Resellers, NOT Restockers

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, by any means. In fact, it would be safe to say I'm rather a newbie when it comes to the subject. But there are some things I've managed to pick up that I would love to share with the other newbies who are looking to get into reselling, especially when faced with the same restrictions as me.

RESTOCKING AND ITS MANY PROBLEMS

What exactly is restocking? Generally, the definition of this term is buying items from Neopian shops – that is, site, NPC shops, not player-shops – and selling them to someone else for a profit.

This can be done many ways, and it's definitely not limited to unbuyables – items that are sold by players for more than 99,999 NP. In fact, a good, slow, but steady way to earn would be to restock items that are high in demand but only fetch a few hundred/thousand NP per piece.

For the purposes of this guide, however, we'll stick to those items that can be bought in the shops and sold for prices that are more than 100,000.

Most of these items tend to fall in the rarity 90-100 bracket, which means they are exceedingly to rare to find in the shops. Not all items in this rarity bracket are unbuyables, and not all unbuyables fall in this bracket, but they do make up a significant number of such items.

When these items are restocked in shops, they're quickly bought by other players. To make matters more difficult for new accounts, an account has to reach a certain age before it can "see" items of a certain rarity in the main shops – if you want to see all items, you'll have to wait until your account has aged to about 4 months.

Even when the age factor isn't a limitation, there are other difficulties, of course. For one, there are always Neopians mulling about the shops, waiting to catch that next restock and its possibility of a large profit. If you've got a slow internet connection / aren't patient enough to wait for that next UB restock / happen to have fallen asleep / whatever, or aren't quick enough to grab the item within a few seconds, you're probably not going to be able to get it, which can be disheartening, especially when you have the neopoints to get those rare items.

But where there's a will, there's always a way, and here are a few tips that will allow you to be able to become a reseller.

1) Keep an eye on the boards, especially the Shop Ads and the Trades/Auctions boards. There are often people there who advertise having UBs in their shops for 99,999 instead of the Trading Post asking price.

This can be for many reasons: the seller may need the NP quickly, and isn't interested in waiting for an offer. The item may be hard to sell. The difference between the post and the 99,999 price tag might be small enough that it can be overlooked, anywhere between 5-10k. Or the seller may simply feel like doing something nice.

These UBs can be sold for a higher price on the post, allowing you to turn a profit. It may not be as large a one as if you'd been the one to buy it from the main shops, but something is always better than nothing.

2) I cannot specify how important keeping an eye on the boards is. One thing that happens rather frequently in the Trades/Auctions boards in something called a "Fun Auction," where the user puts up an expensive UB for auction with the beginning request being very tiny. I've seen morphing potions that sell for 350k+ being put up for an initial asking price of about 30k.

These auctions can be tricky – because of a large amount of publication, there are often a number of people battling it out for one item. The closer the lot gets to closing, the more fierce the bidding, and you'll need to time it perfectly right to win the item. But seeing as even getting a single item can mean a 75k-100k profit, that's not a problem. Besides, the good thing about these auctions is that they don't usually last longer than an hour, which allows a quick return of your NP from the auction house if you don't win.

3) Keep a lookout on the trades. Often, there are people who advertise 'quicksale' on their wishlist. Essentially, this means that they're willing to offer an – often substantial – discount on the Trading Post price of an expensive item for a quick sale. Again, this is something that can for many reasons, just like with the above two points.

These discounts can vary in amount – it can be between a few thousand to a few hundred thousand NP off – but if you aim for somewhere around the middle of those poles, you should be able to get an item for a good value.

4) Sell to resellers. How does this work you ask? Well, you can often sell items to other resellers at a price that allows you to make a profit, while simultaneously allowing them to freedom to price high enough that they too can make a profit. For example, I once bought a Cybunny Scout Usuki for 99,999 from a user shop. The going price in the trades was close to double that – about 195-200k. Instead of waiting for an offer of that amount, I sold it to a reseller for 150k.

Apart from allowing both of us to profit off the item, this also ensured two things. One, I got pure NP quicker and two, I had the NP to make another such purchase/trade.

With this method, you won't make as much profit as you can – but you will make some, and chances are, you'll make it faster.

A FEW WARNINGS

As with everything, this isn't a perfect system. One of the many reasons that a user could be selling an item for cheaper than its going TP price is the fact that it's HTS – hard to sell.

These are items that can takes between weeks and months to sell, and are usually items that are almost always gallery items – plushies, usukis, and the like. Items that disappear in a single use tend to be much easier to sell.

Before you make that discounted purchase, make sure to consider whether you have the patience to wait for so long. You could, of course, make an immediate sale to a collector whose looking for that item at the very moment you put it up for trade/auction, but that is probably rare.

A good way to sell these gallery items is to use the shop wizard to search galleries for items that are similar. For example, if you're looking to sell an Electric Wocky Bread, search for galleries with a multitude of items that have one of the three individual words in it – 'Electric,' 'Wocky' and 'Bread.' A gallery with an electric/bakery/Wocky theme may be missing the item you're selling.

Such gallery owners usually have wishlists on pet pages or in their gallery description, and often open their neomails to people selling items they're missing from their collection. Mailing them to see if they're interested in your item will often get you a faster sell, though you'll probably have to mail quite a few owners to get that reply you were hoping for.

Another thing you need to be careful of is the going price of the item. There are people who sell cheaper items in their shops/trades at inflated costs. They may have various reasons, ranging from not realising that they're making a costing error to simply hoping that someone would be willing to trade a large amount of NP for a low value item. It's usually best to research the item you're buying on the Post, the Shop Wiz and the Auction House, and maybe ask a few of the people over at the Auctions/Trades chat to do a price check for you. You might lose a deal or two to faster and more experienced Neopians, but it's better to lose an opportunity to make more neopoints that to lose them all.

AN ALTERNATE METHOD

So, you aren't interested in any of the options above. You want to earn neopoints, and not at the rate of a few tens of thousands an item – but at the same time, you still have restocking problems. There is, of course, a cheaper but more difficult method to become a reseller.

Random events and the wheels of Neopia can give out extremely valuable items. These can range from the buyable – like Nerkmids, Dubloons, Codestones and certain Paintbrushes – to the extremely expensive, like Transmogrification Potions (and you though Sloth only appeared to tax you), Brightvale Job Coupons and the Water/Transparent/etc Paintbrush. These can be sold at high prices with little to no cost on your part – but random events are rare, and can be both good and bad, and winning something from a wheel involves a good amount of risk that something unpleasant will happen to your pet. Apart from that, most wheels are restricted, and can only be spun at set intervals.

Another way to earn these items is through the Battledome and Key Quest. Certain Battledome challengers have the chance of awarding you items such as morphing potions and paintbrushes, some of which are unbuyable, and opening the Key Quest vault with a gold key brings with it the chance of you winning a paintbrush, of which some may be unbuyable. But Battledome prizes are capped at 15 items a day and only 10 Key Quest keys may be used in the vault per day. Furthermore, the possibility of winning these items is much rarer than that of winning other, more easily available items.

A final way is through completing maps. Certain maps award rare items and NP at their completion. For example, completing the Forgotten Shore Map opens up a new daily, which brings with it the opportunity to win a Draik Egg or a Krawk Morphing Potion, both of which sell for more than a 100,00 NP on the Post/Auction House, with the Egg costing more than a million NP. In a previous Neopian Times editorial, TNT has confirmed that completing the original treasure map – the one whose pieces are labelled 'Piece of a Treasure Map' – brings with it the possibility of earning a Draik Egg as one of the rare items. Completing a World Challenge Map allows you the chance to win a possibly unbuyable Paint Brush or Petpet Paint Brush. Presumably, the same opportunity to win a rare item accompanies the other treasure maps (save for the Secret Lab and Petpet Lap maps, of course – their purpose is rather different).

Of course, this isn't easy. While Forgotten Shore Map pieces are easy to come buy – you can buy the set for less than 2000 NP on the Post or in shops, or probably get free pieces from the Anchor Management daily – you're probably going to have to wait a long time before you come across that Egg or Morphing Potion. Apart from that, it's not even a guarantee that you'll win something daily, whether an UB or not. The other map pieces, on the other hand, are expensive – a full set can come up to a few hundred thousand NP. You could get the pieces as a random event, or in the case of the World Maps, win them from World Challenges. But as mentioned above, random events are unpredictable; and apart from being hard, you're limited to winning 3 World Map pieces from the World Challenges a day, and World Maps (unlike other maps, which require 9) need 20 pieces to complete. And, of course, none of this means you're guaranteed to get that UB at the end. You could, of course, turn in multiple sets of the maps one after the other, but your chances only marginally improve, and you lose NP once again.

However, these methods can have their rewards, especially when Jacko comes buy with a paint brush worth 2 million or Dr Sloth hands you a Transmogrification Potion worth 10 million. If you're willing to wait for it, you can do it!

I hope this guide has helped give some new insight to the newbies who are confused with the world of reselling and restocking. As for me, I'm off to hone my skills on the Trading Post.

To all you sellers out there: good luck selling!