Flipping with 1, 5 and 10M ! :god_ash_small: [Guide] [Difficulty: Newbie]
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*For the complete merchanting guide, visit: Benefits Complete OSRS Flipping Guide - Old School Runescape
Table of Contents
The Basics Difference between low volume & high volume items Low Volume Low Demand vs Low Volume High Demand
The Basics
If you're starting with anywhere between 1-10m, then perhaps this guide can help steer you in the right direction if you're new to the whole merchanting scene.
Consumables (very safe - thin margins) Consumables are any item that is used repeatedly by any number of players in high numbers. This would include items such as:
Food: lobsters, shark, saradomin brews Skillers/Pvmer loot: logs, ore, arrows, bars
This category is most certainly the safest place for any merchant to start, but I wouldn't expect to be making anything crazy to that would you get you excited here. This is purely to get your feet wet in the water before you begin to expand to other areas. However, some merchants find consumables to be a favorite for short and long term flips alike.
You'll want to check the margins in-game to see where the item stands since the margins are already so thin, but you'll want to refer to our graphs to make sure it's not crashing or potentially hitting a bubble.
*For those who continue to flip these for the more long term (inactive flips), they'll keep an eye on a small pool of items and watch their price points over time. If they ever see an item hit a price point where they believe it's bound to rise again. They'll invest in that item over and over again every 4 hours and on as many accounts as they have. Once the price starts to rise to what they've predicted (doesn't always happen - the game changes over time too), they'll sell off their entire stock for a good sized profit.
Example: Mystery Item Trades at: 90-120 yearly GE Limit: 20,000
Now: Trading at 93 Players prediction: Buys 70K worth at 95gp/each and another 50K at 98gp/each
Two weeks later: Trading at 117gp/each Player sells: 120K worth at 115gp/each
Total Investment: 6.65M + 4.9M = 11.55M Sold at: 13.8M Profit: 2.25M ROI: 19.4%
PVP/PVM Gear Supplies
This category can include some items mixed with the consumables category, but essentially what you'd be doing here is looking at any item that PVP/PVMers will use in their day to day activities.
Examples: Abyssal whip Dragon Scimitar Heavy ballista Trident of the seas
These items are relatively safe and you shouldn't face any heavy losses with items that have such a low price point. But that doesn't mean ignoring your instincts when the item skyrockets and you were late to the party.
PVM Drop tables
You can use any number of OSRS bosses to scroll through and flip. If you've seen my Zulrah video, then you'll see that I stocked up on the loot of up to 500 kills. The purpose wasn't to see how much money I could extract from the items but to see in general how much money Zulrah makes.
As a merchant, you can take advantage of the impatient tendencies of PVMers wanting to sell their loot as quickly as possible and moving onto other things.
Treasure Trail (the riskiest category on this list)
This is hands down my favorite category. You have items that have a low trade volume and are questionable in every regard about their true value. This is the truest sense of, "the value of an item or commodity is that of which one is willing to pay for it."
You can use the low trade and low demand as a means to create your own margins. But this is also the riskiest category to pursue, for all the above reasons. If there's a low demand for the treasure trail item you've just bought. You may be holding onto it for a couple of hours to a week. Sometimes, you might not make any money at all.
Difference between low volume & high volume items
Low Volume Low volume items aren't frequently traded and would experience a slower than usual time to take to complete. Like treasure trail items, their low trade volume allows room for merchants to create their own margins.
High Volume High volume items are heavily dictated by the community as a whole. As a merchant, you have quite literally no say in which direction the price will move and you are at the service of what buyers are willing to pay.
However, since they're consistently introduced into the game and there's seemingly an endless demand for them, this makes flipping them quick and easy. You won't be finding jaw dropping margins here, but you would find yourself in a more comfortable setting than anywhere else.
Low volume low demand vs Low volume high demand
Low volume low demand Like the above low volume category, this is dangerous to get involved with. You'll likely be talking about lower tiered clue scroll rewards:
- Bobs shirt - Crier coat - Cat mask
Low volume high demand Unlike the above category, these low traded items do still hold a high demand:
- gilded platebody - gilded platelegs - robin hat
- High volume high demand is just consumables
- High volume low demand can be someone's collection, but not really something you'd flip