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

If you are not interested in investing in Runescape and using the Grand Exchange then this post will be of no interest to you.  But if you spend your time trying to figure out which GE items will make you the most profit, then read further.

 I have reached the point where I can safely say I have about 80% of all the items I want entered into the Grand Exchange Central Database. Nearly 2000 items with individual values exceeding 3 billion gp.  Because I have devoted a lot of time to the development of the GEC and plan to devoting even more time I have finally got a paid hosting service and a real domain name. www.grandexchangecentral.com. Everything GEC related has already been moved over to the new server and domain and I have setup 301 redirects so visitors from search engines and other blogs can seemlessly be transferred to the new domain. I am sure there will be a few bad links that will crop up, but for the most part everything appears to be functioning properly. It is best to make this move now while the GEC is still small and has very limited search engine placement and visitors.

My blog, Runescape Thoughts, will continue to remain on my free x10hosting account. I plan on continuing to write articles with the same frequency that I currently am now. Which is about one every week to ten days.

Concerning the GEC, I just need to finish off food, range and mage weapons and parts and I will be pretty much finished setting up the database. I am sure when I finish entering those items I will remember a whole lot more things to add, but at least the end is in sight. There are a smattering of a few dozen other non runedexable items I also want to add. Anyway, I see the initial DB building finishing up in the next week or two.

After I get everything entered I am going to proceed by doing following things, all likely simutanoiusly.

1) I will review all the items I have entered into the GEC and confirm alchemy values and parts lists for accuracy. I’ll also try to setup logical comparisons. Anyway, I will likely just work on 25 items a day so it will be about three months before I finish with the “polishing” of the database.

2) I will be continuing to develop and design new content and ways of analyzing the GEC data. We have charts and tables and tickers, but there can always be more. Recently I started working on a Currency Exchange page where Tokkuls and other Runescape currencies are compared to gp. I also plan on tracking the value of the Gold Piece to see how it has performed against itself. The are tons of way to display the wealth of information in the GEC database.

3) I am going to set up some forums that will focus on investing on the Grand Exchange and other ways to make money in Runescape. Real world trading and exploiting bugs and using cheats will be strictly taboo and users who promote such activities will be banned. Of course other general discussion areas will be available.

4) This  item I am most excited about. I will be setting up a Mock Grand Exchange.  A mock exchange can be used as a “game” or as an investment training tool. Users will be allotted a certain amount of mock (virtual) gp and be able to purchase items in the mock exchange. Then they can track how those items perform over time without the risk of using real gp in the real Runescape. After I get the bugs worked out I might even implement contests where users can compete against each other to see who is the best investor.

5) I will finally start actively promoting the Grand Exchange Central. Currently I have made no attempts to mention it on other fan sites or blogs. I want a stable and advanced system in place before trying to bring a bunch of visitors to the site.

All of this and more.  And it is all for free.  I have written this site because I love the game and also because it gives me an excellant chance to train my coding and web development skills.  I have no plans now or in the future of ever charging to access the GEC or any parts of it.  The GEC for me is fun and I would rather have a great and well visited free site then a so-so and barely active pay site.

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.