‘Flipping’ is a process of buying items at a lower price than their actual rate, and then selling them for a higher price. This method is mostly used by rich players to make more OSRS gold. But, since the Grand Exchange was brought in-game, the mechanics of flipping was changed. However, players had found different ways to make money by using the exchange, which includes price manipulation, long-term investments etc.
Being an in-game player, it can be bothersome to earn the starting cash needed to Flip items. However, an easy way to obtain is by buying OSRS gold from best OSRS gold sites. GameZod has a list of suppliers that provide a safe & fun experience while making a purchase. All you have to do is click on the above link, and surf your way through the list to find yourself a suitable vendor.
Grand Exchange
When you’re buying an item, the exchange searches for offers that meet your buying price, and once It finds a similar offer, it instantly completes the trade. If the offer isn’t completed, it will be placed in the back end until a matching offer pops up, or until the offer is cancelled manually. This is the reason why some traders instantly take place, while others don’t. F2P (Free to play) players have access to three trading slots in the Grand Exchange interface, and the P2P (Pay to play) players have access to all eight.
To prevent price manipulation, JAGEX had added a limitation to the number of items that can be bought every 4 hours. The list of the maximum purchases or trading limits can be found in this Wiki page. The price guide is updated every day, but if you compare it with the price today, it will show the average of yesterday’s price. Since items are always rising & falling, attempting to sell it according to the price guide will be completed swiftly, but if you’re trying to buy the item according to the price guide, then it won’t. The same if for the items falling in price, but in the opposite way.
Key Points
The utmost important thing while trading is to determine the price of a particular item. The two values that should be considered while flipping is the street value and the market value. Street value is the price of an item that can be traded in person, and market value is the price of an item that can be traded via Grand Exchange. Another key factor is the buy-sell test tool, which is very important while trading through the market value.
Market Value
To figure out the market value of an item, you should first place a buy order for an item in the exchange for a price greater than its value on the price guide, if it’s instantly bought, then that is the high end of the price range. Next, sell the item for a price lower than its value on the price guide, if it instantly sold, then that would be the low end of the price range. Compare both the price to get an approximate range of how much the market value of the item can be, for example: if you’ve bought an item for 450 gold coins and sold it for 445, then the market value is between 450 – 445 gold coins.
Street Value
Speaking of the street value of an item, this often happens to an item that is hard to obtain, like third-age equipment’s, or when investors are looking for bulk quantities as the grand exchange doesn’t offer them, or even when the price of an item is not properly represented by the exchange. Street value trades are taken place in trade words and are arranged through the OSRS forums, which is a good place to find wider price ranges to generate better profit. For example, if the market value of an item is around 360 gold coins to 365, and a player on forums has a buy offer on the same item for a higher price (370 gold coins), then you can simply buy the item off grand exchange and sell it to him/her for a profit.
Flipping Strategy
There are two factors that a flipper should keep in mind while investing his money; Being aware of the prices & price trends, and how the recent OSRS updates are affecting the market. First of all, watch the price of an item and buy it when it’s starting to fall. In the same way, sell the item when the price is increasing, or before the price falls back once it has reached its peak. But it won’t be easy as it sounds, because it’s hard to predict the actual moment of the disturbance that takes place in the prices. That is why it is important to study the exchange charts and examine the price trends by using the Grand Exchange Market Watch. Examining the charts will help you notice the range of an item, and how it is always within that range when it falls or increases in price.
Always keep eye on the updates, so that you can get a hint on which item can be in demand in the future. However, you must keep in mind that if enough players think the same way, they may also buy the item in stock, resulting in a crash or downfall of price when the update is released. JAGEX has a way of releasing the contents before the update to keep the prices stable. A good example is the release of mahogany and teak logs before the release of construction. When the skill was released, players had a good supply of both the logs beforehand and met the requirements of other players that required them to level up.
The Two Types of Flipping in OSRS
Flipping is recommended for a player that has a good amount of money, or at least 10 million in gold coins to start. Anything below 10 would result in slow profit. If you’ve bought an item that had resulted in a major crash and cannot be sold at a high price, then the best thing to do is either hand on to it till the price increases or simply dump it at a lower price. Choosing an item by carefully analysing the market can prevent this sort of thing from happening, and it is important to always test the item by buying it to see how the price graph is moving.
If you have a stock of 100,000 gold coins, and you’re buying an item worth 50,000 coins in the quantity of two is not a wise choice. Instead, choose an item that is worth 150-200 gold coins, so that you can buy it in a larger quantity. The key is the profit gained per hour and quantity plays a huge role in it, as it is more important than the price. Moving items quicker helps you gain better profit even if the profit is low. Another factor to keep in mind is diversification, which means that you shouldn’t put all your money on a single item, and instead pick 4-5 different items to flip. There are tons of impatient players on OSRS who sell their rarely dropped items in a hurry as they need money, so that will help you buy the desired item at a low price. In the same way, there are other players, who are willing to pay a higher price for an item as they need it urgently.
Normal flipping
This form of flipping involves buying an item at a lower price and selling it for a higher market value. This is different from investing because the price changes over time and flipping play a huge role in pending buy and sell orders to gain profit. The whole buy & sell process is created by impatient players. Flipping is most profitable when it is bought and sold within a large price range, and it is safer when the item has a higher trade volume.
Bank Quantity Flipping
This form of flipping involves buying large quantities of an item at a stable price and then selling it for a higher price. The profit may be small, but depending on the bulk quantity, the profit is larger. This form requires a large amount of cash to flip and is more profitable than the other methods if done right. A recommendation is to have at least 20 million or more gold coins before using this method to gain profit.
Best Items to Flip in OSRS
In OSRS 21 % of the in-game items can be accessed by F2P (Free to play), while P2P (Pay to play) players can access all. So, a recommendation before you start flipping is to purchase a bond and become an in-game member to have access to more beneficial items that can be flipped to gain profit. Without further ado, let’s look at the list of the five best items that you can flip today for profit:
1. Potions
Potions include prayer potions, super combat potions, super restores, stamina potions and energy potions, which are some of the safest items to flip in-game to avoid a huge loss. These items have a good buy & sell ratio, so they’re easy to trade. Remember to always check the Grand Exchange tracker’s potion tab to view which one can be profitable during the time of your investment. Once you’ve selected 4 different types of potions, make sure that you buy 2,000 in a quantity of every type, so that you can have 8,000 of all types in total. The tracking list always has potions that are profitable daily, which ensures that you’re flipping strategy is perfect.
2. Player Killing Items
PK items include helm of Neitiznot, Berserker helm, Granite Maul, DDS (Dragon dagger special), Dragon scimitar and Armadyl god sword, which has a good buy & sell ratio as players often buy these items to PK, or are often sold as loots that they’ve obtained from their kills. The max limit on these is 70, so buying according to the limit is relatively cheap. However, major profit is not to be expected from such items, because of the item-limit on them. For example, the profit on 70 helms of Neitiznot would be around 50,000 – 70,000 gold coins.
3. Items with High Trade Volume
High trade volume items include planks, magic longbows, magic short bows, bolts & darts, runes and Zulrah’s scales, which has a good buy limit of 10,000 or more. These items provide lower profit as compared to the other items, but as you can sell them quicker and at a higher volume, it can be quite profitable per hour. A small profit margin of 10 gold coins or more is enough to make money through these items.
4. PVM Items
PVM items include Fury’s, Serpentine helms, Tridents and Whips, which are considered to be PVM (Player VS monster) items, or in other words, medium ticket items. These items are worth 3-10 million gold coins and have a buy limit of eight. They are a perfect pick for daily profit as they are constantly bought and sold in-game. Always remember to check the Grand Exchange tracker before starting to flip these items, as there are small differences that can result in a non-profitable flip.
5. High Ticket Items
High ticket items include Dragon Hunter Lance, Dragon Hunter Crossbow, Ghrazi Rapier, Dragon War Hammer and Dragon Claws, which are quite expensive to flip. Although it is risky, they do have a good buy & sell ratio and players who have a good pile of money often flips these items for a huge profit.
Flipping Tips
- Do not flip static priced items and try to go with the dynamic ones.
- Keep a record of your purchased and always update the prices of the items that are listed on it.
- Patience is very important while flipping items, as some items take time.
Conclusion
If you want to start flipping and need initial capital to start with, we recommend to choose trusted OSRS gold site to buy gold. If you have high level account and would like to gather capital by yourself you can check our blog about Top 10 OSRS bosses to farm for gold which can be good source of gold.