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This is a question to GMs.
If you gave the players a minor artefact, either as a reward or god forbid it came up as a random treasure, how much would you allow the players to sell it for?
The adventuring troupe we play as have found a minor, non-cursed artefact that is probably more trouble than it's worth to keep once word gets out that the troupe now has it....so, what shall we start the auction at...?
OR shall we just cut our losses and dump said item in the bay as a 'tribute' to Gozreh?
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It's a seller's market so it sells for whatever the players can get. For a Minor Artefact (Depending on it's power and significance) I would be thinking of a minimum offer of 50,000gps as a starting point.
However expect the clerics of that church to be mighty annoyed that you are selling one of their holy items for filthy lucre. Depending on the church this could go very badly for the players.
However expect the clerics of that church to be mighty annoyed that you are selling one of their holy items for filthy lucre. Depending on the church this could go very badly for the players.
That assumes the artifact is divine rather than arcane in origin.
In our home campaign, our group ended up with a huge evil cauldron which was entirely useless to the PCs. We ended up selling it to a LG church interested in destroying it for 10,000 gp. It's hard to sell something only a psychopathic despot could use; unless you're an arms dealer.
If your artifact is actually useful however, then the sky's the limit based on what it can do. The most powerful magics items usually top out around 200,000 gp; so I'd consider that a starting point. The tricky part is in contacting a sufficient number of people/organizations with the resources to bid on it while simultaneously avoiding the less scrupulous people/organizations who'd rather save their money and simply take it from the PCs.
The idea of artifacts simply being sold and forgotten seems like such a waste to me. The possibilities for adventure hooks around artifacts are endless.
What if it doesn't want to be sold?
In my current game, we've run into more than one fairly evil-oriented artifact now. So far, we've handed over the first one to our Pathfinder contact, and we will likely do the same with this latest one as well.
Selling an artifact (especially an evil one) is just begging for some enemy of yours to pick it up and try using it against you.
Destroying it or, failing that, locking it up in a fairly safe place, has been the better solution.
In my current game, we've run into more than one fairly evil-oriented artifact now. So far, we've handed over the first one to our Pathfinder contact, and we will likely do the same with this latest one as well.
Selling an artifact (especially an evil one) is just begging for some enemy of yours to pick it up and try using it against you.
Destroying it or, failing that, locking it up in a fairly safe place, has been the better solution.
We're just going to lock up the sword of world slaying, and leave it here and assume nobody can ever find it, it's perfectly safe, just like that villain who fell off the mountain into a lake that we never found the body of I'm sure he's dead.
Anything that leaves your sight in one piece, is subject to come back to haunt you, no exceptions :)
The Pathfinders are somewhat set up for holding onto those nasty artifacts. A heckuva lot better than a small group of mid level adventurers.
Someone that is breaking into the Vaults of Absalom, is probably someone I won't be ready to deal with personally anyways. They are also much more likely to be there for something else, or at least getting the artifact for some other reason unrelated to myself.