Flipping involves buying an item for as little as possible and then selling for as much as possible within a few hours. See the whip example above for an illustration of how flipping works. Flipping is unique in that it can be used to profit from an item falling in price, by buying for much below the median price and selling for a little under in the median price. This is sometimes called reverse flipping as opposed to regular flipping for an item rising in price but this distinction is not always made.
- Remember that it can be difficult to buy an item for below medium and sell for above medium, unless the price actually changes from falling to rising, because prices are virtually always either falling or rising, and often only switch every few days. Advice to buy for the absolute minimum and sell at the absolute maximum is not sound because it is very unlikely for this to occur unless you are investing and are actually predicting a price reversal.
- When flipping you should have a selection of items that you should flip over and over. You can avoid the 4 hour timer by switching to another item after selling a previous item. This way you may be able to flip all your cash several times per day. In general you make 0.5% to 2% profit per flip, although of course it’s possible to lose money, or make more than that. In a good day you may increase your net worth by 1%-2%; this can add up over time. Another way to avoid the 4-hour timer is to buy directly from a player instead of through the Grand Exchange, but it is often difficult to get either the quantity or a good enough price to make this worthwhile.
- If you buy an item and find that a major crash has started and you cannot sell at minimum, you can either hang on it until the price rises again, or dump it at minimum. If you choose your items carefully, this shouldn’t happen to you very often. A wise rule is to always do a test buy of a small quantity, and then resell to see how quickly the item moves. If you can buy ten easily, then sell ten easily, next time try to buy 50/sell 50, then try to buy 250/sell 250. Never start out buying a huge quantity of an untested item.
- You also want to find items that are in your price range. If you only have 100k to invest on an item, you probably don’t want to pick an item that is 50K as you would only be able to buy 2 of them. Instead pick items that are about 250-500 coins, that way you could buy up to 2000-4000 of them. Quantity is usually more important than price, but not always. If your investing funds are low, it is best to focus on quantity, then as your investing funds rise, focus on quality, such as high level armour, or weapons, or rares.
- Pay attention to the charts: they are EXTREMELY valuable. How to find the charts: Go to the RuneScape Home page. Click on the menu bar “Game Guide”, then click on “Grand Exchange”. Bookmark this page in your browser, it will serve you well in the future. This is your home base for trading. You can see which items are going up in price, and which are going down. Type in an item, such as “Law Rune” in the search box, then hit “Go.” You will get a list of items which either have “law” or “rune” in the item name. Click on “Law Rune” which should be at the top of the list. The first chart you will see is the 30 day chart, hit the button at bottom right marked “90 Days”. This will give you an overview of how the price has been increasing or decreasing over the past 90 days. For a longer chart you can also chose the “180 days” button. (which is almost a half year)
- Using the charts you can usually predict which items will be increasing in price, and which will continue to fall. Be aware that many items will rise and fall repeatedly within a certain range, so the graph will look like a wave. These items are especially valuable as flipping items, as they are somewhat predictable. You want to buy right at the bottom of the wave, and sell at the top. Looking at the last 30 days on the chart should give you an excellent idea of where the buy and sell point will be.
- Another important concept is DIVERSIFICATION! Do not put all your money on one item. If it drops in price, you are in trouble. Try flipping 70% items that are resources like flax, food, bolts, ore, runes stuff people will need badly and 30% in technical items like armour, weapons or rares if you’re rich enough. Try to pick four to six good items (you may have to experiment to find four good ones) and just keep buying low, and selling high. Remember there are always impatient players who get rare items as a drop, such as corrupt dragon items, and they need cash fast, so they will sell for the minimum. That is great for you as you can buy cheap. Then later will come the impatient buyer, who has to have that item right away and is willing to pay a lot of money: great for you also. You must be able to be patient and buy cheap, then you must also be patient and sell high. Patience is one of the keys to making in money trading. Waiting for the right seller to come along, then once you have a good stock of the items, waiting until the right buyer comes along. One rule of thumb is this: if you find the right items, you should be able to buy some and resell the same items within 24 hours. If you can’t buy a supply of your preferred trading item within 12 hours, you probably should pick another item, or rethink your price. Same goes for selling: if you can’t unload the supply of items within 12 hours, your price is probably too high, or the demand is falling.
- As a general rule, you want to buy overnight, and sell during the day. This is because there are fewer players at night and it will be harder for them to unload their items that they manufacture or receive as drops, so they get desperate and lower the price. Also demand will rise during the day, especially during “prime time” which is 9pm to 4am GMT.
- Trial and error will let you know what the right price points are. Sometimes you can offer a single item at max, if it doesn’t sell, cancel and re-offer at a lower price. Repeat until you find a price that the item moves easily. Re-offer all your stock at that price. You have to balance speed and profit. Sometimes it is better to sell something for slightly above market price in one hour than wait 12 hours to sell them all at maximum price. Remember, the key is profit per hour. If you can move more items quicker, you might make more money even though it’s a smaller profit on each individual item. Ever wonder why stores have big sales? This is why.
- Remember to treat the items as commodities. It doesn’t really matter what sort of item is it. It can be an expensive barrows item, or something really lame like Guam seeds, or bronze daggers. Don’t worry about anything except if you can buy the item cheap and sell it later at a profit. Don’t buy an item because YOU like it, you want to buy and sell based on what other people like, want, or need.
- The market is volatile and prices and therefore supply and demand change hourly. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t buy something at a price you like. Move on to a different item. After a few weeks of trading you will probably have a list of your favourite ten or twenty items that you like to buy and sell. Everyone’s list will be different, but find items that work for you. Be aware that some days will just be “dry” and you will have trouble finding any good bargains to buy and you will have trouble getting a good price for items you sell. Don’t get discouraged. You will find that other days everything you do will be a “home run” you will make so much profit it will astound you. This is the nature of the business. Do not change the way you do business on dry days. It is easy to get desperate for profit and start making bad decisions. Do not let this happen to you.
- Flipping a crashing item that has not been manipulated can also be extremely profitable but also extremely risky. This involes buying an item at near minimum and selling below medium before the next grand exchange update.
- Remember, most players (who aren’t merchers) buy and sell either at minimum, maximum, or the market prices. It is easier for them just to punch one of those buttons and set their price. Therefore there will be hundreds of buy orders at minimum, and hundreds of sell orders at maximum. Don’t fight that crowd. If you want to buy cheap, set your price a few coins above minimum, that way your order gets filled first. Same with selling, if you drop your price a few coins below maximum, your sell order will complete faster.
- Also, don’t get greedy. If you are averaging 1% to 2% return on your money per day, you are doing excellent. Don’t try to do the “giant deal”, or the “big score” in hopes of making a lot of profit all in one day. You want multiple small profits repeating every day, not one big kill. The big kill can end up killing you if the items decide to crash instead of go up.
