Recently, on the forums, Evilb0b presented us with a rather remarkable post/topic.

I trust everyone knows what a merchanting clan is, and if not, basically, it’s an organized group of merchants with a profit goal. But you’ll learn more from the post itself.

Bob took the time to test out those clans, and gifted us with his conclusions, which were quite interesting, and will hopefully be able to assist you on your merchanting needs and travels. Here it is:

‘Recently it seems that every time I’m at the grand exchange, there’s always someone spamming: “join [clever merchanting name] clan chat to make mils using GE”, or something to that effect. However, not really being the merchanting type I’ve thought nothing of it. I usually make my money from my combat training and skilling, although its a rather slow process, I make enough to get by. But then, just the other day I noticed the impact these clans have on prices and understood how the GE works a bit more.

I had quite a few half key drops which I joined together to form a crystal key and went on my way to get the uncut dragonstone. I’ve long since realised making anything out of it loses money, but what shocked me was its price at the moment: it’s 90-95-100k!! (min-mid-max price). I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the reason behind this ’sudden’ rise, (the last time I sold an uncut dragonstone it was 50k). I checked the items made from this gem: cut dstone 50k, glory amulet 40k, ring of wealth 10k (rock bottom price- it’s at alch value), combat bracelet 10k (also rock bottom). It was then that someone told me it was the result of a GE Merchanting clan. So I had to look into this for myself.

I found out about a clan chat called Smokin Mils (if it’s full then use Smokin Mils2). The clan owner has set the name to ‘Uncut Dstone’ – indicating that is the item people should buy at max price on the exchange. Now here’s the clever part: if a lot of people are buying the same item at maximum price, the GE system thinks that it’s getting rare and thus up’s the price of it. The clan owners are urging people to buy these until uncut dstone prices hit at least 205k, that is the targetted selling (or ‘dumping’) price.

After talking to quite a few players about this I have found this is by far the easiest method of making money there is. Although, it requires a very popular (and busy) clan in order to manipulate the GE to this extent. There is another similar clan chat owned by Chessy018, who I only just heard of to be honest. But apparently she is the richest player in RuneScape with several stacks of max cash (over 2bil), such that she has to keep some of the cash in GE slots as it cannot be banked. Search her on Youtube (also search the first clan I mentioned) and there you will see an inspiring video of how the grand exchange brought to life her dreams of being a RuneScape billionnaire.

The final message: I am going to be setting aside a few mil to invest in items chosen by these clans for a while just to see how it works out – hopefully I can make some decent money out of it. And if you’re in need of someone money yourself why not check out one of these clans, the more people that join them the faster it works! (You don’t actually need to ‘join’, just hop into their clan chat now and then and see what the ‘hot’ item is.) ‘

‘Yes, you guys are right about ‘being in the core’ to make the real money. However, just because you’re not in the ranks doesn’t make you can’t make money. I’ve found you need to be very careful about how you do this.

Merchanting clan leaders are very nearly item scamming! What I mean by that is they don’t actually break any rules per se, but it seems almost like they are. Here is what I know now:

1-clan leader finds an item to merchant, buys as much of it as he/she wants, and also lets the higher ranks in on it, autotalkers are used at the GE to attract clan members
2-then after already banking his/her share, announces the item to everyone else in the clan chat (along with a phoney baloney target dumping price)
3-as more and more people start to buy the price rises, then the leader and his friends start to dump (way before the target price is reached)
4-99% of the demand for this item is now coming solely from the people in the clan chat, purely for merchanting, very few other people are interested in the item by this point
5-this means new people joining the chat to merchant are actually buying the items sold by the people higher up in the same clan
6-as everyone starts to realise the item is crashing before hitting the target price (eg by looking at GE database trends) they question the clan leader
7-the clan leader shakes away any of these by claiming other clans are ruining them by dumping early or something
8-many players are left with items which won’t sell (most of these are new to merchanting and were looking to make a quick buck from a ’sure fire way’), their dreams of making millions are dashed..
9-somewhere in a dark room the clan leader + friends laugh at the easy money they made at the expense of people who joined their clans in good faith, and get ready to repeat the process with a new item

Yes it sounds harsh but I’ve found that to be the truth, Sorry if my first post was misleading but I’ve found out a lot more since then. This doesn’t mean merchanting with these clans should be avoided, it just means you should be careful and make your own decisions instead of letting the leader decide what to do with your cash.

Tips and tricks:
-check the items being merchanted by hopping through various clans, there are several good ones you can visit (find names at GE or from the clan section in RSOF)
-always, always dump early, keep in mind the target price they give you is wrong and you should aim to sell before it (or if it) actually reaches there, of course you don’t know when the leader will dump so try dumping after a few days of buying don’t get greedy and leave it too late
-don’t invest all of your money, if it’s an expensive item being merchanted just buy a few of them, make sure you keep 50%+ of your cash in case the investment goes wrong and you end up losing out
-unless you’re an experienced merchanter (in which case you give me advice) try to use merchanting only as a supplementary income, and something else for your main income (eg you can never make a loss cutting & selling logs) ‘