Selling Magic Items

Larcen · Nov 5, 2002

Hi everyone,

Our party just entered Waterdeep with a whole bunch of magic loot to unload and we naturally want to sell everything as close to full market price as possible. But our DM says we can only sell magic items for half price.

Now barring any regional, or seasonal, or situational influences that the DM may wish to impose on current market values, the PHB tells us that most equipment can be sold for 1/2 it's listed value, and that comodoties can be sold for full price. What about magic items?

There is a lot in the books on determining Market Value for magic items, but we could not find where it says that players can SELL them for that amount. Are we missing something?

Of course I am asking this question from the point of view of the actual rules, and not rule 0 (which will probably win in our case) !

Thanks for any help.

P.S. The general feeling in our gaming circle right now is that some kind of CHA based roll, like Diplomacy, should determine what you can sell magic items for, but somewhere near the Market Value. We won't mind making the die rolls because the value of these things are not insignificant.

Shallown · Nov 5, 2002

I usually start at 1/2 price then let charisma, prior relationships and contacts etc determine an end price. It is nice to establish contacts just for selling/gaining magic items a prefered source.

I never understood selling Magic items as used goods like normal equipment since their is seldom any difference between a fresh from the forge +1 sword and a 50 year old +1 sword as far as what you want it for which in most cases is to have a +1 sword.

KnowTheToe · Nov 5, 2002

Shallown said:
I usually start at 1/2 price then let charisma, prior relationships and contacts etc determine an end price. It is nice to establish contacts just for selling/gaining magic items a prefered source.

I never understood selling Magic items as used goods like normal equipment since their is seldom any difference between a fresh from the forge +1 sword and a 50 year old +1 sword as far as what you want it for which in most cases is to have a +1 sword.

It depends who you are selling to. Getting 50% from a merchant/dealer is not a bad deal. After all, he has to find the buyer and hold the expensive inventory.

If you are selling to the Collector or adventurer you should get close to street value. The issue is, you are not merchants and don't have contacts.

As far as the rules go, your PC has no idea what that magic item is worth unless you have appraise. Once you have a decent appraise, make sure you have ranks in profession merchant and then you have all the skills to find the end user. WARNING***This may take long boring RP sessions in which the other players are picking their nose and then reaching intot he chip bowl.

If you get full price for items, your DM will modify the amount of treasure you find to adjust to the economy he wants in his game. Either way it should work out the same. My suggestion is be happy with 50-60%, it is only a game.

hammymchamham · Nov 5, 2002

If the PCs don't want to roleplay and negotiate, I generally give them half (or less). If they roleplay and negotiate, they may get more, and past relationship with the NPC may be helpful (or hurtful) to what they'll get. When it comes to PC's buying items, I let them ask if they can find an item, then I roll a percentile to determine if such an item (base upon if its a minor, medium or major item), their level, and the size of the town. And if they RP or negotiate, they may get it for less (but usually not much more less). For example, a Ring of Feather falling is 2200 (I think). My pcs were in a small town and I rolled to see if the town had a ring, and it did, and the ring was that type. I quoted them a price of 2500 (of course the players knew that was too high, but not nessacarily the PC's). Now, the NPC is fairly friendly to the group, so they could easily get a discount.

But strikely rules wise, magic items are equipment, not nessacarily commodities. Magic items are a luxury.

Spatzimaus · Nov 5, 2002

It varies with the item, the city, the CHA of the seller, how much they roleplay, etc.

By the DMG guidelines, sell for half. But, that seems more appropriate to mundane items than magical ones.

The problem is, a magic item doesn't really LOSE value as it gets older; it's still just as magical. That +3 sword you bought for 18k is still a +3 sword, after all. It's still going to hit just as hard even if it's now "used", so its value hasn't decreased any.
For some item types, you might not be able to find a buyer. Who'd buy a +1 Goblinbane Keen Longspear? Same goes for a lot of Wondrous items. That'd change the resale value, since you'd have to lower your price to sell it at all. Or, if you want to sell a +5 sword in a small city, you might not find a buyer with enough cash to afford it.

But, if I was the one who made the sword, why couldn't I sell it for full value by acting as my own merchant? Or, at least, pay a merchant a small commission to sell it for me. It'd still be worth far more than 50% (which was the cost of the materials I used making it!)

You can't sell at full value to a merchant, because if you did there'd be no profit margin for the person you're selling to unless they went over market value. If you could find a buyer on your own, THEN full price would be fine.

Here's what I do IMC.

When dealing with a normal merchant (who doesn't want the item as an item, he wants it as something HE can sell), the rough guideline I use is that the "margin" is (500/CHA) percent, split to each side. That is, if you have a CHA of 10, the merchant sells for 125% and buys for 75% (margin of 50). If you have a CHA of 25, he sells for 110% and buys for 90%. Note that these are percentages of the appraised value, and you could replace the CHA with (CHA + result of opposed Bluff/Sense Motive check)
Roleplaying can tweak this a bit, but never to the point where the merchant would take a loss.

However, there's also a guild in my world, the Circle, that is primarily a magic/psionic items clearinghouse. There, you can do straight trades for magical items. Want to trade a Bag of Holding for a Sunblade? No problem, assuming you can find someone with the item you want and who's willing to equalize the trade with cash.

They also have a lot of high-level casters who make items (including a custom PrC), all of which are marked with a magical logo. Items marked this way are guaranteed not to be cursed or intelligent, and if you buy them from a Circle merchant they're sure not to be stolen (no previous owners looking for it; if it WAS stolen and resold back to the guild, they'll replace the item for the original owner). This tends to give them better resale value.

Larcen · Nov 5, 2002

Thanks for all the responses guys.

Spatzimaus said:
...By the DMG guidelines, sell for half. ...

Can you give me an exact page number for this? Thanks.

BTW, Spatzimaus, I like your formula. We were trying to convince to our DM to do something like: 60% plus the results of a Diplomacy roll to determine the price we got for each magic item. Simple enough and produces an unmodifed range of 61% thru 80% market value. After reading this post, maybe we can sell him on 50% plus a Diplomacy roll.

~~~

Also, a couple more points that were brought up at our last session:

1) If commodities sell for full price, why can't magic items too? Surely they are just a valuable, or more?

2) Since we are in Waterdeep, a major (if the not THE major) metropolis in FR, woulnd't it be much easier to get higher prices for our goods there? That was the whole reason for the LONG, and much side-tracked, trip there. (I know my original post asked for no regional modifiers to prices, but I was just wondering if even Waterdeep can get us more than merely half value.)

Spatzimaus · Nov 5, 2002

The 1/2 thing is the basic "equipment can be sold for half value" thing you mentioned at the start, it's just restated in a few places.

The difference between a "commodity" and "equipment" is in how it retains its value. A diamond would be a commodity. Its resale value will be the same as its purchase value, plus or minus market variations and haggling. It's retained its value completely. Gold bars, coins, etc. all fall into this category: they ARE money, just in different forms.

Equipment, on the other hand, decreases in value over time. A brand-new sword is better than an old, rusty sword, assuming they started at equal quality. The basic D&D rule is just half-value when you go from "new" to "used", because D&D doesn't use an item wear system or a quality system (except for the Masterwork thing). Of course, if I took your +1 sword and increased its enchantment to a +2, I should get full value for the "new" sword, right?

The problems with this I mentioned before. Magical items derive most of their value from their enchantments, which never decrease in power. Also, constructing magical items requires materials equal to half its market price, so it should never drop that far simply because at 50% it's cheaper to just make a new one. That's why I picked 75% as the "average" resell price.

Really, you should also include a depreciation system. If I buy a new sword and turn around to sell it back, it hasn't decreased in value. Even if I kill a few things with it in between, it'll still be mostly full value. This is where haggling comes in.

The catch is, it all has to end up transparent to the players. For example, using my original system, I could say the margin is 500%/(CHA + (opposed Bluff-Sense Motive check or whatever).
But, to keep there from being tons of rolling, I just say that the default merchant buys and sells at a flat 80% and 120%. If you choose to haggle, THEN you can roll the opposed check.
If you fail the check too badly, the merchant just refuses to talk to you altogether; you annoyed him by trying to argue over pennies while he was trying to deal with other customers. Likewise, maybe he hates your race and won't talk to you in the first place, in which case I might force you to roll the check with a -5 penalty or something just to see what price he WILL sell to you at.

Crothian · Nov 5, 2002

I don't like the flat 50% for selling all items. It does keep it easy and I think that helps, but I perfer a more complicated way of doing it.

Larcen · Nov 6, 2002

Thanks Spatzimaus. I agree with pretty much all of your points. In fact, I am sure that are group would be happy with your 80%/120% range. Thats is much better than half price.....but then you DO take a hit when you buy stuff at 120%, so I guess it all balances back down to close to 50% anyway. :-( Can't have everything I guess.

I agree Crothian. It's not like selling expensive magical items comes up so often that making rolls to sell them becomes a chore. Indeed, half the fun SHOULD be selling them. What method do you use?

Dash Dannigan · Nov 6, 2002

Actually magic items can degrade, be damaged, and broken over time. A +5 sword a millenia later may very well be a +1 sword due to magical effects or other disatrous events wreaked upon the poor thing.

As for getting more than half-price for sold magic items...it's all balanced. If you want to buy a ring be expecting to pay more than listed price and don't complain. If selling back can be variable so is buying...after a while that get's to be a headache so why bother and just let the averages cancel out, just let the variablities stay abstract and play D&D instead, not monopoly.

Besides selling your stuff for half is not so much a representation of the items actual listed value but that of supply and demand between an individual and a retailer.

Why mess with it? Leave it at half and then buy things at list. Anything else are just mad attempts at powergaming it, trying to get the most out of what you got for personal gain. The DM has enough headaches without PCs squabbling over gold pieces like that. Just my take on it.