Restocking Tricks of the Trade

I sometimes get people asking me, "How do you have so many valuable items? How did you get so many neopoints? Is it from games, stocks or the lottery?" The answer to that is none of the above. Over the past few years I've been on this site, I have been doing something known as 'restocking'. That is, buying items from the Neopian shops and selling them for profit.

You can make hundreds of millions in one day, depending on what you restock. Now the three things that I believe are key to successfully restocking a hit item from the stores are:

1. Luck - You want it, you NEED it. Shops now restock items randomly so there are no set times that the shops restock their items. You could be sitting at a shop for hours before something remotely good even comes by. Hope you brought your lucky robots foot!

2. Knowledge - When planning to restock, know what shop you want to go into. You need to have some sort of knowledge about what is profitable and what is complete junk in the shop you're in. If you see an item that catches your eye and hesitate to debate on whether the item is a keeper or not, you could be losing that item to another person.

3. Speed - Now this factor is going to be broken up into a few parts.

(a) Internet connection speed. A fast connection speed is always helpful for restocking. Not to say that this is determining factor but say you and another user see a rare item in stock at the same time and you have a slower connection than theirs; there is a chance that they might get it first.

(b) Reaction Time - A full shop usually has 6 columns of 4 rows of items totalling 24 items. Picking out the rare items from the junk quickly gets you that much closer to that item you covet. So you click on the item you want, and a box appears asking if you're sure you want to buy that item. If you click OK and think you're done, think again. We now move onto the haggle screen.

(c) Haggling - What this is basically is to try and lower the amount you pay from the original price. You will see a picture of the item you want to buy, a box to submit your neopoint offer and another box with an image on it. Take note of the item's original price before you get on this page. Haggle roughly a close amount to the original price; it usually does not matter if you go over or under a bit. However, some of the shopkeepers may be feeling cheap or bit too generous and decide that your offer is either too low or high even if the offer is relatively close to the original. Here are some examples of haggles I usually do:

An item that costs 10,000 NP, I would haggle 9879, 9898.

An item that costs 102,924 NP, I would haggle 98797. 98989. 101010.

After you get your haggle you focus your attention on the large image at the bottom asking you to click on whatever neopet is displayed. You will see an picture of some Neopian land along with a Yurble, Eyrie, Wocky, Kougra, Bruce, Kau, Elephante, Mynci, Kacheek, Acara, Buzz, Aisha or Chomby.

Some neopets such as Buzz and Blumaroo are harder to pick out due to their slimmer designs, but if you haggled within the range of the asking price and click on the neopet image correctly you are doing fine. If you did all of the above quickly and correctly, you should have a chance of grabbing that valuable item.

If you get a notice saying that the item is SOLD OUT, that means you were too slow and didn't get it. But don't fret, practice makes perfect and if you keep trying at it, you'll get all those valuable items to maybe sell for millions in no time! All in all, be confident in your restocking skills no matter what. There is always that chance that no one will be lurking in that shop you're in. That may be the chance you've been waiting for to grab that million neopoint item!

Extra Tips:

Don't keep more than 50 items in your inventory; you will get a notice saying your inventory is full.

If you do make this mistake and miss out on an item, well, that's one lesson learned!

TNT did say the maximum you should hold is 50. ;)

Keep SOME junky items in your inventory. If you have nothing in your inventory and successfully restock that Draik egg, you might be the victim of some terrible random event. This may include the Grundo Leader, Shadow Usul or Pant Devil stealing it away, Dr. Sloth using his ray to zap it into sludge or Meuka gobbling it up and leaving behind a nice snotty gift. How lovely! Not!

Keep a reasonable amount of neopoints on hand. Some shops such as Pharmacy sell items usually all less than 50,000 NP while a shop such as Meridell Foods sell items such as certain Draik eggs for more than 1,500,000 NP! Knowing these handy notes of info helps you better prepared for when that item really does come into view for you to buy it up.

If you want to really go for the big items, give certain shops a go. Shops that have the biggest profitable items include Stamp, Battle Magic and Defence Magic to name a few.

Stamp sells a variety of super rare stamps such as Sticky Snowflake Stamp, which can sell for hundreds of millions!

Battle Magic sells that elusive Bony Grarrl Club, which can sell for over a hundred million NP!

Defence Magic sells that shiny Thyoras Tear, which can sell for around seventy million NP!