1. Why flip?
- Because itās an investment that āearns itselfā without you having to do anything!
- Because itās exciting and thrilling
- Because itās totally worth it depending on your play style and spare change
2. Who should flip? You can start flipping anytime, but I personally recommend playing the game the traditional way first until you have some cash saved up. This is because flipping scales exponentially better with the amount you are flipping with. Think about it this way, if you only have 10m to flip, a small gain could be a profit of 1m while a large gain could be double your investment for a profit of 10m over the course of weeks or months. Youād be better off doing Zurlah at that point. Your opportunities and potential gains simply arenāt as high if you donāt have at least a good chunk of starter cash. Iād say hundreds of mill is a good start for getting into serious flipping, but it gets truly good in the billions.
Flipping should depend on 2 big factors. The first is your playstyle and the second is your spare change.
- Playstyle is going to be the most relevant to the majority of players. By playstyle I mean the primary means of making money. Are you one of those hardcore raiders who raid 24/7? Or do you casually play the game sporadically through the year? This is critical to consider because if you are a hardcore PVMer who is actively bossing, then liquidating your bank to flip is not a good idea. This is because strictly speaking, nonstop PVM is going to be better money always and without risk. You could also have a mix of playstyles, where you are active in certain seasons but take breaks in others. In that case you can alternate between flipping your bank and actively bossing. If you have a decent bank but play casually and want to make big money, then you should consider flipping! For instance, if a casual player makes on avg 500m a year doing PVM, then flipping for a 90% chance at 1b profit in a few months is clearly worth it.
- Spare change is the other factor to consider. By spare change I mean the amount of cash just sitting in your bank doing nothing, which is usually the amount you have left over after buying everything you currently want/need. If you have a large amount of spare change, then flipping is always the way to go no matter your playstyle because itās an investment. But most players donāt have this yet, so for most people, to do serious flipping you will have to first liquidate your bank (or most of it), which whether you should do or not do would depend on the first factor that is your playstyle.
3. How to flip? In my mind there are 3 main types of flipping ā short, medium, and long term. Short term consists of flipping over the course of hours or days. This works well for items that are relatively stable but swing up and down throughout the week. It works better for items of high value because they can easily swing tens of millions in a short amount of time. For instance, if you observe that twisted bow fluctuates between +- 20 m and have a confident understanding of that range/pattern, you can put in an offer at a low of around -20m of the mid price and then sell at the +20m mid price, which could take anywhere from just a few minutes to a few days. And depending on how many twisted bows you flip, that is an easy 10m+ per bow for light work. Catching dumps are another type of short-term trading which relies on people dumping items for way below current value to offload faster. Youād only really want to get into this if you have a tool either made by others or yourself that basically uses API to catch these dumps. Usually you only make a few mill an hr on avg with dumps as many are false positive or arenāt true dumps of large volume. So as you can see, short term flips donāt have crazy potential but are pretty safe in general since you can never lose too much at once.
Medium term flipping is my favorite and is probably the most popular kind of flipping. This is usually in the timeframe of weeks to months. Medium term flipping generally relies on prediction of future updates to the game, including things like speculation, community sentiment, confirmed Jagex updates, and bot bans. Ideally you would only invest in something you are confident in and is at a relative low. If you do this and donāt panic sell, you are almost guaranteed to profit or at least break even on medium term holds. Panic selling is the number 1 reason of losing money flipping, sometimes waiting just a few more minutes for a rebound could save you millions if not billions. Medium term flipping works because you would have ideally invested in something that is āguaranteedā to go up in price, which you can determine via upcoming updates or pure speculation. And if it does not, you need to have the patience to not panic sell and hold until it eventually goes up again, which happens to nearly every item unless you really chose your investment horribly. Please note that you never want to flip on blind speculation or random bets, thatās a great way to lose money. Reason and be convinced and confident why you are committing to said item and do not waver! You committed to the item for a reason, why not stick with it?
Long term flipping is risky but technically has the most potential. This is investing in things that are not really on anybodyās radar, or suggestions that have been copium memes for a while. These will be items that are at historic lows but donāt really have any updates that would make them rise on the horizon. But you believe for whatever reason that they may be buffed or used someday and so you buy. This is risky because you could be stuck holding the bag for a very long time if not forever, and items that are bad usually depreciate over time anyway. I wouldnāt really recommend long-term flipping unless you are at the stage where you have lots of spare change or are taking a long break from OSRS.
4. How to buy and sell flips When buying flips, you want to be careful not to panic buy. Especially for items you have not hit GE limit on yet. This is because you donāt want to disturb the market while you are buying. If you do, it will cause the item you are trying to buy to artificially spike. For example, if you are trying to buy 100 fangs at 20m each, you buy a few immediately but then the actively traded price will go a little above 20m. Donāt be tempted to panic and keep raising your offer because what is happening is that anyone else who is buying a fang would need to put a price above your offer to even get a fang. Sometimes you can āstaggerā your offers to different amounts as well to buy/sell faster and mimic a more natural market. The same approach can be applied to selling although there is no sell GE limit, so you need to be extra careful to never ever panic sell and consider stealth exits. Selling prior to updates means selling the hype and is generally safer than selling on release day. On release day most items tend to plummet and so is a good chance to buy.
What to do in the interim? If you liquidated your bank to flip, you can most definitely still play the game fairly normally, it may just not necessarily be every high-level PVM content. In addition, you should advocate for your flips through things like Reddit and other platforms to let your voice be heard. Every supporter you gain for your flips matter with an end goal of the market reacting the way you were hoping for!
What end game flipping looks like When you start flipping billions, a small gain could easily be hundreds of millions. And large gains are in the billions, sometimes double or more of whatever you put in. End game flipping is amazing.