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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 4565866" data-attributes="member: 18280">Sorry, but I am a bit confused here.Why would a merchant who payed 50% accept a lowball offer, but a merchant who paid 20% not do so?It is generally true, IRL, that you can shave cost off of more expensive items than cheaper items.  For example, the last time I bought a major appliance, I was able to get the mail-in rebate upfront....and I was still able to claim the mail-in rebate.  This is because I know that X% of the sale price is the commission, and a commission of X-Y, so long as Y is smaller than X, is still better than no commission at all.It is hard to imagine how an adventurer could shave cost off of a few iron spikes -- where is the incentive for the merchant?  But if you are talking an item worth (say) 5,000 gp, for which the merchant has paid 1,000 gp, it is not at all unlikely that he would accept an offer as low as 2,000 gp.Again, in real life, every comic shop everywhere has "wall books".  If you wanted to buy the most expensive wall book in any given store, there is a very good chance that you could get better than a 20% discount on that item.Finally, it follows that if our end-uesr knows that adventurers cannot sell the item for its value, and can therefore lowball the offer, that our PCs could become the end users and do the same to other adventurers.  They could even hire agents to do so, seeking out specific items, and thus pay no more than 50% of the value, after paying the commissions and costs of the agents.RC</blockquote>

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