|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
From the PRD:
"Selling Treasure
In general, a character can sell something for half its listed price, including weapons, armor, gear, and magic items. This also includes character-created items.
Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself."
I get that the standard rate for selling magic items is 50%. Does that also go for all other items found as well, particularly items with "values" listed? For example (from an adventure):
"... a rotted leather pouch containing 52 sp, a gold wedding ring worth 120 gp, a rotting leather glove clutching 4 fine amethysts worth 150 gp each, an ash wood wand of levitate (8 charges), and a scowling silver death mask worth 250 gp."
Would the ring then sell for 60 gp, the amethysts for 75 gp each, and the silver death mask for 125 gp? What about this (same adventure):
"As a whole, the 120 books are worth a total of 2,400 gp."
So they'd only sell for 1,200 gp?
The PRD has a table with trade goods. This obviously isn't an absolutely finite list, but are trade goods exclusively things you'd find in bags/barrels on the back of a merchant's wagon? (Listed trade goods: flour; chickens; iron; tobacco; copper; cinnamon; goats; ginger; pepper; sheep; pigs; linen; salt; silver; silk; cows; saffron; cloves; oxen; gold; platinum.)
In general, gems, jewelery, art and the like still sell for full price.
+1.
That's why people used to "wear their wealth" -- it would be an insane proposition to do if you lost 50% on the transaction.
Of course, local market conditions will still apply, and a buyer will likely start off offering less than full value, as you'd expect.
Note: Edited to add last point. ;)
Couldn't say what's written but look at the real world: it's harder to get what you originally paid when you try to sell a used hammer (even a really nice one in good shape) but you can probably sell a ring or piece of artwork for the original price or even more, depending upon style etc. (assuming you paid a fair price to begin with).
Also, the value of art objects is entirely subjective - one man's trash is another man's treasure. A fine work of "art" in the goblin community might be worth nothing in a human town. A dwarf's "noodling" at the foundary might sell for a fortune in that same human town. Pablo Picasso could have paid for your entire family's dinner (and I'm including distant relatives here) by doodling on a napkin and handing it to the waiter.
I usually let the PCs sell treasure items at the listed value with exceptions: 1) if they're in an undesirable form (platinum idols to evil gods and the like) and they have trouble finding a buyer I'll usually mark them down 50%, sold as scrap; and 2) they're highly desirable to some buyer, in which case they might get a lot more for the item (books to a collector, etc.) YMMV.
M
If an adventure says "this treasure item is worth 500 gp", I assume that means what the players can sell it for. I mean, that's what non-equipment treasure is for, right? Selling?
If they meant purchase price, they would say "this treasure item costs 500 gp". Cost != Worth.
"... a rotted leather pouch containing 52 sp, a gold wedding ring worth 120 gp, a rotting leather glove clutching 4 fine amethysts worth 150 gp each, an ash wood wand of levitate (8 charges), and a scowling silver death mask worth 250 gp."
The PRD has a table with trade goods. This obviously isn't an absolutely finite list, but are trade goods exclusively things you'd find in bags/barrels on the back of a merchant's wagon? (Listed trade goods: flour; chickens; iron; tobacco; copper; cinnamon; goats; ginger; pepper; sheep; pigs; linen; salt; silver; silk; cows; saffron; cloves; oxen; gold; platinum.)
Usually anything that must be appraised to determine its value, such as a gem, jewelry, or a work of art, can be sold at the full stated value. Goods such as tools, weapons, armor, etc., can usually be sold for half price. Gems are generally used as a substitution for coin, but the rest should be sold to get that cash. I've seen jewelry used as a fungible commodity in the same way, but that's not really standard, I don't think.
This can be as simple or as complicated as you like. In my campaign, I allow the players to spend gems as cash, if they have papers certifying its value from a gem-cutter's guild or similar reliable source. They'll appraise the gem themselves to get an idea what it'll be worth (and thus divide the spoils more easily), but they need a professional appraisal to spend it. The papers are traded with the gem, and if they buy a gem to lighten their coin load, they're assumed to have the papers for it. It's pretty simple and transparent, but it requires them to get back to civilization once in a while to use the gems. Appraisers usually charge less than 1% of the value appraised. To sell art and jewelry, they have to find someone who would be interested in that kind of commodity, so it would be hard to sell an expensive sculpture in a rural village, even if the game system states that such cash is readily available in a settlement with that population. When they do sell it, they can only use the appraised value as a starting price, and haggle with a buyer, or auction it among several buyers.
The original GM of the campaign I'm running now established his own database of gems, and he would name the gems with a code string, and when we came to a town, we would reference the gem by that code, and that would usually result in haggling with the person we wanted to sell it to, ending in a value pretty close to what we expected, unless the appraiser (we're fairly low level) missed his roll by a lot.
I've played in other campaigns where accurate value is given without an appraisal by the DM ("You find three paintings worth 50gp each"), and the item itself is just a symbol for its own cash value, so you could pay for a nice suit of armor with a rare 200-year-old wood carving and a gold ring, for instance. That certainly cuts down on the paperwork, but works of art tend to lose their curiosity value in that kind of a system. Players tend not to care what shape the item takes, as long as they can spend it.
I do it half value for all treasure unless the players goes out of their way to find the best price. I'm assuming the players are trying to dump the treasure for coins as quick as possible so 1/2 is what they would get. If they went out of their way to track down someone looking to buy the gold ring they found then they get full price. Usually at the lower levels my players do go out of their way to get the best price but once that 100 GP ring is peanuts they just take half because it's not worth the bother of hunting down the right buyer.
For me this completely depends on how you are trying to sell the items.
If you are hocking the item at the local pawn shop you are going to get 50%, and all characters are guaranteed 50% value on something unless some very bad roll playing gets involved. This represents being sold or traded to a merchant that fully intends to turn around and sell it to somebody else.
You can attempt diplomacy or roll playing in order to increase your return. You can even try to rip off the merchant, but you don't want a reputation of doing this in towns or shops you have to repeatedly visit.
If you want full value for an item, you are going to have to find somebody that wants that item. There are art collectors, exotic dealers, and other people in any populated town that are likely willing to pay full value or even more for rare pieces of work, and rare weapons. There may even be those odd secluded occultists that will buy cursed items if you look. These require various amounts of looking, diplomacy, and roll playing.
Then of course there is the PC setting up a store of his own to sell the items at 100% value. This requires once again various amounts of diplomacy and roll playing, not so much with customers but employees, government officials, local protection rackets, etc. The amount of profit is going to vary based on how he plays though these, as well as how much free time he has in any specific campaign. Full value or higher should be reserved for more rare items, not necessarily higher value items. Sometimes random items just have odd properties that a art collector, or weapon collector may want to add to their collection. And swords of goblin bane should sell well in towns with goblin problems.
Trade goods should sell at full value, or be bartered at full value. In any town there should be various ways of doing this at trade houses, or even the general store. Trade goods should include raw materials that are made into final products, not actual items. The buyer of a trade good should be buying it with the intention of manufacturing something of use out of it. Any wood, metal, mineral, plant, animal, etc should be considered a trade good, and the value of trade goods should vary based on location, it's really easy to make a table for every main town and adjust percentage numbers based on rolls or economic status of the town.
I usually charge PC's an appraisal fee when they bring in gems, jewlery and other objects d'arte ranging from 3% to 5% of value depending on if they sell them to the appraiser or not.
I've always had gems, coins, trade goods, and essentially pure metal (i.e. gold bars) sell for 100%, but 50% for everything else - including art and jewelry.
So just to be clear: you're saying that it's in the best interests of your party to pop the stones off a piece they find and sell those for full value, and then sell the gold setting at full value for its weight (assuming the jewelry isn't masterwork)?
That.... seems.... wrong...
In terms of my earlier statement, I should have probably added the fact that there needs to be an actual buyer around - someone who both wants the stuff and can recognize its value. (Without the first, there's noone to take the item, and without the second, you could just go out in the woods, paint a bunch of stuff yourself, bring it back, cast glibness and sell it all for 10,000gp a pop.) I also treat buyers in these cases as real people wo will attempt to make themselves some profit, and so you need to nail negotation rolls to get the full 100% value. (90% value, however, should be quite attainable).