Since the Grand Exchange was introduced trading has become much more convenient, and has allowed for easy manipulation of prices by taking advantage of the existing system. To make money in the G.E. it is important to understand the basics of how it works.
Market Prices: Market prices are calculated automatically every update and are equal to the average trade price of an item after the previous update. So if many people are buying an item the max price throughout an entire buying period (period between two updates) its new market price will be nearly equal to its old max price. This is why merchanting clans can manipulate prices for profit.
Item limits: every item traded over the G.E. has a limit on the amount that you buy buy per 4 hours. For example, barrows items have a limit of 10 meaning that you can buy 10 of each kind of barrows item every 4 hours. Armour sets act as a seperate item.
The quantity limits are:
Spoiler:
Runes
25,000
Logs
25,000
Ores
25,000
Bars
10,000
Spirit Shards
10,000
Food
10,000
Raw Food
20,000
Herbs
10,000
Potions
10,000
Bones
10,000
Feathers
10,000
Soft clay
10,000
Cowhide
10,000
Arrows
10,000
Vials
10,000
Gems
5,000
Bows
5,000
Jewellery
1000
Most Seeds
100
Most weapons
100
Most armour
100
Flatpacks
100
Barrows
10
God Wars Armour
10
Rares
2
Time penalties: After you buy an item from the G.E. or in trade, you cannot sell that item over the G.E. for 4 hours. After you sell an item in the G.E. or trade, you cannot buy that item from the G.E. for 4 hours. Player to player trades cause 4 hour penalties for the G.E. and not the other way around.
Update times: Update times are completely random and cannot be predicted exactly. They are roughly every 11-36 hours.
The queue system: There are normally many buy offers in the G.E. for most item at any time. When you put up a buy offer you need to wait for someone to put up a sell offer at a price lower than your offer, but if there are other players offering a better price they will get priority and receive the item first; so the lower your buy offer the longer you will need to wait to receive the item. When an item is "bought out" it means there are many max price offers for that item. When you put up an offer you are put in a waiting list behind all the people that put in max price offers before you did. If you remove your buy offers you lose your place in the queue. The queue system works the same way for selling.
Getting hard-to-get items: Because of the queue system it is always best to put in buy offers as early as you can. The best time to put in a max price buy offer is after a price update. If you are fast enough, you will have the first max price buy offer and you will be the first person to receive the item you want! But the update times are random, so how do you get your offer up first? You can use a G.E. notifier system. There are several that exist and they come mostly in the form of IRC bots and MSN bots, but our clan has a custom program that will set off an alarm to notify you of updates a few seconds after they happen.
Market Prices: Market prices are calculated automatically every update and are equal to the average trade price of an item after the previous update. So if many people are buying an item the max price throughout an entire buying period (period between two updates) its new market price will be nearly equal to its old max price. This is why merchanting clans can manipulate prices for profit.
Item limits: every item traded over the G.E. has a limit on the amount that you buy buy per 4 hours. For example, barrows items have a limit of 10 meaning that you can buy 10 of each kind of barrows item every 4 hours. Armour sets act as a seperate item.
The quantity limits are:
Spoiler:
Runes
25,000
Logs
25,000
Ores
25,000
Bars
10,000
Spirit Shards
10,000
Food
10,000
Raw Food
20,000
Herbs
10,000
Potions
10,000
Bones
10,000
Feathers
10,000
Soft clay
10,000
Cowhide
10,000
Arrows
10,000
Vials
10,000
Gems
5,000
Bows
5,000
Jewellery
1000
Most Seeds
100
Most weapons
100
Most armour
100
Flatpacks
100
Barrows
10
God Wars Armour
10
Rares
2
Time penalties: After you buy an item from the G.E. or in trade, you cannot sell that item over the G.E. for 4 hours. After you sell an item in the G.E. or trade, you cannot buy that item from the G.E. for 4 hours. Player to player trades cause 4 hour penalties for the G.E. and not the other way around.
Update times: Update times are completely random and cannot be predicted exactly. They are roughly every 11-36 hours.
The queue system: There are normally many buy offers in the G.E. for most item at any time. When you put up a buy offer you need to wait for someone to put up a sell offer at a price lower than your offer, but if there are other players offering a better price they will get priority and receive the item first; so the lower your buy offer the longer you will need to wait to receive the item. When an item is "bought out" it means there are many max price offers for that item. When you put up an offer you are put in a waiting list behind all the people that put in max price offers before you did. If you remove your buy offers you lose your place in the queue. The queue system works the same way for selling.
Getting hard-to-get items: Because of the queue system it is always best to put in buy offers as early as you can. The best time to put in a max price buy offer is after a price update. If you are fast enough, you will have the first max price buy offer and you will be the first person to receive the item you want! But the update times are random, so how do you get your offer up first? You can use a G.E. notifier system. There are several that exist and they come mostly in the form of IRC bots and MSN bots, but our clan has a custom program that will set off an alarm to notify you of updates a few seconds after they happen.