How much will NPC's pay for animal skins?
Our PC's have some deerskins and need lots of gold
(Level 2 + Severed Limbs = Too Expensive to Heal).
I can't find any guidelines on how much animal skins are worth in the D&D universe.
Well, they're worth money (as in the real world).
However, basic economic trends apply:
1) components cost much less than the next level of refinement/usage in a product
2)things double in cost for each layer of agency re-selling the product
For #1, as an example, my wife can get alpaca fur for dirt cheap and spin it into yarn herself. She can pay much more for spun alpaca yarn. A hand-knit alpaca sweater would cost even more than that.
For #2, case in point, try to trade in something for cash/credit, and you generally get 50% of its resale value. So bring in a $200 item, they'll give you $100, and then put a sale tag sticker of $200 on the item. This is standard practice on pretty much anything (not just trade-in). Marked up price is almost always double its cost to that agent.
With these 2 concepts in mind, examine product pricing for products that will be made from the deeskins. The skins themselves will be 1/2 to 1/10 of that price, most likely.
Clothing (explorer's outfit, extreme weather gear) or tents, backpacks might be a decent comparison. While not precise, 1 deer skin can probably make a backpack or an outfit. I think a backback is 1GP, so start there.
At 1Gp for a finished good, the basic steps to make it are:
tanning/prepping the skin to be workable leather
selling the leather to a supplier
supplier sells it to a backpack maker
backpack maker sells it to adventurers.
That's easily 4 layers of price doubling (and therefore price halving).
1/2/2/2/2 = .03125, so 3CP per skin
You could rule out a shorter chain, but then there could also be more layers. Consider the fur trade industry when north america was settled. trappers get furs, sell the furs. Furs get prepared. furs get shipped over seas, furs get made into stuff, stuff gets sold in stores
Anyway, glad I could help. If you want real world dollars, I got a guy who actually does this stuff. he use to run trap lines and sell furs, and he owns a deer farm.
