look at the lovely spread

Ew irl, waste of xp

So this is how I flip. I have a list of items and their 4 hour limits. I go through each one of them. Some work, some don't but that's just how it is. If I time myself I can say that I easily make 600k-1.2m /hr. I have in the past trained firemaking and magic by alching in between flips. My experience is based on F2P as that is what I am at the moment.

Anyways nice guide. I skimmed through it but it looks quite organized.