[Guide] Moon's Flipping/Merching Guide

#1
In this guide we’ll look at several types of “GE Money Making”, aka flipping or merching: investing, high-volume flipping, and low-volume flipping.


Investing is where the buyer buys an item when they know it’s hit a low price (but may not rise for some time) or when they expect a price to rise in an item (commonly seen when prepping for DXP Weekend).


High-volume flipping is where something that can be bought in bulk (trade goods) are bought at a LOW price and sold at a higher price within a short time period. This usually involves things like herbs, secondary ingredients, ore, ammo, and other consumables. Check this link out for suggested items


Low-volume flipping is where something that can not be bought in large amounts is bought for a low price and sold at a higher price within a short time period. This usually involves items like armors, weapons and other gear.



High-volume Flipping

I’ll start with my favorite type of flipping, which usually gets the player a small amount of gold but very quickly. I like this method because it’s easy to start and continue to practice even when the market goes haywire with new patches and what not. There’s some things you need to know before I explain further….


Every item has four important facts: Max Price, Min Price, Expected Price (or average), and Buy Limit.


Buy Limit is easy, it’s just the max quantity you can buy within a 4-hour window. For example, you can only buy 10,000 cannonballs every 4-hours. This is important to know for the “volume” part of high-volume flipping.


Expected Price or Average Price is the cost of the item that the GE expects you’d be able to buy or sell the item at. The system isn’t accurate and it takes a while to update in prices but it’s helpful to use as a baseline when finding the max & min prices.


Max Price is the max amount of gold that players are SELLING their item for.
Min Price is the min amount of gold that players are BUYING the item for.


Let’s look at  an example:
I am interested in doing some high-volume Flipping with Super Range Potions so I go to the GE and look them up.

[Image: sEw6jU8.png]

The GE believes that Super Ranging Potions (3) are about 10,368gp. It also reminds you that the buy limit is 1,000 every 4 hours.
From this screen, I indicate that I want to buy ONE potion and I hit the +5% button several times so I can buy the item instantly (similar to what players do when they want an item immediately and don’t want to wait around for a seller).


The sale completes and I get this window.

[Image: QNJn1WK.png]
I was able to buy the potion for 10,885 gp where the market had predicted that they were about 10,368 gp.


This means that the current MAX price of the item is 10,885 gp - the highest price that people are successfully selling the item.


Now I need the MIN price, and I throw the item back into the GE. This time I mash the -5% button until the price is well below the expected price. The sale goes through and I get the next window:
[Image: 72zmTqd.png]

This tells me that the MIN price is 10,600 gp - this is the minimum price people are trying to buy the item at.


What does it all mean?


We now want to compare the Min & Max Price.
Min Price = 10,600 gp (the lowest price people are buying the item for)
Max Price = 10,886 gp (the highest price people are selling the item for)
Margin (Max-Min) = 286gp per pot


Margin can also be seen as net-profit, the amount of money you stand to gain after factoring in the purchase price.
If the Margin is 286gp and you are actually able to buy and sell for those prices (I usually adjust mine to be more competitive), you can buy 1,000 potions every four hours so you would stand to make 286,000 gp max every 4 hours.

If I wanted to get this item, I would "undercut" the min price, meaning that I would try to buy the potions for a few gp higher (ie. 10,605 gp instead of 10,600) and then I would throw those potions in for a few gp less than the max price (ie. 10,880 instead of 10,886). 

Important note: If you are selling an item and see that someone has just bought one potion from you - they are finding the max & min prices and you might soon get undercut yourself. Wait a little bit and if you're able to, buy 3-12 potions to see what the price is now and then you can choose whether to compete with this person or let it slide. 

In summary: When you think of an item that could be worth flipping, buy 1 of the item and take note of its buy limit and its max price then sell the item and take note of its min price. This then gets you the item’s margin (or net profit). To make the money, you want a large margin.


Low-Volume Flipping


Low-volume flipping is very similar to high-volume but you are looking at items that are a much higher value and where there’s much more guessing involved.


I recommend using http://www.grandexchangecentral.com/ to look at price fluxuations, it also recommends amounts that you can try to buy or sell items.


I honestly don’t do a lot of low-volume flipping as it seems like much more of a gamble and slower than high-volume flipping.


Investing


I like investing for two reasons: DXP weekends & lower activity periods where I’m not on RS as much.
I wanted to talk about investing last because I feel like the more you do high or low-volume flipping, the more experienced and successful you’ll be overall for long-term investing since you eventually learn what prices ranges are healthy for specific items. This is one reason people are pretty protective about what they sell, if too many people latch on to those items, the prices will be much less stable. 


When to invest and when to flip?
Sometimes you may end up buying an item that is tanking, historically you had been successfully buying and selling the item and then the price keeps dropping and you’ve bought a bunch of the item and you can't resell without taking substantial loss. Just be patient, keep it, and flip other items. For those brave enough and believe that the item’s price will go back to more normalized prices, you can also choose to invest in them and buy more (which may also drive down the average price you paid for the first batch of items). Overall, there’s always going to be some amount of chaos in the market - make the best judgement and go from there.


Double Exp Weekend!
DXP should be upon us, usually coming out in mid to late September (though some hypothesize that it will come August 31st - Sept 3 (the weekend after the Summer weekends), I don’t think anything is confirmed at this time though so it’s an ideal time to start investing in DXP items. The wiki is a great resource for predicting the next DXP weekend but there’s usually two: one in spring and one in fall. Below is the last fall DXP date:

[Image: UEkiDzU.png]
The announcement usually occurs a month before the actual date but this can vary. Let’s look back at Super Ranging potions, this time go to the RS wiki and look at their graph for the date of DXP: 
[Image: RR19O0u.png]
As you can see, in the week leading up to the September DXP weekend (15th) - ranging pots were selling at an average for 16,633 gp (amazing price compared to what it is at the moment) and nearly got to 18k gp during the weekend itself (then crashing to under 14k after the weekend). So this graph tells you that it is most likely a great item to invest in FOR the weekend itself.


Additionally, it’s hidden but you can also see that the price went to just as high on about August 18th - right around the weekend was finally announced.
[Image: WRGPKsR.png]
I point out that this item is great for the weekend because there are other items that may not be great for DXP weekend. For example, cannonballs are finished products and their price tanks because of the excess amount being produced. However, these items are perfect to sell during the announcement period where people are hoarding resources to be used during the weekend! See the graph below:
[Image: XO3vVHc.png]


Obviously there could be better items compared to cannonballs but this is just one of the examples of finished products that are good to invest in RIGHT NOW (8/19/18) in order to sell for higher later.



Recording your stuff!

I absolutely love records and looking at monthly progress, I highly suggest keeping a google sheet of sales. Here’s an example (items not included for obvious reasons) smile 
You can set up formulas so the only thing you enter is Money spent, units & Sold (where profit, and unit prices are automatically calculated)

[Image: plg6aW1.png]

That pretty much concludes my guide, if you have questions - let me know or post in the comments! 


To get more information on everything above, here’s where I’ve learned stuff from:
https://levelskip.com/mmorpgs/RuneScape-...ping-Guide 
Flipping for Wealth youtube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgzdbdPB5jk&list=PL21giD8iGhAtq3UZQfkyFFSbPP22emZY_
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#2
Awesome guide, Blurry! I've always wondered how people flip, I'm one of those lazy people though that just try to buy everything instantly or sell things in a hurry to sell it below GE mid price lol
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#3
Thank you! Yea I was always really scared of the whole concept but once I got some practice and found some helpful information it's actually a really cool concept! Plus doesn't hurt that I can still make some gp while not actively in the game haha :-P
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#4
Fantastic guide, thank you! I personally invest for dxpw but ive never tried the flipping side of money making. I’m gonna give it a go with this guide, thanks for writing it all!

(Oh anddd dxpw has officially been announced for 31st till 3rd Tongue http://services.runescape.com/m=news/month-ahead---august?jptg=ia&jptv=community_news#_ga=2.144369079.346530994.1534747110-2033666554.1500589454 - mega annoyed because i have plans the friday and monday -.- yuchangejagex)
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#5
Thanks for taking the time to share this info, Blurry. I'm tempted to invest in some items for dxp, but lack of confidence is holding me back at the moment. Might just go for it, though.
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#6
Very informative I feel less oblivious to flipping now smile hope to try this out in the near future
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#7
(2018-08-20 07:37:54)Beccah Wrote:  Fantastic guide, thank you! I personally invest for dxpw but ive never tried the flipping side of money making. I’m gonna give it a go with this guide, thanks for writing it all!

(Oh anddd dxpw has officially been announced for 31st till 3rd Tongue http://services.runescape.com/m=news/month-ahead---august?jptg=ia&jptv=community_news#_ga=2.144369079.346530994.1534747110-2033666554.1500589454 - mega annoyed because i have plans the friday and monday -.- yuchangejagex)

Oo awesome! The best thing to do would be to research the items you are thinking about, for example...consider different herbs or potions and then look them up on the RS wiki and check out how they've been doing and what their September DXP weekend value was. A lot of things nearly double in price!
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