Bulk Items and Runescape Merchanting

Merchanting in runescape is one the the best methods to make money. The main reason merchanting makes considerable money in runescape is the fact higher level players (skill based players) will generally deal in bulk items.

Bulk items can be any resource (depending which skill is being trained). It is normally 1000 or more of a single resource, so 1000 iron ores would be consider bulk whereas 100 iron ores wouldn't.

The desire of players raising their skills by buying in bulk is obvious, it saves them a lot of time accumulating the resources in bulk rather than in smaller quanities, so they are willing to pay to have a larger amount guaranteed in order to gain the level they desire quicker.

This desire leaves it open as an ideal situation for merchanters to take advantage and offer their services to gather up items in smaller quanitities. Runescape merchants will spend their time gathering up smaller quantities of items initially and building up their supplier line for specific resources. In the long term, they can request their suppliers provide them with higher amounts of items (thereby reducing time taken to acquire resources).

As a supply line of workers is established for a merchant in runescape, it makes it easier for them to merchant other items - they simply ask their supply line to gather up the required items. This enables merchants to diversify a bit, although they shouldn't try and merchant everything, 3 or 4 items is normally enough for novice merchants to handle adequately.

One the supply line for bulk items is in place, it just remains to have an outlet - or a buyer. This is the person or people who will be training a skill and will normally want to buy in bulk to reduce the time of gathering up resources. The profit from merchant trades will vary from resource to resource, but any profit will add up in the long term and improve a merchants communication lines and ability to react to changes in the runescape economy.

Once firmly established as a bulk trader or merchant, any runescape player will have the chance to pursue some of the rare items such as party hats or santa hats. They will likely be able to afford them, but whether they decide to actually merchant the party hats or santa hats is another question entirely. That decision I will leave to the runescape player involved, although massive price growth is unlikely and prices will be unstable at different times of the year... so if deciding to merchant those rare items, tread with caution.