Trading

The Old School RuneScape Wiki also has an article on: osrsw:TradingThe RuneScape Classic Wiki also has an article on: classicrsw:Trading

Trading is the exchange of coins and other items between players. Trading is one of RuneScape's oldest features and while not essential to most of the gameplay, it plays a large part in the community and is utilised by nearly every player.

For free-to-play players there is a 25,000 trade limit per hour. Becoming a member will remove this limit permanently; if you return to free-to-play, you will not have the limit again.

How to trade

The trading process is relatively simple and divided into three steps:

1. Initiating the trade—Where one chooses their desired partner
2. The first trade window—Where one makes their offer of the items to be traded
3. The second trade window—Where the player is given one final chance to make sure they want to go through with the trade

Players must be wary, as there is no way to undo it if one of the parties is unwilling to do so.

Initiating a trade

The trade context menu.

To trade with someone, a player must right-click the person and select the "Trade with" option. The message "Sending trade offer..." will appear in the chat interface, and "[player name] wishes to trade with you" will appear in the other player's chat interface. That person must then accept the invitation by either clicking on that message or sending a trade offer of their own. If the offer is accepted, a trade window will open for each player.

However, if one of the traders has an interface preventing trading open such as bank, Combat Stats, or trading interface with another player, "The other player is busy at the moment" message will show up in the chat interface.

Players in a busy world who wish to see the trading messages text may click on the "Trade and Assistance" chat tab at the bottom of the screen. This allows the player to see only the trade requests and game messages.

First trade window

The first trade window.

A trade modified by the other player.

The trade window has three main parts:

• Your Offer—to add to a trade offer, click on an item in their inventory; to remove an already added offer, click the item. Players may trade with both what is in their inventory and their money pouch.
  • The backpack icon allows the player to offer everything that can be traded from the backpack.
  • The money icon allows the player to offer a user-entered amount of coins from the money pouch.
• Trader's Offer—other player's trade offer.
• Wealth transfer scale—calculates the values of all the items using Grand Exchange price as an indicator and then shows if the trade is balanced or positive to one or another player. Note if the value of items shown is too great, then a message notifying about this fact is displayed instead.

Upon entering the trade window, items gain a new right click menu consisting of the following options:

• Add-1, Add-5, and Add-10 add the corresponding amount of the item to the player's offer.
• Add-X: The player is prompted to enter a number which will be the amount of the item to be added; one may use "K" for 1,000 and "M" for 1,000,000.
• Add-All adds all of the item to the player's offer.
• Value displays in the in-game chat window the current Grand Exchange market value of the item.
• Lend allows the player to temporarily loan another player the item assuming:
  • The player is not currently lending an item.
  • The other player is not currently borrowing an item.
  • The item in question is applicable to the lendable items list.
• Examine retains the same function as usual, displaying text to describe the item.

If an item is removed from an offer, a big red flashing exclamation point will appear where the item used to be with a message noting to check the offer. If the player attempts to accept the offer, they will be given a warning to double-check the offer.

There is also an indicator showing the amount of free inventory slots the other player has left, as well as an accept and decline button. Once either player is satisfied with the trade, "Accept" must be clicked to proceed. When both players have done so, the second trade window appears. If a player does not wish to trade with the other anymore, "Decline" may be clicked to close the trade window.

Second trade window

The second trade window.

A trade modified by the other player seen in the second trade window.

The second window is a final confirmation of the transaction; no actual offering of items will take place in this window. Here players are able to review which items have been offered by each party to confirm they are trading what they intended to. Numbers are more specific in this trade window; e.g. if a player offers 1,234,567 coins in the first window, it will only display as 1,234K. In the second window, however, the full value is shown and the player will see that 1,234,567 coins are being offered.

Any items modified from the first window will still be marked in red, this time with a bar that spans the length of the entire half of the other player's window.

Once both players have checked the items of trade and are satisfied, "Accept" must be clicked to finalise the trade. When both players have done so, the trade is confirmed and both players will be notified with the "Accepted trade." message.

Declined trades

Since 4 January 2012, when the player's trading partner declines the trade or performs some other action that has them exit the trading screen, the player will be notified with the "Other player declined trade!" message. This change was made in response to ongoing scams.

Trading directly with players

The Grand Exchange is the most populated place to trade with other players, though face-to-face trading has become significantly less frequent since the exchange's introduction. There are also official trading worlds: 3 (free-to-play) and 1 and 2 (members).

Bank sales

Bank sales was significantly altered after an update. This article is retained to provide information on past elements of RuneScape.

A bank sale occurred when a player attempted to sell multiple bank items directly to another player. This was done primarily to free up bank space and tidy up one's bank, rather than for money-making. A player conducting a bank sale would withdraw the items, usually in notes, from the bank and stood in a populated bank or near a populated area with decent traffic while advertising their sale. When a potential buyer traded, he would typically choose one or a few items to buy, and the seller removed the unwanted items. Haggling was common during bank sales.

Advertising phrases used included "bsale!", "bank sale", "B sale" or just "sale!", often with a guide price ("b sale 150k" or "b sale, half off") or mentioning items of value ("b sale, zammy legs"). In crowded areas, flashy chat effects were used to grab attention, as well as adding one's display name ("bank sale - Elfinlocks") so finding the trade partner was easier. Occasionally the terms "junk sale" or "noob sale" were also be used if applicable.

Common items offered included low-value bulk items in large quantities like low-level seeds and body runes, which may also have been products of skilling like tiaras or willow logs, as well as monster loot that was difficult to sell otherwise. Bank sale items were usually offered below their market price because disposing of the items would take priority over profit or breaking even.

With the release of the Grand Exchange, the popularity of bank sales decreased to the point that it is now rare to see a player offering one. This was due to the GE providing a much faster and easier way to liquidate unwanted items. As such, bank sales usually consisted of junk items that were hard to sell on the Grand Exchange. Alchemising was also is a simple alternative, but may not have always been the smarter choice. Bank sales seemed to be marginally more frequent on free-to-play worlds, because of both possible game inexperience, lesser bank space and limited slots.

Payment

Cash only

The seller would strictly only accept cash as payment, and accept no items. The predominant and default bank sale payment method.

Items

Sometimes players would accept items. Item payments also included a combination of cash and items, seller willing. Item payment was typically used with junk items. More commonly to turn unstable junk into stable junk. So if the seller thought they could profit from an item-to-item trade, they would take it—profit was the notable difference between cash and item payments.

See also

• Junk trading
• Bank

Tradeability

Main article: Items § Tradeability

Not every item in RuneScape is tradeable, and of the items that are, not every tradeable item is tradeable on the Grand Exchange. In general, most tradeable items are tradeable on the Grand Exchange, however. The most common exception to this rule is coins. In general, almost every tradeable item has a "drop" option rather than a destroy option and will display itself on the ground. Exceptions such as implings in jars exist.

Trivially, any tradeable item may be offered to another player via the trade screen and this may be the only way to get items not available on the Grand Exchange.

Update history

This information has been compiled as part of the update history project. Some updates may not be included—see here for how to help out!

• patch 3 August 2020 (Update):
  • Mobile players will now get a warning message when attempting to trade items that are untradeable.

• patch 17 September 2018 (Update):
  • Offering stackable items or offering-X items in a trade will no longer offer the entire stack.

• ninja 7 December 2015 (Update):
  • Reworked the first trade window and added a new button, "Offer all", to place all carried tradeable items into the trade in one action. Exceptions include Bonds and 1-for-1 trade items.

• ninja 1 June 2015 (Update):
  • Trade requests from players on an Ignore list no longer appear in the player's chatbox.

• ninja 15 September 2014 (Update):
  • The trade interface has been updated to use the correct interface skin.

• ninja 17 December 2013 (Update):
  • Players are now prompted for their bank pin before opening a trade window.

• patch 3 September 2013 (Update):
  • Messages displaying remaining inventory and loan durations in the trade window now fit correctly in their boxes.

• patch 13 August 2013 (Update):
  • The interfaces for the photo booth, Explorer's ring alchemy, price checker, emotes, trading, and the Dungeoneering party, floor and complexity settings have all been updated.

• patch 29 May 2012 (Update):
  • The trade tracker no longer allows free players to trade freely if they try to trade over 2.1b worth of items.

• patch 22 April 2014 (Update):
  • The trading interface header bar now scales in size based on the length of the players name you are trading with.

• patch 4 April 2011 (Update):
  • Players will no longer be restricted when picking up big bones after trading.

• patch 13 October 2009 (Update):
  • Corrected the logic regarding the amount you can trade or receive with other players. Note: this only affected the displayed value.

• update 30 September 2008 (Update):
  • Flexibility of the player trade system has been doubled (in some cases tripled). All players will notice an increase in the amount they can trade with other players.
    • Accounts with fewer than 10 quest points will be able to earn or lose up to 5,000 coins in wealth every 15 minutes from trading.
    • Free players will be able to earn a maximum of 10,000 coins every 15 minutes by completing the free quests.
    • Members will have access to a maximum of 60,000 coins per 15 minutes if they have 270 quest points.
    • Trade margin will increase with each quest point after 10.

• update 2 January 2008 (Update):
  • From this moment on, no unbalanced trades may be made. This applies to every player, on every world, no matter if you are free-to-play or a member.
  • Introduction of the 30,000gp trade margin.
  • Duel Arena staking cap increased.

• update 16 February 2001 (Update):
  • Another improvement to trading denies a player from accepting an offer while the other player is changing their offer in an effort to stop cheating and make trades safer.

• update 13 February 2001 (Update):
  • You can now hover over an item to see the items name and description to make trading fairer and safer.

Trivia

• When the net exchange of a trade experiences an overflow error by exceeding 2,147,483,647 coins, the wealth transfer is displayed as "Unknown".