Price Stability in Runescape

The price of items in runescape is rarely ever constant. Players should always check out the price of items before they make any large purchase. This will ensure they get value for their money and in the case of resources, that they get the most efficient experience return available to them.

There are numerous items that have gained some stability over time, however they sometimes change depending on actual game changes in runescape itself. The most stable prices belong to resources and the standard armour (bronze through to rune).

One reason for the price stability is the increase in new items that make the traditional items less desired and therefore with lower demand and an increase in people able to supply the items, the standard items have reached their optimal market price.

The items people should take particular care with when trading are new items and generally high priced items. New items will always tend to start of at a high price and after a week to ten days will start to settle down ad gravitate towards the optimal price. However, there is likely to be no true optimal price for items other than resources and standard equipment as the true value will always be how the buyer perceives it.

Rare Items in Runescape

The runescape market is heavily focussed on the serious merchanter gaining several items that are no longer brought into the game. These items have previously been dropped by Jagex on holiday occasions and have since been discontinued.

Holiday events have taken over from holiday drops and as a result, the original items that were dropped are now rare as they will never be replaced. As time goes by, people may get banned, lose the rare item through their own fault if they accidently cast the high alchemy spell on it, or simply a player may have quit runescape for good.

As a result of all this activity, the price of these rare or discontinued items invariably increases over time.
With the exception of the Bunny Ears and the Scythe, all of the other items shown in the picture are highly sought after rare items. The Bunny Ears and the Sythe cannot be traded to other players and are therefore not able to be merchanted or sold.

The highest priced item on the list is the Christmas Cracker as it contains an unknown coloured party hat - it will be one of the other types that already exist, but is priced similarly to the highest priced party hat which is currently the Blue Party Hat.

Both the Pumpkin and the Easter Egg are items that can easily be eaten and therefore over time are rising in price - although currently they lag a long way behind the desire for people to own a Party Hat.

The Halloween Masks and the Santa Hat are currently very desired items and almost daily or weekly increase in price. Invariably, as the holiday season approaches for either item, the price will likely show a sharp increase and many merchanters will be seeking to take advantage of this scenario.

Owning a rare item brings its own problems - people may try and scam you out of the item or trick you into selling it for a much lower price. My advice is simple, always know the price of any item that you wish to sell and in the case of rare items, the price can fluctuate at different times although over the long term the general trend will be an upward spiral.

There are two other items that were not holiday drops, but moreso, are now discontinued items. These items are also rare because no more will be brought into the game - although they are now redundant items themselves, they still retain a trading quality for people looking to merchant them over time.

The disk of returning was previously used in RuneScape when normal players wished to visit this 'black hole' by purchasing this disk, and spinning it to return from the Black Hole. The 'black hole' was basically an area where players who had broken rules or cheated were held.

The half jug of wine is now discontinued due to a change in the Cooking skill. In the past, Wine was changed so it took 1 swig, not 2, and only people with half jugs at the time of the change will have had these. Consequently, most players sold the half jugs of wine as prices have increased over time.

Player Owned Shops

My vision is that one day Jagex will incorporate fully interactive Player Owned Shops within RuneScape to be combined with the recent introduction of Player Owned Houses.

The ideal situation is that Jagex would permit Player Owned Shops to be fully functional on non-member worlds as well as member worlds. A big selling point of members could be owning their very own store. I feel this would address the problem of spam that is rife in the popular trading worlds currently and would cut out on a lot of chancers trying to scam people in trades.

The basic principle behind this would be shop opening times. Players could set their opening times ( on a 24hr clock basis) to be open when they are online or open 24/7. A shopkeeper would get paid wages per hour and players would be able to freely set the prices of goods they had in stock that they were selling. Players would also be able to set the selling price of their stock which would always remain at the same level unless altered by the player.

In addition, players could select 3 items ( or a set number of items) that they would always buy if they had sufficient funds available... much like managing the kingdom in Miscellania, players would therefore manage their shops.

There could be a host of events surrounding this like advertising their ingame shops through fliers that would show the location of the shop, special sales or simply the shop name and owner.

I feel this would revolutionise the trading world in RuneScape and would be a very worthwhile thing for Jagex to consider in the future. It would also impact widely on runescape merchanting.