Selling Treasure

[Morrow]

Quick question here, I know that characters selling magic items can expect to receive a base price of 50% of market value. What would be the base price they can expect for selling gems, jewelry, and other items?

Morrow

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Quick question here, I know that characters selling magic items can expect to receive a base price of 50% of market value. What would be the base price they can expect for selling gems, jewelry, and other items?

IMC:

I treat gems, jewelry, and other such items as cash equivalents.

Thus, you can carry 100gp in coin, or you can carry three onyx gems, worth 50gp, 30gp, and 20gp, and have exactly the same amount of "useable" cash.

The 50% reduction in price is meant to simulate finding buyers for non-cash equivalent items. So, yeah, the sword is really worth 6,000gp, but its difficult finding someone willing to speculate on so large a purchase.

 

[kigmatzomat]

IIRC, the 3.5 PHB declares gems and jewelry to be "commodity" items, like iron and grain, that have a constant value.

 

[Khayman]

We allow PCs to sell treasure for the listed value if they can find a buyer; otherwise, merchants give you the standard 50%.

We also adjust the sell value of magic items by +/- 10% depending on Diplomacy rolls.

 

[lonesoldier]

Complete Adventurer has rules for haggling prices. Quick, easy and painful.

 

[dcollins]

PHB, Ch. "Adventuring: Treasure: Special Items":

Special Items: While gems can be cashed in for gold pieces and the coins split evenly among adventurers, somed treasures can't be split up so easily. Magic items, for instance, can be sold, but only for half of what they would cost...

The same basic thing is said in the "Equipment: Wealth and Money" chapter. "Gems and jewelry also serve as portable wealth", that, is, they count the same as coins and are always worth full value.

 

[Morrow]

Excellent, that makes it easy. Thanks.

As for haggling in Complete Adventurer, using the diplomacy skill to haggle only allows the character as a buyer to bargain for a lower price. It doesn't have a mechanism for trying to get a higher price as a seller. I suppose the NPC you're trying to sell to could try to use haggle on you to push the price down, but social skills don't work on PCs.

Morrow

 

[diaglo]

PC: I swear to you this is +3 Flaming SHock Keen Battle Axe.

Buyer: I'll give you 7gp.

PC: Didn't you hear me?

Buyer: I'm not a Wizard. It looks like a battle axe to me. I'll give you 7gp.

PC: <slices head off Buyer> See I told you so.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Although I'm not so sure that converting gems & jewellery is the way to go as a rule. The portability seems such an advantage even considering bags of holding.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm still somewhat old school. In 1st edition, DM's were encouraged to give players something like 60-100% of the value of gems and jewelry. If you were to sell gems and jewelry in my campaign, your ability to sell the gems for a profit would be directly tied to some combination of a) your ability to assess thier value correctly using an appraisal check, b) your ability to make a successful haggling check using diplomacy, c) your ability to find a suitably friendly merchant that deals in gems and jewelry, and d) the merchant's ability to appraise the gems worth with his skill check.

This is slightly more complicated than simply making gems and jewelry cash equivalents but...

1) Gaurantees that the appraisal skill is useful.
2) Gaurantees that charisma is not treated as a dump stat by everyone in the party.
3) Is alot more realistic, and hense helps keep the player's out of a gamist mind set.
4) Allows me to introduce NPC's who can then be used to provide suitable plot hooks in the future.