This is possibly the biggest NP maker in Neopia. But it normally requires you spending hours each and every day restocking from Neopian Shopkeepers. We don't want that sort of thing, but there are a vast array of guides that explain the process if you were interested. This section details how to maintain a shop with little effort for a great profit.

Hopefully you've read the retired item section and have an idea of what's expected there. What we're doing here is selling those items you've (already or hypothetically) accumulated.

Once again, the system here is simple. As you buy your retired items, you place a few in your shop at a large price increase. There are some caveats here, but I usually go for between a 20% increase through to a 10000% increase. This variance in price increase is due to one simple rule; always price higher than 1000np. This way, when the item sells, it'll appear in your shop history. This is important because at least once a week, you'll be checking your shop till for sales, and you need to know what items are selling and at what price.

For example, if you bought 50 Soap Bottles at roughly 100 np each, you'd put 3-8 in your shop at 1000np. It may take some months through to years for the price to go up, but when it does, someone will buy the item, and you'll get an alert in your shop till. Once that happens, you simply retrieve some from your Safety Deposit Box, stick them in your shop, and raise the price to.. maybe 1800np (or any price you're comfortable with). After a couple of years, you'll have increased the price of most of your items several times. Meaning that items you paid 100np for, are now selling for 2,500np each. Items you bought for 2000np are selling for 80,000np each.

And this brings us to our next point; when retired items reach unbuyable status. The system is much the same as with your shop, but you need to post them in the trades. You'll get more responses if you state a price, and most people will try to haggle you down a little. I'm usually ok with this.. mostly because items I'm selling for 800,000np only cost me 5,000np. But you decide what you're happy doing.

You should expect to only make the occasional sale like this, which is why it's very important to buy as large a range of items as you can. Some perform much better than others, and you're goal is to have enough go up in price (and sell) to produce a steady income for you. Personally, I get all my profit and put it straight back into more retired items. This creates a nice cycle of NP in that increases exponentially over time.

The Stock Market is a game that lets you buy and sell shares in Neopian companies. The companies are themed according to various aspects within Neopia, but share prices have no bearing on Neopian events; it's (for our purposes) entirely random. Which makes it very simple to make the best of the game. The concept with the stock market is to buy low and sell high; simple, right? You bet!

There are really only two rules that matter with the stock market. The first is that you can only buy 1,000 shares each day, the second is that the lowest price you can buy at is 15. This means that the best price you can buy shares at each day (assuming you want the full 1,000 shares) is 15,000np worth of shares.

If you click here, you'll see a list of companies that have shares for sale between 6np and roughly 20-25np each. Bookmark this page for future use. You just need to choose any company that's selling shares for 15np, and buy 1,000 of them. Once you've bought the shares, you'll arrive at a page that displays your stock portfolio. We'll cover this in more detail soon.

There are some important details that you need to know about the stock market.:

1. You don't lose NP unless you sell at a loss; only sell at a profit (above 15).
2. It doesn't matter if prices drop, because you're not going to sell at a loss.
3. The market is random, so eventually all stocks will rise.
4. 60 is the most commonly accepted 'best' sell point.
5. If you add buying shares to your daily activities, you'll eventually make more than 1 million NP each month from sales.

Next we'll look at your stock portfolio and what the numbers mean. Read More.

Now we're looking at your portfolio.

The picture below displayes a screenshot of a company called Alien Aisha Vending Ltd, with the Ticker "AAVL". The 'Open' is what price the stock was selling for at the start of the day (12am NST). The 'Current Price' is how much it's selling for now, with the 'Chg' being the difference between the Open and Current Price. We only need to pay attention to the Current Price and the Quantity (Qty), which is how many shares you have in the stock.

You may find some value in 'Paid', being what you paid for your shares, and the current Market Value, which is the price you'd get if you sold all of your shares. Make a note of the small triangle on the left which needs to be clicked when it's time to sell shares.

Your portfolio total is a summary of all your stocks.

On the right are some examples. Eg 1 is a new port where someone has being buying for 4 days.

You'll see that they've got 4,000 shares, which is 1,000 for each day. The next number is their total purchase value (which is the amount of NP paid for them). If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that this amount means that some shares were bought at more than 15np a share. This isn't ideal, but occasionally you'll find that there are none available at 15. You decide whether you want to wait for a price change or are willing to spend an extra 1,000 to 2,000np.

The third number is the current value. Meaning that if all the shares were sold, there'd be a profit of 2,000np. The percentage at the end is the difference between the purchase price and current value. It should only be used as a rough gauge of port porformance; it doesn't matter if it's low.

Eg 2 is a port that's been running for more than a year. With a port of this size, you can expect to make roughly 1 million NP each month.

Eg 3 is my portfolio (as of Oct 2010). It's showing a surprisingly high percentage because I've got 31,000 shares in KSON, which is up at 386. There are also two other stocks that are silling shares for 164 and 173.

This brings us to when to sell.. Read More.

When to sell shares is often a personal choice that mostly comes down to whether you need the NP or not.

When talking 'Sell Points' we're referring to the Current Value of individual stocks. Each day we check the stock market to see if any of our stocks have risen to meet our chosen Sell Point; meaning that if the Current Value of a stock is over (eg) 45, then it's time to sell those shares.

A sell point of 30 or 45 can be a good start to get a return on your investments fairly early. This works if you're low on NP, or just want to get something back quickly. But the lower you sell, the smaller your profit margin is. Keep in mind that if you sell at 30, you're not making 30np per share. You've making 15np per share; the other 15np is the NP you spent on the investment.

There are a great variety of selling strategies, but most overcomplicate what should be a simple action. If you visit the Stock Forums, you'll hear most people proclaim a "buy at 15, sell at 60" approach to the stock market. And for the most part I have to agree. This works exceptionally well in producing an average of 1 million NP each month and will result in you having a portfolio size between 300,000 to 400,000 shares in total; depending on the market. This is where you're buying as many shares each month as you're selling.

If you want, you can stop reading here and go with the 'sell all of everything over 60' approach. It makes life easy. But if you wanted more options and details, please keep reading.

One option some people use is a progressive sell point strategy. It's a little more complicated, but simple enough once you understand it. We'd be best served by example here. So, if you're sell point was 45, rather than selling everything at 45, you'd just sell (eg) 2k shares. Then you'd wait and watch. If the price goes up to 50, you can sell another 2k shares. And you can keep this progression all the way until you have no shares left.

Another option is to use a Market Value strategy. This approach centers around the market value of each stock. You pick a value, say 500,000np, and every time a stock you own has its market value exceed that point, you sell enough shares to drop it under that point. This way you can maintain a steady income and monopolise on stocks that perform exceedingly well.

In this next ssection, we're looking at the finer details of the stock market. Read More.

You might be wondering if a sell point of 60 is really appropriate. You may have seen my comments and my portfolio size and questioned some of the advice. Or you may just be smarter than most others and see more potential than what's already been explained. Whatever the case, this may give you some answers and help you truly expand on your investments.

There are a few key points here:

1. The market is truly random, and stocks do reach 500+
2. Given enough time, all stocks can/will reach 500+
3. Your sell point should also be based on how long you intend to play neopets.

My sell point starts at 250, where I sell 5k shares. I sell another 5k shares at 300, 350, 400, etc until I run out of shares. I may not make any sales for a year or more. But when I do make sales, they start at 1,250,000np for 5k shares. This works for me because I don't intend to stop playing Neopets. So I know that eventually, I'll have hundreds of thousands of shares in each stock, and when they reach 500, I'll sell the lot for many many millions of NP. KSON is close to doing this (at the time of writing this). And two other stocks are also high enough for me to hope.

This method works because I'm getting the most out of my investments. I don't want to make 45np per share (selling at 60). I want to make at least 235np per share, even if it means I have to wait a few years to do so. My rule with playing Neopets is 'time passes whether you make an investment or not'. With the stock market, time passing means more opportunities for stocks to go really high. And as I'm here for the long haul, I'm best served building up my investments and waiting for the spikes.

If you've grasped this concept, you'll see that your sell point should really be based on how long you intend to play neopets. The higher the sell point, the better the profit. But the longer you'll have to wait to enjoy those profits. You can settle for 1 million NP each month with a sell point of 60, and good luck to you. But if you have the intention of playing for life, then do yourself a service, and hike up your sell point to something truly impressive.

Read More.

Retired items are those items which are no longer being released into Neopia. This results in some ideal investment opportunities.

The 'items no longer entering Neopia' is important. We know that if there's a lot of something, the price drops (because there's less competition for the items, and shops must sell at a lower price to encourage sales). The reverse of this is also true. Less items means more competition, which drives the prices up.

Retired items aren't just 'not entering Neopia', they're leaving it too. Many retired items are usable (and lost after use), but all of them can be lost via random events, lost accounts, or just forgotten about in safety deposit boxes. This further improves the prices of items in shops.

Example Items
Balthazar Plushie	Walking Book	Seasonal Stamp	Snicklebeast	Cylara Poster

What we're doing is buying a heap of these items and storing them away until the price goes up. It's an investment, much like the stock market.

What to expect: Read More.

This method of making NP takes time. Lots of it! It requires a lot of NP too, but the rewards are brilliant.

My argument here is 'time will pass' regardless of whether you make an investment or not. So if you plan on playing for a year or more, try the system and see how things work out for you.

I've had some items go from hundreds into the ten thousands in days, or from thousands into unbuyable within weeks. But those are the rare/extreme cases. Some items increase by 100np each year, others jump up 10 x its original price. On the whole, I expect my total retired item value to double each year. So if today, my total value is 800 million NP, then by this time next year, I expect/hope to have 1.6 billion NP. Some years I've come up a little short, some years I've tripled my total worth.

The message I'm trying to get across is; item price increases vary by a large amount. Buy a wide range of items to increase your chances of buying the ones that go up quickly.

The system: Read More.

What you're looking to do is buy at least 100 of each of the items you decide to buy. This way, you can make some sales over time, to get some income back, and still have enough of them handy for when they reach unbuyable status.

I usually end up buying between 100 and 1000 of each item. Once I've chosen an item for purchase, I'll check the shop wiz and decide on an upper price limit. I'll buy all the items below that limit. This in itself pushes the prices up. For items I like, I'll check back every few days/weeks and buy up any more that have gone on sale for less than that limit. All but a few of the items get stored away in my SDB. You may choose to use this system, or find one that works for you. But I'll always put a few into my shop for sale at a decent profit (above that price limit). See the Shops section of this petpage for details on why I'm doing this (but make sure you check back here).

I don't like the idea of boasting, but I like to explain to people what I've got, so they have some idea of how well this system can work. The retired items I've got are worth between 10np through to 1 million NP each. A single set of (the same type of) items can be worth 20,000,000 NP or more. It's even more impressive when you understand that those same items cost me less than 80,000np for the lot. But know that this is a rare example and I've stored them away for 5 years to produce this value. Out of over 350 unique retired items, only 6 have reached unbuyable status and only 2 past 1 million NP each; all bought at less than 10,000np each, some at only 100np each.

The choice: Read More.

Ok, so you're interested. Great. But you want details on what to buy. Sure, read on.

Where you start depends largely on how much NP you have. The stock market should be your first port of call for making NP. It's more likely to give you a quick return. But retired items are more likely to provide you with a much better return if you have the NP spare. But I'd recommend doing both. Below is a list of items and my views on why the work and don't work. From this, you can decide where you want to invest, based on your NP and the items within your price range.

Foods Battledome Clothing / Furniture Foods are good investments within reason. The prices do go up if they're fairly low to start with, but past a certain point people stop spending NP on them. "Why spend a lot of NP of something when you can get something cheaper that does the same job?". Only choose food items if there's some high appearance value in it. If it looks like a dogs breakfast, leave it be. Battledome items can be good investments if they are one use, and disappear after that use. But they will not go up in price much beyond it's ability in the battledome; as in if the weapon does 5 icons of damage, it wont rise in price much beyond other normal items that also do 5 icons of damage. Clothing and Furniture are good so long as they wearable. Here appearance value makes a big impact on how quickly the prices rise. People also tend to buy them, stick them in their closed or SDB and forget about them. And the more people that do that, the higher the prices go. A good selection. Stamps / Collection Petpets Books Stamps and other one use collectable items are great purchases. Among by favourites. You've got the benefit of many/most of them being useful in obtaining avatars, along with them having some inherent value to people completing their collections. I've always seen a good price increase in stamps, but that also means they're expensive buy up. Petpets are a mixed bag. You really have to do some extra research here. Is it the petpet that's retired, the colour of petpet, or the paintbrush that paints that colour that's retired? Respectively, the value is high through to low in terms of investment potential. Books are right up there in terms of my favourite retired items. They've consistently shown nice increases despite the type of book or how it looks. Pay extra attention for retired books that are part of collections or needed for avatars. All books serve to increase intelligence, which some Neopians will pay a lot for. Paintbrushes Toys Goodie Bags Retired paintbrushes are rare. Normally they're for colours that Neopians have decided they don't like/want. So the now useless paintbrush becomes more of a keepsake than anything else. Occasionally a paintbrush actually becomes retired but still works. This is where you'll make a lot of NP. Keep an eye out for Hidden Tower paintbrushes that stop being sold. Leave these be, for the most part. I've had some luck with these when there's a high appearance value involved. But for the most part, there's little benefit here that cannot be gained quicker elsewhere. These can be good, but usually only rise in price according to the types of items they contain. If there's a chance of an expensive item (eg a paintbrush) then the prices can go decently high, but in general terms, the price only goes up a little when people foolishly try their luck with them. Avatar Items Advent Calendar Items Event / Game Items Finding a retired item that's needed for an Avatar is your true goal. This is where you can become a millionaire overnight. Or a billionaire if you're already a millionaire. I've had items jump up from 250np each, right upto unbuyable status within hours. Some items go into the high millions within days. This means it's neigh impossible to buy large quantities of these items. You just have to be lucky enough to already have those items in your hoard when an item is chosen as being needed for an avatar; and then you'd better hope it's a one use item sorta deal. This is instant true and utter wealth (which hasn't happened to me yet). This is the starting place for many new investors. Advent Calendar items are available in great numbers, which means that they can be obtained relatively cheaply. But it also means a much slower price increase. The majority of my items are Advent Calendar items, and I still double my NP each year with them. Ideally, you'd target non-Advent Calendar items, but those can be pretty expensive. Event, Quest, and Game items are generally 'limited edition', or released only during the event. Like Advent Calendar items, they're not truly 'retired' but they serve the same purpose most of the time. These are hard to get into, partly because there's not often many available, and the price increases can be slow, because not many people know about them, or want them.

Some words of caution: Read More.

TNT take offense to people taking advantage of others. While investing like we've been covering here is fair game, you need to know that working as a group is against the rules. This is why I wont explain to you that you should buy X item or Y item. I will detail what makes a good investment, and list all the items I know of, but aside from that, you're on your own.

TNT will freeze you if they determine that you've been working with other people to hoard items. This includes asking others to buy a heap of them and sell them to you in bulk. And it includes having you and several friends choose the same items to hoard in an effort to push the prices up. TNT have said that one person working alone can do this, so long as they're not targeting specific sections in the shop wiz (such as the list of shops starting with 'D' when their username also starts with 'D'.

Don't use scripts or autobuyers, or anything that makes buying easier. TNT have some fancy ways of determining this, and they're always updating their security. Any gain you get will be temporary.

Onto the retired item list: Read More.