Restocking Guide
Introduction
The purpose of this guide is to teach you how to restock. This is just a basic guide, so don't expect it to explain to you how to restock unbuyables. It's mostly meant for people who are new to restocking and want to learn how it works.
The point of restocking
Why do people restock? There's one simple answer to that: to earn neopoints! Restocking is one of the quickest ways to earn a lot of neopoints. It will get you hands full of cash much quicker than you can make money playing games.
Getting started
In order to get started with restocking you need some money to begin with however; it takes some investing money. It is suggested that you first go play games until you've earned roughly 10,000 neopoints, or 10k as restockers would call it. Another thing you need before you can get started is a shop. If you don't have one already you need to create one, you can do so by going here. It is suggested that you have a shop size of at least 4 or 5 if you want to become a successful restocker. As you get better you can keep expanding your shop.
Commonly used terms
Before you start your restocking adventure, it's best if you learned some of the most commonly used expressions and abbreviations, so you won't get confused about what we - or other restockers - are talking about.
| Restocking | Buying items from main Neopian shops and selling them in your own shop for a profit. |
| Restocker | A person who restocks items. |
| RS (RSing, RSed, ...) | Restock (restocking, restocked, ...) |
| UB | Unbuyable item. This item cannot be purchased from user shops because it is too expensive. Items that cost more than 99,999np can only be purchased from other users through Auctions or the Trading Post. |
| Buyable item | Items that you can buy from user shops |
| TP | Trading Post |
| Banned | You can get banned from restocking by refreshing too much in Neopian shops. Don't worry, you won't get banned for refreshing for half an hour, but if you do refresh for a long time you will. To see whether you are banned or not, you can go to Tiki Tack shop in Mystery Island. If there are no items for sale in this shop, then you know you're banned. |
| 5 seconds rule | This is a TNT rule: you can only buy one item every 5 seconds. So if you bought one item, then you have to wait 5 seconds before you are able to buy another one. |
| 1k, 2k, 3k, ... | 1,000np, 2,000np, 3,000np, ... Basically the 'k' represents 'thousand' Neopoints and the number in front of it is the quantity of thousands of Neopoints. So if you had 25,000np you would have 25k. |
| HPD | Half Price Day - the 3rd of every month where all of the neopet shops (not user shops) are half priced |
Where to restock
When you restock you go to one of the Neopian shops. For beginners I recommend the Book shop as you can almost never loose Neopoints, there will be more about which shops are good for beginners or more confident restockers later.
The shops all have their own special number. The first one (number 1) is the Food Shop, you can see this in their URL (or website address).
The Food Shop has an URL that looks like this:
http://www.neopets.com/objects.phtml?type=shop&obj_type=1
Notice the number at the end? That's the shop number. And if you were to replace that 1 with let's say 56, you would land at the Merifoods shop. Each shop has its own specific number. All shops can also be accessed from the explore maps, but if you're too lazy to look for them, the numbers and names are listed below.
Shop numbers and names
If the shop has an abbreviation it commonly goes by it will be listed after the shop name
|
1 Food Shop 2 Magic Shop 3 Toy Shop 4 Clothes Shop 5 Grooming Parlour 6 none 7 Book Shop 8 Collectable Cards 9 Battle Magic Shop - BM 10 Defence Magic - DM 11 used to be Neopian Video Rentals 12 Garden Centre 13 Pharmacy - pharm 14 Chocolate Factory - choco 15 Bakery 16 Health Food Shop 17 Gift Shop 18 Super Smoothies 19 none 20 Tropical Food Shop 21 Tiki Tack 22 Grundos Café 23 Space Weaponry 24 Space Armoury 25 Petpet Shop 26 Robopet Shop 27 Rock Pool 28 used to be Aquatic Delights 29 used to be Utility Fish 30 Spooky Foods 31 Spooky Petpets - spp 32 used to be the Apothecary 33 none 34 Coffee Shop 35 Slushie Shop 36 Ice Crystal Shop 37 Super Happy Icy Fun Snow Shop - SHIFSS 38 Faerieland Bookshop 39 Faerie Foods - ff 40 Faerieland Petpets - fpp 41 Furniture Shop 42 Tyrannian Food 43 Tyrannian Furniture 44 Tyrannian Petpets - tpp 45 Tyrannian Weaponry 46 Hubert's Hot Dogs 47 Pizzaroo - pizza 48 Usukiland 49 Lost Desert Foods 50 Peopatra's Petpets - dpp 51 Sutek's Scrolls 52 none 53 Back to School Shop 54 Battle Supplies 55 Osiri's Pottery |
56 Merifoods 57 Ye Olde Petpets - mpp 58 Post Office Kiosk (Stamp) - stamp 59 Haunted Weaponry 60 Spooky Furniture 61 Wintery Petpets - wpp 62 Jelly Food 63 Refreshments 64 none 65 none 66 Kiko Lake Treats 67 Kiko Lake Carpentry 68 Collectable Coins 69 Petpet Supplies 70 Booktastic Books - kbook or bb 71 Kreludan Homes 72 Café Kreludor 73 Kayla's Potions 74 Darigan Toys 75 Faerie Furniture - ff 76 Roo Island Merchandise Shop 77 Brightvale Books 78 The Scrollery 79 Brigthvale Glaziers 80 Brightvale Armoury 81 Brightvale Fruits 82 Brightvale Motery 83 Royal Potionery 84 Music Shop 85 Lost Desert Medicine 86 Sea Shell Shop - shell 87 Maracite Marvels 88 Maraquan Petpets 89 Geraptiku Petpets - gpp 90 Qasalan Delights 91 Desert Arms 92 Words of Antiquity 93 Faerie Weapons 94 Illustrious Armoury 95 Exquisite Ambrosia 96 Magical Marvels 97 Legendary Petpets - lpp 98 Plushie Palace 99 Altador Cup Souvenirs 100 Wonderous Weaponry 101 Exotic Foods 102 Remarkable Restoratives 103 Shenkuu Petpets - ff 104 Chesterdrawers' Antiques 105 The Crumpetmonger 106 Neovian Printing Press 107 Prigpants & Swolthy, Tailors 108 Mystical Surroundings |
Recommended shops
This chapter is to help restockers with different kinds of experience to find themselves a shop suitable to restock at. Not all shops are added, these are only a few suggestions.
--Beginner--
These shops have a nice, slow pace to them, although they are not always the most profitable. I recommend you only use these to practice your skill, as you wont make a lot of neopoints in these shops.
|
- Book shop - Food shop - Bakery - Petpet Supplies - Pharmacy - Tropical Food Shop - Chocolate |
--Confident--
These shops are for the average restocker. The profit you gain from these shops can reach up to over 150k per day, with not too much problem. These shops restock fairly often, and have a lively pace to them. At times these shops can be very busy, but even the master restockers tend to use these as a secondary shop to restock in.
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- Spooky Foods - Pharmacy - Gardening - Pizzaroo - Grooming Parlour - Unis Clothing - Collectable Card Shop - Fresh Smoothies - Gift Shop |
--Very Confident--
These shops are incredibly lively, and too hard for the majority of the users. The profit gained from these can range to over 300k per day if you focus and have good skill. Due to the fact these shops restock valuable items, they tend to have a slower pace and restock only a few times per half hour, possibly 7 times.
| - Plushie Shop - Toy Shop - Furniture - Post Office - Collectable Sea Shells - Petpet Shop - Robopet Shop - Faerieland Petpets - Wintery Petpets - Kayla's Potions - Legendary Petpets |
--Master Restocker--
These shops are ONLY for the restocker who is INCREDIBLY fast. The profit gained from these shops can easily reach over 700k per day if you focus and manage to get something every other restock. The majority of items that restock in these shops are UB's. Due to the impressive profit to be made in these shops, they take the longest time to restock, possibly once per hour. These shops also only restock 1 or 2 items per round, so unless you're incredibly skilled and lucky, you're going to get frustrated in these.
| - Magic Shop - Defense Magic - Battle Magic - Collectable Coin Shop - Wonderous Weaponry - Royal Potionary - The Scrollery - Exquisite Ambrosia - Words of Antiquity |
--Long Time Shops--
These shops aren't really hard, they restock junk most of the time, but IF they do restock something good, it's ka-ching, jackpot! These shops require a lot of patience. Also, it's not even sure that when you see the 'jackpot item', you will get a chance to buy it. It's at your own risk, you could either get rich and make millions, or you will be refreshing like mad and wasting your time not making any profit at all.
| - Magic Marvels - Brightvale Armoury - Merifoods |
You'll find yourself crawling up that list with ease in time!
Buying Items
Now that you have learned about commonly used terms and about the different types of shops, it is time for some action! It is now time to start buying some items. First of all you should choose your shop, all the shops restock at random times, there is absolutely no pattern. You might have heard that the Food Shop restocks first and all other shops follow it. This was the old system, TNT changed that and now all the shop restock at random times, so your only option is to refresh your shop every few seconds.
For this guide we have chosen to restock at the Book Shop. When the shop is empty is will look like this:
After a while the shop will restock. This means it gets filled with items, then it will look like this:
Now you must select the item you wish to buy. Keep in mind that the whole purpose of restocking is that you make a profit. Usually items that are priced at 2,500np, 5,000np and 10,000np or above are good to buy. Also, most items of which there are only 1, 2 or 3 in stock are the most profitable. Although this is a bit different for each shop, so you might want to observe the shop for a while, and perhaps check a few prices on the Shop Wizard. If you have restocked at the same shop for a while you will get a better notion of which items are most profitable and which items are not worth buying.
Let's say you have selected your item, and wish to buy it. Now all you have to do is click on the item. When going to click on the item, be sure to check the price that the shop is asking for, that way you can already be thinking about what you are going to offer when you get to the haggle page. Once you click on the item, a window will pop up asking you if you are sure you wish to buy that item. It looks like this.
You will of course select 'OK'. There are two ways to do this; you can either click on it with your mouse, or the faster way (which you will most likely come to use, if you want to be a good restocker) is just pressing enter on your keyboard. Now you will see a window that we refer to as 'the haggle window'. It will look like this.
All you have to worry about is the price the shopkeeper is asking for, and the little picture below the price box.
Now it comes the haggle part. Let's say the Shopkeeper is asking 3,000np for a certain item. You have to know the difference between good and bad haggles. If you are trying to buy an item that is really good and makes a lot of profit chances are other people are also trying to buy this item. So you will have to be quicker than them. In order for you to do that you have to enter a good haggle very quickly.
Good haggle: 3131, 3232, 3030, 2929
Bad haggle: 3333, 3222, 3111, 2999
Reason: If you put in let's say 3333 it will take longer to type as 3131. It might seem insignificant to you, but even a split second might get you an item.
So now you know how to haggle. Now what?
Now you need to click on the picture you see below the haggle box. It will look something like the picture below. It's not always going to be the same picture, so be careful. In this case it's a Blue Acara in the Deep Catacombs, but you might as easily get a Yellow Yurble in Tyrannia.
See that pet on the pic? Good, because you need to click on it. In time you will learn to just enter the haggle number without even looking and you'll be able to search for the pet while you're typing. At first this will go more slowly, but as your skills develop you will most definitely notice the difference.
After you have clicked on the pet in the picture, you will get either this window:
This means you got the item you wanted. Congratulations!
Or you will get this window:
This means you didn't get the item you wanted. But don't worry, you'll get the hang of it if you keep practicing.
I have my item, now what?
Good job! Congratulations on your first successful restock! Now that you have your item, you need to sell it. Remember that shop of yours you've made? Well, you're going to sell your item there. But how to get the item to the shop? All you have to do is click on the item in your inventory. A window like the one below will pop up.
Now you need to make sure you chose the correct option. Click on the 'Put into your Shop' option and click 'Submit'. You will get the following window:
You have now successfully stocked your shop with an item!
But wait! There is a second way to put items in your shop. This way is the easiest to use when you have restocked more than one item and you want to put all of them in your shop. This place is called Quick Stock. You can find it at your inventory in the 'Jump To' menu.
You need to check the 'Shop' choice and click 'Submit'. And there you have it: the second version of stocking a shop.
Now you have your item in your shop, and now all you have to do is price it. But how will you know how you should price it?
Pricing items
There is this function on Neopets called the Shop Wizard. This powerful wizard can search through all of the users shops, and show you how much they are asking for an item.
You need to know the name of your item. Go back to your shop for that and copy it, in this example our item is called 'The Gelert Diaries'. You paste the name of you item into the search box where it says 'What are you looking for?'.
Now there are a few options that need explaining:
The first option is area. This allows you to search for an item in shops or galleries. The difference is that in shops the item is for sale, and in galleries it's just for display. So in this case we choose the shop option.
The second option is 'containing my phrase' or 'identical to my phrase'. If you were to enter the word gelert in the box and searched with 'containing my phrase' the Shop Wizard will search for all items that contain the word gelert, such as: Blue Gelert Eraser, Pink Gelert Plushie etc. Since we don't want to search for any of those items and are only interested in the book 'The Gelert Diaries' we use the 'identical to my phrase' option. When you use this option the Shop Wizard will only search for the exact thing you typed into the search box, thats why it is important to spell it correctly.
The last two options are for determining your price range. You can use them if you are looking to buy an item and you don't want to spend more than a certain amount of neopoints. This is not relevant for us, since we are trying to sell an item, not buy one.
After you've filled in the form correctly, click 'Submit' and you will get something like this.
What you need to know now is that the Shop Wizard operates on a certain system. Is searches for the item and shows you the cheapest ones. But if you refresh the page, you will get slightly different results. Different usernames and different prices. That is because the Shop Wizard searches in groups of people whos usernames begin with certain letter of number. They are grouped as follows:
an0
bo1
cp2
dq3
er4
fs5
gt6
hu7
iv8
jw9
kx_
ly
mz
There is also a feature called the Super Shop Wizard. This special shop wizard is for people who have premium neopets (a non free version of neo). There are a few differences between the super shop wizard, often referred to as the SSW, and the normal shop wizard. The main difference is that the SSW will search ALL the user shops and pull up the lowest prices out of all the shops. It doesn't require you to refresh and find the lowest out of all the groups.
The format is about the same, you enter the name of the item, and then you can pick between gallery and shop, and you can put in a min or max. There is also an option at the bottom of the SSW that allows you to check prices only. What this does is it makes it so that it will pull up the average price of the 10 lowest priced shops, it will not give you any names of the shops though. The SSW jubjub gets tired much more quickly than the normal shop wizard jubjub, the check prices only option used to be unlimited, but they have recently limited the amount of times you can check only the prices as well.
Now that you know the ways that you can find the cheapest price of your item, you will need to price it in your shop. You will want to sell your item, so you definitely don't want to price your item too high, because nobody will buy it. There are three strategies for pricing your item right.
First of all you can choose for your item to be the cheapest of the entire normal Shop Wizard results or the Super Shop Wizard results. If you want to do this you have to keep refreshing the results page until you have seen what the cheapest price is overall, and you price your item below that or if you have SSW then you just price it below the first listed shop.
The second strategy is different, with this strategy you don't try to be the cheapest overall, but the cheapest of your group (this only applies to normal shop wizard techniques). If you want to do this, you keep refreshing the results page until you find the page you will be grouped in. For example, if your username starts with a D, you will be in the dq3 group. Find this group and price your item a little lower than the cheapest item on this page.
The third strategy only applies if you have the Super Shop Wizard. You can check the price only option to pull up the average price of the 10 lowest shops, and then you can price your item around what the average price would be.
When should you use which strategy? Of course you are free to do whatever you want. The first strategy will probably get your item sold much quicker than the second/third strategy so if you're in a rush to sell and cash the money, use strategy one. If not, you might do just fine with strategy two/three, but remember that anyone with the Super Shop Wizard might not ever see your item since it will pull up the lowest prices there are.
How do you price your item? Go to your shop and type the price you have in mind in the box that says 'Your Price'. Now you can press enter on your keyboard or click on 'Update' at the bottom of your page.
Now you need to wait for your item to sell.
When your item sells, you will need to check your Shop Till to collect the Neopoints you have earned. On the Sales History page you can see which user has bought your item, but only purchases of 1,000 np or greater will be displayed there.
PIN Protection
As you can see in the screenshot above there is this image with a Skeith at the bottom of the shop page that asks for a PIN number. This is a Neopets protection system, you can protect your shop with a PIN number so that no one can make any changes to the items in your shop without the PIN number. This means that if someone else where to enter your account, they can not price your items differently or remove them from your shop, your items will be safe. This is a great option and we suggest that you use it. If you want to protect your shop with a PIN number, go to the PIN Number Preferences page and enter a PIN number. It's not just your shop you can protect but also your Safety Deposit Box, Neopets, Gallery etc. If at any time later you want to change your PIN number or remove it altogether, this is also possible.
Space Discount
A few years ago, Neopets invented a Neopian Shops Discount card. With this card you could buy things at the Neopian shops, and they would give you an additional percentage off your final haggle price. This card could be obtained by signing up for sponsor offers. Even though these offers haven't existed for years, people who got the card back then, are still able to use it.
The more sponsor offers you signed up for, the greater your percentage off would become. These are the different discount levels (you can click on the name to see the discount card):
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