Trading

The trading post is a good idea, but unfortunately it has limitations.  You can only have 10 items, and 800k in cash (was 600k).  The best item I use to substitute for cash is an icetravaganza scratchcard.  It's worth 99k, and easy to sell.  I also use map pieces, going for about 25k, as a substitute.

In case you haven't seen a trade before, this is what they generally look like.  The lot number, the person selling, the item listed below, and a brief comment as to what they would like. You simply click on the gray "Make an offer!" button to make an offer.  Easy yeah?

Logistically, I have the "newest 20" already bookmarked.  I go there, then scroll down by hitting the space bar over and over, looking for items I'm familiar with.  Once I get to the bottom, I hit the "Home" key to bring me back to the top.

This is the odd thing.  For the "newest 20", the newest items appear on the top.  However, for the search feature they have, the newest items (after searching for a specific item) appear on the bottom.

Speaking of which, don't use the trading search feature to measure current market prices. Those results are the 20 earliest trades that never were sold or traded . . . and it used to be really out of date, but now it's better. Still, don't use that as your only guide if you can help it.

Now, as you're probably wondering, how do you make money?  It's pretty simple enough, just offer less than what the market price is for their stuff.  To give the illusion of value, you could pad your offers with neggs and codestones, if you are bidding on a decently priced item.

If you see someone offering something for cheap, like a codestone valued at 4500, I always offer like 4050 or 4100.  A decent price, where I make money, but nothing so low that he rejects it.  Sometimes they will reject it, but if it's reasonable, and they don't know any better, or they don't care, they'll take it.

For a wishlist with a "low" price, I offer a "little" more.  Like in this one example, where the person neomailed back, her wishlist was something like "first person to bid 4500 gets it".  It was a spooky map worth a little more than 5000.  Rather than offer 4500, I offered 4505.  Here's the neomail:

Do that, if it's undervalued.  Offer 50 more, offer 500 more, if it's worth it, offer 2,000 more.  It's just like auctions, where you make 0 profit from the auctions you don't win.  Don't be too stingy in trades, especially when it's a good deal.  You make 0 profit from the trades you don't get. 

I generally offer really bad items, like a toy sail boat or a snowball, and pure points.  I figure people prefer points, rather than something they have to re-sell.  However some people like items, and if you can find cheap items (that look expensive), you can get away with giving like 5 of these different items, and maybe a lot less points.

Val says to offer some kind of cheap plushie, like the blue aisha plushe or something for cheap items like codestones.  If you are offering more than 100k, it doesn't matter what generic item you use, but for cheap stuff, that newbies are probably trading, it helps.

It's up to you, both work, but for me, I don't want to bother with sending so many items for so many trades.  Just one crappy item and a lot of points is my style.  The offering of many items only works on small items that newbies probably put up.  Experienced players don't offer codestones or map pieces in trades, they sell it in their shop for pure points.

For me, I search shops for toy sail boats, or pickled olives or stuff like that and buy them for 1np each.  I could go to the money tree, but usually you can only grab about 5-10 items before you are "money tree banned".  Serious, I have a fast connection.  At first, I'll grab cheap stuff 1/2 tries.  After about 7 or so items, I can't get anything.

Anyway, after buying cheap items (and check cause usually if a shop has one item for 1np, they have many like that), I start trading.  I usually keep my junk items in my safe deposit box.  Why?  Well, my trades have trades.  I'm not wasting space in my shop for these items, and my inventory is too cluttered usually.  Putting your junk items in your safe deposit box for quick access when you are doing a lot of trades is very efficient.

Don't get me wrong, you should have junk items in your inventory to reduce the chance that the pant devil or whatever will take something good.  You just don't want to have so much stuff that you can't use the quick shop, or have people send you anything.

You can just go to your safe deposit box, click on the icon of the toy sail boats like 5 times to grab 5 in your inventory.  When you're done, just do a quickstock to put them back in your safe deposit box.

If you determine the value of an item based on what the seller claims the value is, you are going to get screwed.  This applies in chat, as well as the trading post.  This is an example in chat, and in the trading post.

When they tell you what it's worth, it's always overpriced.  Don't fall for it.  By overpriced I mean yeah, they may say it's worth 120k, but if no one will pay 120k for it, IT'S NOT WORTH 120k. They may say it's worth 3 million, but if no one wants to pay 3 million, IT'S NOT WORTH 3 million. Seriously, why would someone sell an item that's actually worth 120k for only 70k?  They're just as greedy as you are.  People are not going to work hard to help make you money. They just couldn't get anyone to buy it at their high price (probably a price they got suckered into paying), and they just want to dump their hard to sell, junk, overpriced items.

"Things are only worth what you can sell them for"
                                                    -My Dad

If they say "worth 50k but selling for 40k", generally, they are lying.  Check the wiz.  They may or may not be telling the truth.  If it's over 100k, don't even bother.  You don't know what the real value is.  It could be 300k like they claim, it could be worth 105k.  It may even be worth only 80k cause it's a hard to sell, even though it's unbuyable.

If you're not familiar with an item, it's best not to buy at all, no matter what kind of "deal" they make it out to be.  Otherwise, you'll be in the same position as them.  Trying to get rid of this hard to sell item that you paid too much for.

There's also a section I made that you should read.  It's called Selling hard to sell buyables, and one way people try to dump their hard to sell items is using trades.  You don't want to take one of these items, and this is how to avoid it.

Related to them telling you the (overpriced) price, is the "auto".  Generally, if someone says something like 250k=auto, it means that nobody in their right mind would pay 250k, so you shouldn't too.  That's why he's giving it auto, because it's way overpriced.  

Once in a while, the "auto" will be a good price.  In that case, offer higher than the "auto", cause other people are offering the "auto" price, so you want yours to stand out.

When putting items up for trade, if you leave the comment as "none", you will get a lot of crappy, newbie offers.   I found if you put a price, like 180k, then you will get more serious offers, especially if it is reasonably priced, and very few newbie offers.  This is because they know that you know what it's really worth.  A newbie offer is like a toy sail boat and 10np for a paint brush.

So always give a price.  You will get less bids, but it will be less newbie bids.  Cause ultimately, if you don't state a price, people will neomail you, or make low bids, and you have to explain how much you want anyway.  Might as well do it from the start.

If you make an offer, and it's not accepted or rejected in a few minutes, leave it there.  Sometimes the person had to go take a shower, or went out, or whatever.  I usually leave my offers up for a few days, assuming no massive price changes.  Maybe they only play an hour a day, not everyone is hopelessly addicted to neopets, playing 7 hours a day you know.  For whatever reason, they haven't made up their mind . . . so just leave the offer.

If you need the money, or item you're offering, then yeah, withdraw.  If you can afford it though, just leave it there for a few days, I've had many offers accepted 3 days after I first offered it.  I suppose you could take the money back and put it in the bank to earn 2 points of interest, but I'd rather them accept my offer, which probably will earn me at least a few hundred.

Never take hard to sell items.  What do I mean by hard to sell items?  If you've never heard of it, it is probably a hard to sell item, so don't take it.  You don't want to get stuck with it.  That's why they're trading it to you, cause they don't really want it.  Why would you?

Trading is a great way to get rid of it though.  Bundle a hard to sell item with lots of points or easy to sell items, trade it in for an easy to sell item, then bam, you got rid of it, hopefully at a decent price.  However, if you're smart, you won't have this problem.

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