Flipping With the Grand Exchange
-~*Contents*~-
- What is Flipping?
- Requirements
- Risks And Restrictions
- Grand Exchange Limits
- Identifying a Good Flip
- Finding your Selling Price
- Calculating your Buying Price
- Adjusting your Flip
- The Waiting Game
- Tips and Tricks
- Conclusion
- Flipping Example Video
- Finding your Selling Prices 2 (High Value Items)
- Flipping High Value Items
- FAQ
- Credits
What is Flipping?
The basic summary of flipping is when you buy an item for a set price and sell that same item for a higher price than you bought it for.
This Guide is going to cover utilising the Grand Exchange,
ONLY for Flipping as opposed to using other players or both.
Requirements
Quests: None
Skill Levels: None
Money: No requirement but it's recommended you start with 10m+
You must have completed the Grand Exchange Tutorial to gain access to the Grand Exchange
Risks And Restrictions
I will state from the start
NOTHING IS GARENTEED MONEY IN THE MERCHANTING WORLD everything you do while merchanting is a risk, if you're not prepared to take the risk for potentially epic profits then stop reading now.
With any form or merchanting be it buyouts, flipping, trading etc there is always a risk. The idea of this guide is to minimise risks by giving you the knowledge and instructions to identify what is a good idea for a flip and whats a bad idea.
The main risks of flipping is picking up a crashing item that you then can't resell or trade off. Ultimately if you pick up one of these you will lose money.
The main restriction you'll run into with flipping is are the grand exchange limits which will be covered in the next section. Another restriction is your cash pile, you may find a golden flip but the item is either too expensive or you just simply don't have enough money to make it worth while.
As a side not and a rule with any merchanting NEVER over invest, always keep some money aside to deal with any problems you might run into a.k.a don't put all your eggs in 1 basket.
Grand Exchange Limits
The main limit you'll run into is the buying limit per 4 hours, this will effect you more if you're doing a large scale flip over time, however this guide is not covering that. The limit is put in place to stop abuse of the Grand Exchange and does so effectively.
However during the free trade update the buy/sell limit was altered in that should you, for example, buy 100 Rune Platebody (which is their limit/4hr) you can immediately sell them again in the Grand Exchange. On top of that, once sold you can then re-buy 100 more.
Cooking and Fishing
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Raw Fish- 20,000
Food- 10,000
Pizza- 1,000
Grapes- 1,000
Crafting
=-=-=-=-=
Clay- 25,000
Hide- 10,000
Jewellery- 5,000
Battlestaff- 100
Gems
=-=-=
Opal- 1,000
Jade- 1,000
Topaz- 1,000
Sapphire- 500
Emerald- 500
Ruby- 500
Diamond- 500
Dragonstone- 100
Woodcutting and Firemaking
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Logs- 25,000
Ashes- 10,000
Mining and Smithing
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ore- 25,000
Bar- 10,000
Runecrafting
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Essence- 25,000
Tiara- 1,000
Prayer
=-=-=-=
Bones/Big Bones/Etc- 10,000
Wyvern Bones/Frost Dragon Bones- 1,000
Construction
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Plank- 10,000
Flatpack- 100
Farming
=-=-=-=
Bush Seed- 100
Allotment Seed- 500
Herb Seed- 100
Tree Seed - 100
Herblore
=-=-=-=-=
Herb- 10,000
Vial- 10,000
Potion (3) - 1,000
Potion (4) - 500
Saradomin Brew (any dose) - 1,000
Swamp Tar- 5,000
Limpwurt Roots- 10,000
Hunter
=-=-=-=
Chinchompa- 10,000
Hunter Kit- 100
Salamander- 10,000
Impling Jars- 500
Furs- 100
Summoning
=-=-=-=-=
Talisman- 500
Pouch- 5,000
Proboscis- 100
Thieving
=-=-=-=-=
Pyramid Plunder Rewards- 100
Ranging and Fletching
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Flax- 25,000
Arrowtips- 10,000
Crossbows- 100
Feather- 10,000
Arrow, Knife, Dart- 10,000
Bow String- 10,000
Unstrung Bow- 10,000
Bolt- 5,000
Bow- 5,000
Leather Chaps- 5,000
Leather Vambraces- 5,000
Armour and Weapons
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Armour and Weapon- 100*1
Dragon Equipment- 10
God Wars Armour- 10
Slayer Item- 10*2
Amulet- 5,000
Barrows- 10
Other Items
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Spirit Shields- 2
Treasure Trail- 2
Discontinued- 2
*1 - Items in the same set share the same limit i.e. 75 Rune Platebody and 25 Rune platelegs every 4 hours. Treasure Trail sets share the same restrictions
*2 - Also includes Slayer drop items: abyssal whip, amulets of ranging, black masks, brine sabres, draconic visages, dark bow, focus sight, granite items, hexcrests, staves of light, dragonfire shield and metal boots.
Identifying a Good Flip
Before you try anything you you need to research the item first via the Grand Exchange database. Ideally you want an item with a stable graph.
You only need to look over the past 30 days, anything beyond that is useless information.
Identifying stability itself mainly comes from checking the
BLUE line in the GE graph is close to the
YELLOW line though do look at the
yellow line to identify price crashes within the past few days.
This is a
Good Graph
The blue line is close to the yellow line which means the item is stable, and the recent fall in price has stopped. This means it will either rise in price again or remain steady for a few days. either way it'll make a good flip
This is a
Bad Graph
The yellow line has been greatly below or above the blue line over the past few days and the item is starting to crash. This will lose you money if you try and invest in it.
Finding your Selling Price
As with all forms of merchanting you need to plan ahead and work out the potential profits and reisk before investing, so before we buy anything we work out our selling price.
Once you've found the item you're going to flip you do this simply by putting an offer in for +5% for
1 and the price you buy it for determines your selling price.
As you can see here the Wine of Zamorak was bought for 1,513gp, that is now my pre-determined selling price (you can opt to make your selling price 1-2gp lower than this to increase speed of sale.)
Calculating your buying price
On average your flips should be generating 2-2.5% profit though this can vary. So in order to determine your buying price you need to multiply your selling price by 0.98. This will give you a 2% prfoit margin between your buying and selling price.
In my example the selling price for Wine of Zamorak was 1,513gp
so 1513*0.98=1482.74
since you can't have a decimal in runescape i always choose to round it up, though you can round it down if you see fit.
Once calculated put your offers in and wait, the items SHOULD come in however it won't be instant and you will have to wait.
Adjusting your Flip
There are times when the market won't let you get away with a 2% profit margin, for items like this you have 1 of 2 options.
1. Increase the price of your buy offer, this will however lose you potential profits.
2. Cancel the buy offer and find a new flip
In the example of Wine of Zamorak, they were coming in slowly so i saw no reason to adjust my offer in efforts to speed things up so i stuck with it.
The Waiting Game
Once you have you items in for selling they should sell over time, failing this you can adjust your selling price to beat competition however this will lose you potential profit. If you're onto a good flip you can also put in offers to buy the item again as you're selling them.
If you have the Ge slots availible USE THEM. The Grand Exchange act's like a virtual queue system prioritising people with the best offers when buying selling. Using more than one GE slot when buying or selling effectivly gives you more positions in the queue and will make your items buy/sell faster.
Tips and Tricks
- NEVER use round numbers, most people when buying/selling and item tend to put offers in at round numbers, if you go 1gp above when buying or 1gp below when selling you instantly give yourself more priority in the Ge queue.
- NEVER over invest
- Always make sure you research and test and item before you put offers in
- Don't be afraid to cut your losses, if an item doesn't appear to be working drop it and move on.
- Use more than one GE slot for buy/sell offers to increase speed, inscreased speed = more profit.
Conclusion
Overall flipping is an easy and reliable method of generating money. On top of that it doesn't require time out of your daily routine in runescape, however more involving flips will generate more income so the more time you invest the more money you make.
If done right you can make in excess of 50-100m a day (provided you have the cash to accomplish this)
Flipping Example Video
http://www.youtube.com/v/G1pTra7ZRR8
Testing Selling Prices on High Value Items
When working out the selling price on itms that aren't really worth alot individually, most of the time you won't care about the single one you bought at a higher price. As in the Wine of Zamorak example above i made up the money i lost in working out the buy and sell price in the profit i made.
However simply buying 1 item of high value at it's re-sale price puts you at a loss of potentially millions. This often puts alot of players off moving into the higher tier of items which is where the best profit is.
Believe it or not there's a really simple way to work out your selling price and cut losses on discovering this.
When buying an item to discover it's re-sale prices (and in turn working out a buying price from that - more in the section below) you simply purchase it then immediately resell it for as little loss as possible.
For this example I'm using the item Armadyl Godsword.
As you can see the same method applies simply buy the item you want at a higher price however for higher value items the profit margin is ALOT lower but the net return is greater.
Now i don't want to hold onto this Godsword because i've spent over 47m on it for something that may only yeild 1-2m profit. So i'm just going to re-sell it.
Ideally you want to break even but if you try that chances are you're competing with the person that sold you your price check buy so it's best to undercut him.
I went for a 5gp loss and selling an item at it's sell price may take some time, most I've encountered is up to 2 hours for it to re-sell. A loss of 5gp is still a loss but this is about minimising that loss to potentially earn some great profit.
In conclusion higher value items aren't as daunting and risky as they look. they still DO carry a greater risk than lower value items but they aren't the horror story that some people tend to make out.
Flipping High Value Items
Currently under construction
FAQ
Q:What are the main risks with flipping?
A: As stated above the main risk is you as a player, poor research and bad judgement will often be the primary cause of loss of money.
Q: Can you tell me what to flip?
A: Absolutely not, flipping is a highly competetive market if i tell you what i'm flipping then it slow my income
Q: I flipped <insert item name here> yesterday but it's not working today, why?
A: The Runescape market fluctuates on a real time basis Simple things as updates, clans, supply and demand etc can change the potential of an item in seconds
Q: My item has stopped buying/selling whats happening
A: Someone has put an offer in for a lower/higher price and therefore takes priority in selling/buying. You can adjust your offers or just remain patient
Credits
Big thanks to Alex for the help