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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 4332230" data-attributes="member: 57267">This may be true, but it opens the door for a niche market.All it takes is for one NPC entrepreneur to realize that he can buy an item from PCs for 50% or 60% or maybe even 80% of its value, then march off to a metropolis and scout around for buyers, eventually sell the item for 100% of it's value and keep the profit.This NPC becomes a broker of magic items, existing in the margins.It's the exact same idea that stock brokerss, foreign exchange brokers, and even bankers earn their living in the real world.With the economy being what it is, a few small, portable magic items could be worth a fortune. If this broker can earn even 25% of a few items' value (paid the PCs 75% of value, sold to the right buyer for 100%) every year, he can live like a king.Even a game world where there are very few adventurers, there would likely be some enterprising NPC who will see this niche market as a vast potential to get rich.Expand on that, and every Tom, Dick, or Harry who makes a living buying and selling anything - weapons, rugs, grain, gems, whatever - would be likely to expand into this niche market. What a great investment. Besides, investing a footlocker full of silver to buy a single +1 dagger that you can easily conceal under your robes until you find a buyer and earn your fat 25% return on investment, that right there might be incentive enough to give it a whirl.Which all boils down to the impossibility of sustaining an extended market where anythign routinely sells for 1/5 of ifs real value. Someone will fill that niche every time. And that someone will be sniffing out the PCs. The players won't have to advertise or go looking for this guy; he'll be tracking them down like his very livelihood depends on it.</blockquote>

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