The problem most people are having with the rules for selling magical items is that they are imagining a high demand, high volume market.
In such circumstances 20% makes no sense.
However, the default 4E setting is clearly not a high demand, high volume market, as can be simply deduced from reading the DMG.
It mentions that any merchant buying a magic item is taking a risk. The item may not sell. i.e. Low Demand.
It mentions that it is very rare for a specific magical item to be available for sale (notable exception : The City of Brass). i.e. Low Volume.
It also makes it clear that the PCs are expected to be selling to a middleman, rather than going looking for a buyer themselves. If there are high chances of no such buyer existing in the first place, and even full-time career merchants can fail to find a buyer, then selling to a middleman rather than wasting months on a gamble actually makes sense. Keep in mind that in the absence of direct-market methods like classified advertisements, websites and ebay, selling privately is far less viable than in our society. (It seems to me that the cost of using a ritual for transport or communication would be , for the average commoner, exhorbitant, so they really don't invite comparison to the internet.)
So selling to a middleman who cannot be certain they can sell the item is a very different proposition to what most posters here are complaining about trying to model. That's not a flaw in the system. It's a difference between the assumed economic conditions. For what 4E assumes, the model is quite realistic.
The problem is that if you want a setting where magic items are high volume and/or high demand, then we don't have rules for that. By all means feel free to complain about the DMG lacking those, but then again there is a very clear implied setting in 4E. It would appear that, at this stage, rules for deviating from this setting are beyond the scope of the core rules.
Incidentally, there's something else most posters seem to be overlooking - the changes in the rules for finding magical items as treasure.
A standard party of five finds four magical items for each level they go up. That means that they would be almost about to hit fifth level before every party member had a magical armour, neck and weapon/implement, with room for one single wonderous item (in the party, not each, and that's assuming you don't have a ranger who needs an off-hand weapon, a defender who needs a shield, a paladin who needs an implement and a weapon, or, heaven help you, more than one from this list) before they hit level 5, and the scramble begins to upgrade to +2.
This is probably why the DMG warns the DM repeatedly to make sure that every single magical item is something desired by the party, to the point of even suggesting a wish list, and replacing the treasure in modules with equal-level items more suited to the party. There simply isn't any fat in the treasure budget to allow for vendor trash magic items.
So the item being sold is also likely to have been used for five levels or so and is now outgrown, rather than being traded in in hopes of a one-for-one swap.
In such circumstances 20% makes no sense.
However, the default 4E setting is clearly not a high demand, high volume market, as can be simply deduced from reading the DMG.
It mentions that any merchant buying a magic item is taking a risk. The item may not sell. i.e. Low Demand.
It mentions that it is very rare for a specific magical item to be available for sale (notable exception : The City of Brass). i.e. Low Volume.
It also makes it clear that the PCs are expected to be selling to a middleman, rather than going looking for a buyer themselves. If there are high chances of no such buyer existing in the first place, and even full-time career merchants can fail to find a buyer, then selling to a middleman rather than wasting months on a gamble actually makes sense. Keep in mind that in the absence of direct-market methods like classified advertisements, websites and ebay, selling privately is far less viable than in our society. (It seems to me that the cost of using a ritual for transport or communication would be , for the average commoner, exhorbitant, so they really don't invite comparison to the internet.)
So selling to a middleman who cannot be certain they can sell the item is a very different proposition to what most posters here are complaining about trying to model. That's not a flaw in the system. It's a difference between the assumed economic conditions. For what 4E assumes, the model is quite realistic.
The problem is that if you want a setting where magic items are high volume and/or high demand, then we don't have rules for that. By all means feel free to complain about the DMG lacking those, but then again there is a very clear implied setting in 4E. It would appear that, at this stage, rules for deviating from this setting are beyond the scope of the core rules.
Incidentally, there's something else most posters seem to be overlooking - the changes in the rules for finding magical items as treasure.
A standard party of five finds four magical items for each level they go up. That means that they would be almost about to hit fifth level before every party member had a magical armour, neck and weapon/implement, with room for one single wonderous item (in the party, not each, and that's assuming you don't have a ranger who needs an off-hand weapon, a defender who needs a shield, a paladin who needs an implement and a weapon, or, heaven help you, more than one from this list) before they hit level 5, and the scramble begins to upgrade to +2.
This is probably why the DMG warns the DM repeatedly to make sure that every single magical item is something desired by the party, to the point of even suggesting a wish list, and replacing the treasure in modules with equal-level items more suited to the party. There simply isn't any fat in the treasure budget to allow for vendor trash magic items.
So the item being sold is also likely to have been used for five levels or so and is now outgrown, rather than being traded in in hopes of a one-for-one swap.
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