“Merchanting was more a skill than anything we use today”
Merchanting is the art of making profit through buying low and selling high. Its a risky game but those who can do it correctly are among the elite in RuneScape. Nowdays though, merchanting is now associated with clans who try to manipulate the system of the Grand Exchange which Jagex put in place to try stop real world trading. However merchanting was not always something to be frowned upon. Once, not so long ago it, was regarded as one of the most important things in RuneScape
Lets take a trip back to years to the peak of merchanting, where if one walked down the right back ally in Falador you could find anything. Quite literally. This was a time before trade limits, where if some one wanted to they could charge half a million for a scimitar - and if they were in short supply, probably get it. This was a time when anyone with a few thousand coins and a bit of patience could easily make more money in a hour than it is possible to through skills today. Not many people complained they could charge what they liked for an item and within reason get it, and many only trained skills to become rich enough to merchant. A simple example of how merchanting benefited everyone would be, say a player happened to be in the Duel Arena and a rune crafter wanted to get rid of excess Fire Runes and sold them to a player for six GP each. The player then traveled to Edgeville and met a mage desperate to buy runes for pking the mage could unwillingly buy them for twelve GP each - meaning a double in profits for the player. This was the beauty of merchanting, simply being in the right place at the right time meant you could make a modest profit. But then, on the 26 November 2007, the Grand Exchange was introduced and all this dramatically changed.
Flash forward to the present day, not a day can go buy now without hearing the groans of players who have fallen victim to “merchanting clans”. Ruthless individuals who manipulate the game in order to make money by scamming their fellow players. The system is unfair and unjust, but nothing is being done to stop it. Each day an item, a common item, will see a huge jump in price as these clan leaders tell everyone to buy up their chosen item at maximum price, with the promise of mega profits for everyone. This is all a lie. Only a few members of the clan will make any sort of profit selling the items while the rest of the clan buy them out, by the time the clan leader orders to sell the item there is little or no demand for it and the price plummets to all time lows and the majority of the clan are left with toxic items, items that are so plentiful they wont sell even for minimum price. This is how these so called “merchanting clans” work. They are not merchanting clans, they are manipulation clans, hell bent on making money for personal gain even if it destroys the game for everyone else. Surely Jagex have taken measures to stop these wrong doers you are saying? NO all Jagex have been seen to do is make a post in official forums telling people not to join these clans. They are not banning the wrong doers they are not compensating the average player, this I’m afraid is down to us. How do we stop these people I’m sure you are all wondering? I’m afraid I cannot answer this but there are a small group of people skillers and good doers alike who are taking small steps to slow down their progress, trading off the Grand Exchange in the parks and centers of every world brining things back to they way they used to be so can we stop them. Well as the saying goes cut off the head and the body will die.
A powdered wig price history
Can we stop the supply of these merchanting items? Can we as a community stop a growing plague thats effecting us all? Only time will tell. One thing is for sure though, if merchanting as it was could be re-introduced, we as a people can refuse to pay outlandish prices but as it is we are bound by the chains Jagex used to bring us together.
Written by Spoc77