News
06.14.08// I'm really sorry the page has been broken for so long everybody, but I'm happy to report that we're back and better than ever! ALL of the previously erased shop guides have been rewritten, and we've added in 4 new shops to apologize for the delay. Alas, my list of UBs restocked is gone, but I still have a count going (95) and will start a new picture count once I reach 100 :). Thank you for hanging in there and continuing to use and advertise my guide despite the horrid glitch that affected it.My affiliates are now open again :). And if you're following the Altador Cup, GO ALTADOR!
05.18.08// No changes to report, just letting everybody know that I do read and appreciate all of the neomails I have been receiving as of late about this page! I am flattered that so many people find this guide useful and I promise to keep it up for all of eternity :).
The shops guide is missing many shops, but since I'm only human, I only know of so many. If you restock in a shop that is not listed here and would like to give advice to others on what to buy and what not to buy, feel free to neomail me a short little bio and I will add it!
01.27.08// Several affiliates have been added within the last few weeks. I will only affiliate you if I like your page, sorry to have to clarify that, but I've gotten several requests from somewhat mediocre pages. The point of affiliation is for both parties to receive a mutual boost in traffic. If I link a page that looks like it gets no hits I will not get anything out of it and hence will not affiliate ;)
I added 5 new shops today so go ahead and enjoy :)
- Shop Name
- Shop URL
- The URL of two items that are good things to go for and catch the eye
- A list of things to go for and what not to go for
- A short paragraph about what it's like restocking in that shop, how easy or difficult it is, etc.
01.06.08// Instead of doing my AP language homework like a good student I spent the day revamping the site! Enjoy the brand new layout along with two new guides - my pricing guide and my abbreviation guide.
01.02.08// December 31 was a record day of hits for me! Thank you so much for everyone who has been linking to this guide and for all the wonderful neomails. It's because of you that I keep this guide updated. :).
I'm currently brainstorming ideas for a new layout that makes the guide easier to
read, but for now I'm going to be adding a couple new shops over the next few days
so keep an eye out!
FAQ
Have a question for the FAQ? Feel free to neomail xfzunx and I'll be glad to answer them!
How did you get
the Chocolate avatar?
To get the chocolate av, you have to buy an item rarity 90-99 from the chocolate
shop. On 8/26/06 I got the av with a Chocolate King Skarl. It cost me about 5.5k
and I sold it for 4k profit. Since then I've restocked about 6 5k items there.
How do I know if I'm making a profit?
The easiest way to do this is know how much money you're starting out with when you
restock. I always start with 100k. So if at the end of the day I have more than
100k, I made a profit. Item-wise though, you have to remember how much you paid for
each item in relation to how much you're selling it for. If you restock in shops
that have hts (hard to sell) items, the profit may not come in during one day. Two
days in a row I did very little RSing and my stop still wasn't empty. Profits tend
to carry over from day to day, so the first day if you have a defecit don't feel
bad, you'll wake up the next morning to find a nice sum in your till ;).
When do the shops restock?
It used to be systematic in the past, but now the shops restock at random. Any
minute, any second. So you have to constantly be refreshing if you want to catch
the RS right when it hits. Beacuse of the random factor though, if you manage to
just hit the RS or come close you have a good chance of getting the best items
because it'll take up to 10 seconds for everyone else to realize that the shop's
restocked, depending on how much they refresh.
Neopets changed its layout! I can't RS anymore!
Maybe. But maybe you can overcome it. Not all computers have this option, but try
to increase the resolution on your monitor if possible. (If you're using Windows XP
go to Control Panel - Display - Settings). You will only be having trouble using
this layout if your resolution is on 800x600 or something around there. I would
recommend setting it to 1024x768+. The larger the resolution, the more items you're
going to be able to see in the shops.
If that's not enough or if you don't have that option, you can always make the font size smaller on your browser, which sometimes lets you see a little more. In Firefox go to View - Text Size - Decrease to the smallest size that you can still see prices and item names. All browsers have this feature, you just have to find it.
If neither of these work, the only solution would be to upgrade your monitor with your local computer store. If you go to a secondhand computer store you can probably trade in your current monitor for a better monitor for a small fee. If this isn't possible, you'll just have to try to deal the best you can with this new layout. Sorry!
Is my account old enough to restock?
TNT has added controls to the site so that new players can't see the rarest items
restock. Here's how it works:
- Newbie: r79 and under
- 10 days: r84 and under
- 16 days: r89 and under
- 1 month: r94 and under
- 3 months: all
Since most unbuyable items are r95 and above, it will be more difficult for players under 3 months to restock unbuyables. However, there are plenty of UB items that are under r95. The best places to restock, in this case, would be uni's clothing and the stamp shop.
What is Half Price Day, and when is it?
Half Price Day (HPD) is the third of every month. On this day all the prices in the
shops are cut in half - 2.5k items become 1251, 5k items 2.5k, etc. But of course,
this means that a lot of people will be trying to restock. HPD is one of the
toughest days to restock, simply because the competition is pretty much doubled.
Although you can make a profit off of more items, it's more difficult to get ahold
of the items.
Basics
You will need:
- A fast connection
- 100k +
- A size 6+ shop
Have absolutely no clue how to restock, or what it even is? Well then I'll explain how it's done. If you already know how, feel free to skip down to the Tips section, as this might be a tad redundant.
Restocking, more commonly known as RSing, is the process of buying items from the Neopian shops and then selling them for profit. Expert restockers, or RSers, can make millions daily just by doing this. But that takes lots of practice and precision. Right now I average between 200k-300k a day in profits. This guide can help you get to that point, but first you'll need a few things:
- A fast internet connection. I have a cable connection at this house, I would say anything DSL and above would be suitable. If you know your computer is fast and can load pages quickly, then that's great. If you're on dial-up, you're gonna have a real hard time making any good profit. It's still possible to make small profit on dial-up, but you won't be able to become successful unless you upgrade your connection.
- At least 100k at the ready every day.
I personally start out with 200k, but 100k is a good start. If you don't have this much money on hand, play games. You can, of course, RS with less than this, but I can't guarantee big profits. You need to spend money to make money. Right now I spent between 100-200k a day, and can make up to 500k on really good days.
- Your own shop that can hold at least 30 items.
In order to sell the items you buy, you need to have your own shop to sell them in! A proficiency in pricing using the shop wizard (or SSW if you're premium) will also be required. You'll want to have it at the size where it can hold at least 30 items (size 6), depending on how many items you're buying and how quick you can sell them. Before I started malling my shop held 90 items and at times that's still not big enough - I've constantly had to upgrade. (Now I'm a maller and my shop is so big I don't know what to do with it!) But it all depends on your skill. When you begin to restock you'll be able to gage how much shop space you're going to need.
Definitions Guide
When you get around to talking to experienced restocker, you'll see a lot of acronyms or terms and may not know what they mean. Here's a list of the most commonly used terms. These terms will also be used interchangably throughout the guide, so it's important that you familiarize yourself with them.
RS, RSing, RSer
Restock, Restocking, Restocker
ETS
Easy to sell
HTS
Hard to sell
AB, ABing
Autobuy, autobuying
Pet lag
When the image beneath the haggle box does not load immediately,
often times causing you to miss restocking an item.
Tarla'd
When an item has been given out by Tarla. In most cases, this
causes the price of the item to deflate immensely.
TP
Trading Post
SW, SSW
Shop Wizard, Super Shop Wizard
UB
Unbuyable (item worth over 100k)
k (as in 100k)
thousand. 100k = 100,000
Have you heard of a term that's not listed here and want it defined? Go ahead and neomail me.
How-To
- Find a shop
- Choose an item
- Haggle
- Resell
- Find a shop. This part's easy! If this is your first time, I suggest going to the card shop or snow foods shop. They're nearly always stocked with items that if you haggle them down far enough, you'll make a profit. To make this a tutorial, let's make you go to the card shop.
- Choose an item. Since you're in a easy shop, you can take your sweet time in choosing which item you'd like to buy. In advanced restocking, you only have about 2 seconds to decide what to get before you try step 3. For the sake of the tutorial, click on one of the blue or red cards. Then click 'Ok' or press enter on the pop-up. You're halfway done now!
- Haggle. Again, this is an easy shop so you have much more time to do
this than you normally would in another shop. In this shop, you can haggle the
price down as far as 25% off. Say the item is worth 824 - haggle by first typing in
something low, like 200 and clicking on the pet in the picture. The shopkeeper's
offer will go down a little, and yours will go up a little. Keep doing this until
he refuses to go down any further, and then meet his price. If you got the item -
congratulations! If not, go back to the shop and try for another item.
In a regular shop, you won't have time to haggle the price down at all. You need to type in an offer close to what the shopkeeper asks. I always have my right hand on the mouse, and my left hand on the number pad on my keyboard. If the item is priced at 2500, I'll type in 2424 very quickly while simultaneously moving my mouse over the pet. For 5000 try 5454, 4545, things like that. Don't actually type in 2500, it takes a little longer to type that than opposed to 2424, and every fraction of a second counts in RSing. A good way to practice this is again is in the card shop - don't click on the pet, but haggle like the item is about to sell out, and type in a close price as fast as you can. Once you get comfortable with it, you can move onto more difficult shops.
- Resell. Once you have an item, now you have to get rid of it! Go to your
inventory and put the item into your shop. Then, use the shop wizard and price your
item - a word of advice, it probably won't sell unless it's the lowest price on the
wizard :P. If what you're selling the item for is more than what you paid for it -
then congratulations, that's a profit! If not, now you know not to buy that item
again because it's a waste of money. Making profit comes with experience - after
restocking at the same shops constantly you get a gage on what's hot and what's
not, and you'll make better decisions.
Looks like I made about a 400np profit on this card, according to the SSW :).
The How-NOT-To: Against the rules methods
There are a couple of things that you are NOT allowed to do to restock your items. All of the things listed below can get your acount frozen permanently - no argument. If you're an honest player, you have nothing to worry about for most of these, but make sure that you don't do any of the following:- Autobuy: Autobuying (ABing, AB'ed, ABers) is the process of using a program to purchase items in the shop for you. I don't know exactly how they work, seeing as how I've never used one, but they are against the rules and will get ALL of your accounts frozen. If you see an advertisement for an autobuying program on an outside website, you should report it to TNT immediately. If you know of anyone using this sort of program, you should a) inform them if they don't know it's against the rules, and/or b) report them ASAP.
- Copy & Paste your haggle: In the past, some people liked to have certain numbers on copied on their clipboard, such as 2424 for items priced at 2500, so this way in case an item with a similar price came up they could grab it quicker. TNT has confirmed in the editorial that this is against the rules, so please do not do this! It is not against the rules, however, to copy what the shopkeeper asks for and then paste it. But I think it's faster to use the keypad, personally.
- Bypass your restock ban by RSing on a side: If you are RS banned, you CANNOT
RS on your side. It is against the rules to earn NP on any account besides your
main, which is why this is not allowed. You will simply have to wait out the ban
before you can continue to restock.
Tips
- Be quick
- Learn what's profitable
- Take risks
- Do multiple shops
- Speed haggle
- Load faster
- Enlarge your screen
Items marked with an * are for advanced restockers only. As the list goes on, some tips may only be helpful if you've truly gotten the hang of restocking, or you're looking for a challenge. If you're a beginner, I don't suggesting you try the * tips until you're more confident in your restocking abilities.
- Be quick.
I can't tell you enough how important this tip is. In restocking, speed is everything. If you're not quick that item is gone. You need to practice being speedy, with both the mouse and the keyboard. Have your fingers already setup on the number pad on the side of the keyboard (it's got the same layout as a calculator, so it should be easy if you're good at using calculators) and have your mouse moving quick. Press the scrollbar to situate the page towards the bottom, where you can see more of the items and won't have to scroll as much. While the haggle page is loading, already know what number to type in to haggle and while you're doing that look at where the pet is so you can click it quickly. All these things take getting used to, but in the end it pays off, and you'll be able to get the '1 in stock' items. - Learn what's profitable.
This all depends on what shop you restock at. Most of the main shops have a lot of items that are gonna get you money, and a lot that aren't. Part of learning to restock is willing to take the chance that you will lose money. Try at a store that you have some sort of knowledge about the price trends - like if you work on your neohome and know the cost of a lot of average furniture, try there. Or if you read a lot of books, try the book shop. If you aren't familiar with any price trends, just watch a shop for a couple of hours and watch the restocks. What items are going quickly? What items sit and rot? Generally you can tell how much an item is worth by how quickly it sells. If an item is sitting a minute after the restock, it's generally little or no profit.Items priced at 2500 and 5000 in most cases will make you profit. This varies from store to store, but it's normally a good bet. Items in the five figures are usually very high in rarity and make profit. But I caution you this is not always the case. You can lose a serious amount of money if you're not careful with what you're buying!
Really the best way to figure out what's hot and what's not is by trial and error. Like I say in #3, don't be afraid to take risks. But to be on the safer side, have the shop wizard open in another window, and notepad in another. When the restock goes, copy all writing on the page (ctrl + a to select all and ctrl + c to copy on Windows) and then pasting it into notepad (ctrl + v on Windows). Study the page carefully and refresh. What's still there? Those items are probably only small or medium profit, or just overlooked. Keep refreshing and see what takes the longest to sell, or doesn't sell at all. When you're satisfied, go into notepad and look up all the items listed on the shop wizard, and compare those prices to the ones that they were going for in the shop. Some profits are obvious, and some deficits are obvious as well. By observing the restocks you can figure out what's good and what's not, and thus become more successful.
- Don't be afraid to take risks.
So you've never seen the item before - so what? Go for it anyways. You're not always going to know the price of the item you're haggling on, but a lot of times it's worth the risk. As you keep restocking at the same stores you'll learn what items you shouldn't be buying. But if you take a risk sometimes you'll get items that you never knew were profitable. The first time I tried restocking in furniture, a Valentines Rug for 2,500 came up. I took a chance, not knowing how much it cost, and managed to get the only one in stock. I made a 7k profit on it when I sold it. It goes to show you not to be afraid of buying items you don't know about. Occasionally you will suffer losses doing this, but in the long run it's to your benefit. -
*Restock at more than one shop at once.
When you become a really good restocker, you'll soon get bored of waiting in between restocks. A great way to solve this, as well as maximize your profit, is by having multiple shops open at once. The best way to use this method is with the tabs feature of Mozilla Firefox, a web browser similar to Internet Explorer (just loads better). If you don't have Firefox, or another web browser with the tabs feature, go to getfirefox.com and download it.
!UPDATE! 1.1.07 Internet Explorer 7.0 endorses the tabs feature, as well as several other browsers. Any web browser that has the tabs feature will make do, although I still heavily endorse Firefox.
As you can see, with the Firefox tabs feature I have 6 different shops open at once. It's easy to go from one shop to the other, and makes it easier for me to restock at one shop at a time, rather than having 6 different IE windows open. To quickly go from one tab to another in FF press ctrl+ Page Up or Page Down :)I started out restocking at one shop. I soon got bored of this once I realized I might do better if I tried several shops at once. Right now I restock at 5 shops at a time - on average. I've done as many as 10 at once and as few as 1. It can make your headspin at times, and you're more likely to miss a restock at one store if you're RSing in another, but the profits you'll gain speak for themselves. Once you think you're ready try adding on one shop at a time, and see how well you can handle it. Add on more shops as you feel comfortable. The more shops you restock in, the more restocks you see and get items from, the more items in your shop and the more profit you can gain. This is truly the key to making a lot of money without RSing UBs. The only problem with this, is you increase the likelihood of becoming restock banned.
Restock banned, RS banned, or just 'banned' on the RS & Chat neoboards, is when the shops refuse to restock anything for you because you've refreshed too much. If all of your shops are empty there is a chance you can be restock banned. To be sure, visit the Tiki Tack Shop and see if there's any items for sale. If you can see items, then you're not RS banned. If the shop is sold out, you are definitely RS banned because that shop is never sold out. Restock bans generally last for 12 or 24 hours, so keep note of when it happened so you know when to come back and begin to try again. If RS bans become more frequent for you, they can last for 36 hours or longer.
- Speed Haggle.
What does this mean? When you're in a shop and the items are going fast you need to learn how to haggle correctly so that you'll get the item fast and for a price the shopkeeper will accept. Sometimes the given price isn't always easy to type in, like 8163 or something. The trick to this is to type in easy keystroke numbers, like 8080 in that case, or 8000 or even 8100. Whatever you can type in fast. Numbers such as 4646 and 2424 work as well. For items priced at 5k, my favorite thing to type is 4565 (which also works great if you're on a laptop!) Practice on the keyboard and figure out what numbers you're quick at typing in. - Do everything you can to speed up your browser. Obviously by
'everything' I don't mean anything that would get you frozen. Also, I realize that
sometimes there's nothing you can do about lag. But there's two kinds of lag (or so
I like to categorize it.) Server-side lag is lag created by the millions of users
that use this site daily. Usually between 1-5pm NST on school days there is a
considerable amount of lag on the site and in the shops. You can't do anything
about this, and you'll just have to hope you can get lucky. However, client-side
lag is lag created by YOU. Yes, you do create lag. Here are some ways that you
create lag for yourself, and how you can fix it:
- Running multiple browsers & windows: When your computer has a lot of things running at once, it will slow it down. If at all possible, try not to have too many programs going at once. Things like iTunes and instant messenger especially create a lot of lag (and can be very annoying if they are constantly getting in your way!). Additionally, try to stick to one browser (multiple tabs are ok, but not multiple windows). Whenever I RS I ONLY have one firefox window open, with anywhere from 7-10 tabs (I RS in 5-7 shops at a time, then one with my inventory/quickstock, one with my shop till/history, and one for the neoboards). DO NOT LOAD UP ANY PAGE THAT IS IMAGE HEAVY AND WILL TAKE A LONG TIME TO LOAD! It will lag you down EVERY time you try to refresh in the shops, I promise you.
- Loading 2 pages at once: Yup. Don't refresh your tabs too quickly folks. Refresh one page, let it load completely (it should say Done at the bottom of your browser) and then go on to the next window. If your browser has to load 2 pages at once it will go more slowly than if you let each load separately.
- Enlarge your window
The more of the screen you can see, the more items you're going to see during the restock, and every inch of screen gives you an advantage. Go into your computer's control panel and set the screen resolution to as high as it can go (I would not recommend anything less than 1024x768, anything higher is much more ideal). Also, clean up your browser. You can hit F11 to make the top of the page smaller. You can also choose to hide the status bar at the bottom. Make sure that you don't have your history or your bookmarks open, and get rid of any unnecessary tool bars (Google, Yahoo, Tarla, etc.)The ideal browser for restocking will hide the top of the browser, the status bar, and all toolbars. The only thing you will be able to see are the back, forward, refresh, stop and home buttons; the address bar and your list of tabs. This should help a lot in getting to those items at the bottom of the page quicker.
Shops guide
Easy shops:
- Collectable Card
- Igloo Garage Sale
- Gifts Galore
- Snow Foods
- Food
- Book
- Smoothie
- Slushie
- Furniture
- Garden
- Toy
- Plushie
- Pharmacy
- Bakery
- Usuki
- Faerie furniture
- Kiko Lake Carpentry
- Booktastic Book
- Chocolate Factory
- Stamp
- Uni's Clothing
- Meridell Petpet
- Collectable Coin
- Collectable Sea Shells
- Magic Marvels
- Magic
- Mystical Surroundings
- Brightvale Armoury
- Battle Magic
- Meridell Food
- Altador Cup Souvenir
For shops that aren't listed here but you're interested in RSing in, visit neoitems.net to view a list of items in that shop and their approximate shop wizard price (note you must join to use their item database). They should give you an idea of what kinds of items to go for. If you don't feel like doing that, try stopping by a "RS & Chat" board - there's almost always one in the AC, BD, and TC chats and perhaps elsewhere. Chances are there is someone there willing to help you out and answer your questions if you're polite and patient.
ALWAYS WATCH OUT FOR ITEMS THAT HAVE BEEN
TARLA'D!!
Click here to see which items
have been tarla'd.
Easy shops
These shops you should have no problem getting items in. Most of them yield many small profit items, although they all have their share of good items as well. They're a great place to start if you're a beginner.
Buy: Black cards, Gold cards.
This shop is so easy. It almost always has cards in stock. If you haggle down each item to the bottom price, you're going to make at least some sort of profit. It usually provides very small profit, only a couple hundred NP per card - but if you RS them in large numbers the couple hundred can add up. It's a great place to get experience. Blue and red cards are the most common, and other colors also appear. Pink, green and purple cards are the next rarity set. If you haggle these down, they usually return some sort of profit as well, and usually on a larger scale because they're more expensive. Some don't need to be haggled down and produce instant profit, such as Plains Aisha. Never buy Lavender though - even haggled down, you're going to lose money. Yellow and black cards are very rare and usually very expensive. If you can, buy them, they're usually profitable (except Maitre D). As I'll say for every shop, knowing which ones are profitable comes only with experience.
Buy: Everything except gross food
This one's a given, of course - almost anything in here is profit except for the spooky food and tiki tack crap. If you catch it right when it restocks, you can usually get a good book or something and make a couple thousand NP profit. But almost anything you buy in here is going to give you profit. The best part is you don't have to worry about haggling, just click on the item! The bad thing is you can only get one item from the restock, no more :(.
Buy: A Mysterious Valetines Card, all wearable gifts
There's nothing worth anything in this shop except what I just listed above. MVCs restock around Valentines day and at close to 100 at a time, so it isn't TOO difficult to get one if you can be quick about it. Otherwise there are some new wearable trinkets that are available from this shop. These are: Lucky Pandaphant Doll (above), Lucky Red Pandaphant Doll, Campfire, and Modern Art Sculpture. There will probably be some competition for these items but it's still a good place to practice :)
Buy: Magical Chia Pops (Aubergine, Pear, Avocado, Tomato, etc.), Ice Lollies, abnormal chia pop flavors, ice cream cones, tuskaninny pops, shaved ice, new brucicles, lutari pops
Another shop that almost always has items in stock. Chia pops and snow puffs are the main things you'll find in here. Just like cards, if you haggle them down low enough you'll make a tiny profit. Want bigger? Get any flavor brucicle besides the normal flavors (normal being red/yellow/blue/green, ones you should get being tchea, haunted etc) and also, lollys are also profitable. Not sure? Wiz it real quick. Usually food doesn't go too quick in that shop, and if it does then you know it's profitable :P.
Buy: All neggs, new items from the news, items priced at 2500 and 5000.
These two are a given. Some of the first shops established in neopia, they sell some of the chapest things and usually yield profit. Food shop yields small, not even 100np profits because the items are so cheap to begin with. But if you're really quick and lucky you can try for neggs. This is a good place to practice your speed, as lots of people RS here, mainly beginners. Book shop is a good place to get decent profits, as so many books restock so often you're bound to get at least something. And they usually all amount to some sort of a profit.
This shop is always stocked with smoothies! It also takes a long time for most of these items to go, so haggle them down to make tiny profits. If you just want a place to practice, this would be a good shop.
Buy: Slushies priced at 2,500, 5,000, 10,000+
This shop is usually stocked with at least a few slushies. If you haggle them down far enough most of them will make you a profit - normally you'll have time to check on the shop wizard to be sure. There are several UB slushies as well to keep your eyes out for - these will probably stock for high prices (either high in the four figures or in the five figures). This is a great place to practice.
Average Shops
Buy: beds, items priced at 2,500, 5,000, 10,000+ (except chocolate bed), tiger furniture, robots, disco balls, speakers, kau furniture, fungus furniture, glowing furniture, sinks, mootix furniture, jeran stuff, valentines stuff, sunny yellow furniture, fountains, speckled furniture, kacheekers, pink poogle furniture, fans
Personally this shop is my favorite :). There's lots of things for all kinds of restockers. A lot of items for 2,500 come up here. Most things in the five figures are usually good deals, except for chocolate sofa. Lamps and rugs at 2,500 are always things you should go after. Posters and paintings are usually a bad deal, don't waste your time and money on them. Beds are usually a safe bet - even the ones that stock on a regular basis can make you a profit when haggled down. Desks and rugs normaly produce profit as well. Always go for fountains. I highly recommend you watch this shop for a couple of restocks at least to get an idea of what's good and what's not. Although the best way to figure this out is by trial and error, you can quickly see some items that seem profitable really aren't - they go every restock.
Buy: Yooyu flowers, sand staues, new bridges, playground equipment, snow stuff, gazebos, stepping stones (except white and yellow), rock gardens, chimneys, 5k+ gnomes that havent been tarla'd.
Ooh lots of pretty flowers :D. A lot of these pretty flowers are uber cheap and can produce a couple hundred np profit if you haggle them down. Normally saying, the flowers at the top aren't worth going for. Try to go for gnomes and things priced at 2,500 (except for umbrellas), as well as the rarer flowers priced at 2,500 or 5000 too. Fountains usually produce at least a couple hundred NP profit, and anything that seems kind of out of the ordinary go for as well (except for that citronella candle, lawn chairs and games). Always go for gazebos, ponds, and unusual fountains, but try to stray from statues. I recommend that if you're unfamiliar with the common garden items you watch this shop RS a few times before you start, so that you can better gage which items are the profit ones.
Buy: Faerie dolls, snowglobes, collectable charms, crackers, stockings, wearable toys, avatar pinatas, 5k and 10k items
This is a shop notorious for having crappy 2.5k items. So if an item is 2.5k, don't go for it! Every restock there's a lot of items that aren't really worth buying. You need to keep your eyes out for awesome items like faerie dolls and avatar pinatas. And now with customization, there's a few toys here that can sell for a lot because they're wearable, such as Plastic Techo Figures (shown above), Bucket of Sand, Colourful Building Blocks, Techo Kite, Clockwork Techo, and Techo Torch. Sometimes some HTS items for 5k and 10k will stock and those are usually a good buy so you should go for them as well. This shop requires a lot of trial and error to get the hang of.
Buy: Plushies from new plot, any non-standard colored pet plushies, codestone plushies, draik plushies, unusual plushies, plushies priced at 2,500, 5,000, or 10,000+
Most people don't know that plushies now have their own store! That helps give you
a one up on restocking just in that area. A lot of plushies restock - and everyone
knows which plushies are profitable and which aren't ;). Don't go for any normal
colored species one unless you haggle them down all the way first (many of these
are worthless from the old McDonalds promo where they gave one out every day). The
ones you want to go for are the ones that aren't basic colored (e.g. Brown Uni
Plushie, Faerie Pteri Plushie, Speckled Pteri Plushie, to name a few I've gotten so
far) and also just out of the ordinary ones (things like Maraquan Bomber Plushie,
Jhudora Plushie etc.). Watch out for the elusive ZDAP which RS's once in a while
here as well ;). A couple of the odd looking ones will appear more often than
others (I see Leeble Plushie a lot, for instance). You may want to wiz these first
really quick to make sure that you're getting profit off of it. But if there's 1 in
stock and it's at 2,500 or so - nab it ASAP.
DO NOT BUY: Snow jetsam plushie, tarla'd plushies, "rare looking" plushies priced
at under 1k, silver shoyru plushie, gold shoyru plushie, most colored pteri
plushies.
Buy: Cure to the current Woe disease, medicinal soap
A lot of people are going to wonder why I didn't put this in the previous section. Yes, pharmacy is insanely easy - but it's not guaranteed easy. A lot of items here are duds. Basically, the only items you'll want to go for are the ones that cure the current WoE disease. You also may want to stock up on the other WoE disease curers for when the item inflates later on. Try to restock more than one in a restock if possible!
Buy: Cakes, 5k and 10k+ items
There are a lot of different items in this shop so this will be a fun one to learn, although may take a while. Generally, cakes are popular items so you should try to go for those. Also be on the lookout for 5k and 10k items, since everything r90+ in this shop is gourmet. It will be a lot of trial and error to figure out which items are the best for you to get, but be reassured in that you probably won't incur a big loss trying to figure this shop out :)
Buy: Usukis priced at 5k and 10k+
The first thought I had when trying to learn this shop was "everything looks the same!" I'll be honest, I didn't try this shop out for long, but did make some decent money while I did. Usuki has a decent level of competition but I wouldn't say it's really difficult. A lot of the actual usuki dolls are worth a lot, so be on the lookout for anything priced at 5k or more. I find a lot of the sets to be junk although many of those can be worthwhile too. I would try buying items priced at 5k and more and then check all other items against the wiz to see what's a profit.
Buy: Anything, especially beds, tubs and sofas. Do not buy Jhudora or Harris items.
This shop doesn't restock many items at once but most of the time the items are pretty good. Now that water faerie furniture has been released (after being announced 2 years ago) this shop has become even more profitable. Not very many UBs, as is the case with most furniture shops however.
Buy: The 4 shell pot items
Buy: Any books stocking for 2.5k, 5k and 10k+ or 1-2 in stock
Intense Shops
**These shops are NOT intended for the beginner restocker! These shops are ones that are known to restock unbuyables (UBs) and/or rarely ever restock or you have a lot of competition with expert restockers. I don't recommmend trying here until you're awful confident in your abilities to restock elsewhere.**
Buy: Any item at 5,000+, most mint chocolate, some dark chocolate, expensive gobstoppers, expensive jelly beans, new chocolate from the news
This shop is awesome. I love restocking here. A lot of dud items come up, but there are quite a few items that can make you a profit of at least a couple thousand. This shop is mostly popular because of the elusive Chocolate Avatar that can be obtained by restocking an item at 5k+. These items are few and far between however so good luck!
Buy: Any stamp that restocks 1, 2, 3 at a time, 2.5k, 5k and 10k+ stamps
This shop is immensely competitive but equally profitable. Stamps are one of those items where you use it once and it's gone forever so this makes the price of stamps go up. Pretty much any stamp that isn't tarla'd or restocking in more than 5 at once is a good bet. If you want to get an idea of which stamps NOT to go for you can visit my shop for an estimate on all buyable stamp prices.
Buy: Most 2.5k, 5k, 10k items, especially multispecies wearables, 10k nonwearables, all wings
Pretty much: if it's wearable, it's a good deal. Of course there are a few items that aren't really worth it (usually the cheap moehog stuff and some other items you'll soon recognize after spending some time in there). For a guide to wearable items check out The Customizer's Catalogue.
Buy: Mortog, Turmac, Vullard, Zebie, Turtum, Whinny, Seece, Symol
Buy: Everything!
It's been a while since anything has been tarla'd from this shop, so pretty much everything is a good bet (although the tarla'd coins are worth less than the other ones). Pay close attention to coins that stock are 10k or more because this store carries many UB items. All coins are high rarity and thus this shop stocks very rarely, and even then only 1-3 items at a time. It is very difficult not only to catch a restock but to get the item. However, it is doable. This is the shop where I got my first UB, so if I can do it you can do it! (By the way, it was a Bzzt Blaster Coin and is still UB today)
Buy: Everything except green clam shell and purple scallop shell
Buy: Bag of Healing Dust, Golden Compass
The only two items worth buying are listed and shown above. BoHD sells for 8 digits and is a very rare and sought after r99. Golden Compass is cheaper but still profitable. If you don't mind waiting to sell this item it usually goes UB during wars.
Buy: All morphing potions except brown moehog, split lenny, green uni, any 1 in stock potions that aren't normally there
Buy: Any backgrounds that don't restock with more than 4 at once unless they're new
Buy: Short Sleeved Yellow Tunic, Crisp Blue Tunic, Heavy Blue Tunic
Buy: Tokens, Highland Chia stuff, Handstithced Usul stuff, Nova/Supernova/Ultranova items, Bony Grarrl Club, Icy Chia Goggles, Kacheek Flour, Rainbow Sticky Hand
I can't help you with this shop. It is really hard to learn and I don't recommend trying to learn it unless a. you have an extensive knowledge of species-specific battledome weapons or just random r99 knowledge and b. you have a lot of money (i'd say at least a couple hundred thousand) you don't mind losing by trying to learn this shop. It's really that hard. There is no pattern in the types of items that I can see that correlate to value. Everyone who I have talked to about this shop tells me it's one you just have to guess and check. But there is a lot of money to be made in it, that is one thing everyone can agree upon.
Buy: Draik eggs, tomato kebab, bread wreath, fresh fruit goblet, roast pork
This, obviously, is the shop where draik eggs restock, and that's why everybody flocks here. Draik eggs are r96+ and are pretty expensive to restock so bring well over 100k on hand into this shop. You can be sure everybody and their mom will try to go for it when it does eventually restock (which could be ages) which is why this shop is particularly difficult. But again, it's very doable.
Buy: Everything!
*** This shop is not linked because it is only open for one month out of the year, and as of 6/14/08 is not open. When it does open you can be sure to see a note in the news and a link from the Altador Cup Colosseum.
Pricing Guide
So now you have all of these pretty new items you got from all those shops listed above, but some of the unbuyable ones don't have prices listed on the TP. Well that's where this guide comes in. Knowing how to price an item, or what an item should be priced, based off of what type of item and how rare it is, is a great way to not only sell your items quickly and fairly, but help combat false inflation (where people either knowingly or unknowingly extravagantly overcharge on an item simply because they don't know the price, or take advantage of the fact that others don't know the price).First we need to establish between renewable and nonrenewable items (for lack of better words).
Renewable items are items that do not disappear after use. This includes most toys, plushies, furniture, garden, most battledome weapons, cards, wearables, petpets and more. Because they don't disappear after use, more and more are constantly poured into circulation with fewer and fewer being taken out. For this reason renewable items generally follow this rarity price format:
- r94 and below: Buyable (99,999np and under - use the shop wizard to price)
- r95-96: 100-400k
- r97-r98: 400k-800k
- r99: 100k-800k+
- r89 and below: Buyable (99,999np and under - use the shop wizard to price)
- r90-94: 10k-300k (Depending on demand)
- r95-96: 200k-600k
- r97-98: 500k-1.5m
- r99: 800k+
- Stamps - Stamps are highly desired and collected by many of the more wealthy neopians (and some of the poorer ones as well). Stamps as low as rarity 89 can become unbuyable, and many of the r90-92 stamps hover between 100-200k, every once in a while being thrown in a shop for 99k. The rarest stamps can sell for 8, even 9 digits, especially if they belong to an avatar album (lost desert, haunted woods, virtupets, snowy valley, mystery island, tyrannia).
- Toy Pinatas - Are generally very low rarity (in the 70s) and have lately become unbuyable in the area of 100-120k. Why? Because opening one will get you an avatar. The toy pinatas are the ones that stock in the toy shop (Balthazar, Boochi, Chuckles, Grundo, Hubrid Nox, Meuka, Turmaculus and Vira). Do NOT confuse these with the pinatas from furniture, which are hardly worth anything.
- Furniture - While neohoming is probably more popular than many neopians realize, rare furniture is ridiculously hard to sell. There will be many 10k items you'll buy that will be around r95-97 that will actually be buyable on the shop wizard. This should not discourage from you restocking in the furniture shops, but UB furniture is priced much much lower than other items of the same rarity. There should really be no UB furniture under r97.
Use the two guideline charts up at the top to determine whether your item is renewable or nonrenewable, and attempt to price accordingly. As a general rule, new items that are below r89 should be priced at 100k on the TP or around there (their price will quickly deflate so try to get the best price you can without really ripping people off). If you restock a new book or stamp, leave it on the post for a few days to see what sort of offers you get from collectors vying to be the first one to add this elusive item to their collection. You can always throw it in auctions and watch collectors duke it out to win. New furniture should be priced at the same guidelines as the renewable items list despite the fact that they usually sell below those prices when they are not new.
Worse comes to worse, if you really have trouble pricing an item make a topic about it on the neoboards and see if anyone can assist you. Neomailing gallery owners is also a good idea to see what the price is.