What is the Grand Exchange Central?

This blog is part of a website known as the Grand Exchange Central (GEC). For almost a year now I have been developing this incredibly advanced RuneScape investing tool, and because of that I have neglected my blog more than I should. But I did want to explain what the Grand Exchange Central is so that even more people can enjoy this one of a kind RuneScape tool. And the best part is that it is free.  Plus membership is not required to enjoy most of the sites basic features.

The basic description of the GEC is that it is a repository of data concerning items listed on the RuneScape Grand Exchange. But this description really does not give justice to the power that the GEC can provide RuneScape investors. Yes, the GEC is a repository of price data dating back up to 210 days. But there are so many more tools and features. Here are some of the highlights.

Mock Grand Exchange: Are you a fan of fantasy football or baseball? Well, the Mock Grand Exchange (MGE) is basically the same thing, except instead of having a fantasy team of players you have a fantasy team of RuneScape items. You are provided with mock (fake) RuneScape gp and can purchase and sell mock (fake) RuneScape items. You can watch you fantasy networth grow or decline in comparison to other MGE members. Plus it is an excellent way to try out investment strategies without the risk of losing real RuneScape gp. The Mock Grand Exchange is still in alpha testing, but very stable and has many active users.

Watch Lists: Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to check every day to see if that “killer” item finally has bottomed out or peeked? Well, the Grand Exchange Central lets users set up watch lists that will e-mail alerts when items have reached certain user defined thresholds. Wanna know when Strange fruit hits 9000gp. You can be alerted. Want to know when it hits 1500gp? You can be alerted.

Trending: This feature is in limited alpha testing right now, but soon visitors will be able to submit search queries that look into pricing trends on items. Want to know which items increased by %25 five times over the past three months. Trend Searching will do that. Find those great investments that no one ever thought of.

Runedexes: These are basically the same as Wall Street stock indexes except they lump RuneScape items into various categories such as headgear, malee weapons, gems, etc. You can watch these Runedexes to see how those categories are performing over time. Is it a good time to buy gems? Should I sell some armor? How are sets doing? Or just take a good look at how the overall economy is doing in general.

Parts Lists: Is it better to sell the parts of an item, or make the whole thing and sell it for major profit. Well, the GEC can help. Many items on the GEC contain parts lists that display what the item is made from and what those parts will cost individually. Just a glance at these lists can give you a wealth of information. And parts lists are being added to items on a regular basis.

Comparisons: Many items also have easy read comparison charts so you can quickly tell how it compares to related items. How much does cutting that gem stone effect it’s price?

Extended History: Most items have data going back up to 120 days with graphs covering time periods as short as a week or up to four months. Plus item 120 day Hi’s and Low’s are prominently listed. It’s a wonderful way of quickly determining if an item is about to bust or is primed for a major increase.

Accuracy: The GEC is updated multiple times throughout the day so the data is almost always fresh.

Forums: Get together and talk with other people interested in RuneScape investing. Our forums have strict policies to prevent violation of RuneScape rules so if you’ve been concerned about getting involved with other merchanting forums, the GEC is the place for you. No RWT, bug exploits or cheats allowed. Feel comfortable talking in a place where if anyone tries to promote violating RuneScape rules they will be banned from the forums and the GEC/MGE. Many other sites are tolerant of these things. We are not. We want our members to be safe.

There are many items I forgot to mention. But what I did mention should already have you wanting to check out the site. So go ahead, check out the

GRAND EXCHANGE CENTRAL

Wonderful news for those of you interested in the investment side of this website. The Grand Exchange Central has now surpassed the 1000 items mark. This exceeds how many items I thought the database would contain and is only half of what I expect to have entered into the database within the coming weeks. Each item is updated daily and we are now maintaining a 90 day history on all items (though because the GEC itself is not 90 days old it will take a little time to fill in the histories). I am kicking around keeping a year long history of weekly averages.

Another big news item is for those of you involved in Summoning. The GEC now contains a listing of all the summoning pouches and scrolls. But the best part about this is the “parts list” included on each item page. Now at a simple glance you can see exactly how much each pouch will cost to produce. This will let summoners out there see which pouches actually make a profit (sorry, most do not).

Even though the GEC is not as complete as I would like, to the best of my knowledge, I have all the headwear, bodywear, and handwear already entered. There is also a lot listed that is not included in those categories. I am diligently working on getting footwear, weapons, and legwear entered. And please remember that the GEC only lists tradeable items (it is an investment website after all).  Also, if you happen to spot something I may of forgotten please leave a comment here or on the GEC main page.

I’ve also started to add alchemey values to various items.  I will add these values to the rest of the database as time alows.  Right now I have to go back and add to a 1000+ items, so it may take a little time.  Newly added items will have the values added imediately.

I made a couple of updates to the Grand Exchange Central beta site.  There is now a Grimy Herb Index.  Also, now many items have side by side comparisons.  For example the Grimy Ranarr is compared to Clean Ranarr and Raw Chicken is compared to Cooked Chicken.  These comparisons are located on the individual item pages. 

In the near future I plan on also including a parts list for certain items.  For example, a Potato with butter will also provide a summary of the prices for raw potatos, buckets of milk, baked potatos, and pats of butter because all four of those items can go into the process of making a Potato with Butter.  It is my hope that these parts lists will give readers a better idea of what items can be purchased on the GE without significant lost to profits while making individual items.

I am still working on a GEC database search engine!  Hopefully I will have something soon.  Right now we have over 60 individual items.  We should have that number up to a hundred by the end of the week.

Well, after confronting various technical issues, my Grand Exchange Central area of this site is progressing nicely. I am moving it out of alpha stages and now calling it a beta. For those of you who haven’t read my prior posts on The Grand Exchange Central, here is a description of it an some of its uses.

I view the Grand Exchange Central (GEC) as a resource to make informed investment decisions in the world of Runescape. The GEC is not all inclusive of all items Runescape. There are tens of thousands of purchasable items in the world of Runescape. Only a small percentage of that total is of any investment value or market effect. That small percentage is what the GEC will follow.

On the Runescape site item market history only goes back a month. On my Grand Exchange Central the data I have goes back to about 45 days. Obviously newly added items will have less available data. I plan on extending that period to 60 or even 90 days (more than double as much as available from the official GE site). With this added information trends can be more accurately seen.

I have broken up much of the economy into indexes (or indices) which represent various segments of the Runescape world. Currently the beta contains an Economy Index, A Wood Index, A Herb Index, and a WIWI Index. Very soon it will include Food, Seed, Potion, Rune, Weapons, Armour and other basic Indexes. And not too long from now other new Indexes will include oddball things like luxury and rare items. I am still trying to determine the best levels at which to calibrate these Indexes. I am leaning toward calibrating the higher value indexes to 10,000 points and the lower value indexes to 1000 points.

One of my priorities even before adding new indexes is to add a search feature. Right now the GEC only has about 50 items and can be looked through fairly easily. When I am finished I plan on having as many as 500 plus items and a search feature is going to be very important. Expect to see the search feature within the coming week.

After I am done including most of the items and indexes I may focus my attention incorporating smart projection routines into the GEC pages that will attempt to predict if certain items will continue declining or improving. Of course any prediction made by the GEC or anywhere else on the Runescape Thoughts Website are as is, caveat emptor, not guaranteed, past results not indicative of future returns, and so on.

If I really get my butt moving I may also include additional item information to the item pages. This information may include the amount of experience earned from making the item, the amount of healing from ingesting an item, and so forth. Don’t expect to see anything like that for months. I will also try to include Index RSS feeds so they can be added to google and yahoo homepages.

If you can think of any items that have investment value or have a direct impact on other parts of the Runescape economy please leave a comment and let me know. I will try, but not guarantee, to include all requested items in the Grand Exchange Central. The Runescape Thoughts is a small site on a free host and simply doesn’t have enough resources to track the whole of Runescape. But we will be happy to accommodate any reasonable requests within our means.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was working on a limited Grand Exchange information repository. Well, I have made a little progress and decided I would let my readers see a little of the progress I have made over the past month or so. Right now the Alpha test is very limited and is only %5 complete. But I hope to make some steady progress concerning indexes and projections. I also want to remind everyone that the Runescape Thoughts Grand Exchange Central will only contain a very small percentage of item information in relation to all the possible items that are available on the GE. My main focus is to provide information on the best investments in Runescape. I don’t see any need to include data on Bronze knifes or weeds. Anyway, give it a glance. I’ll post most up dates as I finish coding various pages.

http://runethoughts.x10hosting.com/grandex.php