Dumps vs crashes: will the price come back?
How to tell a GE dump, a burst of selling that tends to recover, from a crash, where the item is worth less for good. With today's biggest moves.
Offerbook · Published · 4 min read
When a price drops fast, the first question is whether it will come back. A dump usually does, at least part of the way. A crash usually does not. Telling them apart is mostly about why the price fell and how much was traded on the way down.
A dump
A dump is a burst of selling: one large holder, or a group, sells a lot of an item at once. Buy offers get filled one after another at lower and lower prices, and the price drops in minutes. Nothing about the item has changed, so once the selling stops, buyers come back and the price tends to recover.
Offerbook's Pulse flags a move when the price changes by 5% or more in about 45 minutes on at least 3 times the item's usual volume. The volume rule matters: a big move on almost no trades is usually one odd sale, not a dump.
A crash
A crash is the market changing its mind about what the item is worth. The usual causes are a game update that makes the item less useful, a new source that increases supply, or a better item that replaces it. Prices fall for days and settle lower. Buying into a crash because the price "looks cheap" is how flippers lose the most.
How to tell them apart
- Check for news. An update or announcement about the item, or about content that uses it, points to a crash.
- Look at the shape. A dump is a sharp drop and then a flattening. A crash keeps stepping down.
- Watch the buy side. In a dump, buyers come back quickly at the lower price. In a crash, the low keeps getting lower.
- Compare with the longer history. The price history on each item page shows the all-time range and 30, 90 and 365-day changes, so you can see if today's price is unusual.
The biggest moves right now
These are the largest 24-hour risers and fallers with enough volume to count.
| Item | Mid price | 24h | Traded 24h |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runite limbs | 19,082 gp | +1.1% | 1,629 |
| Raw admiral pie | 1,757 gp | +0.4% | 59,468 |
| Heavy ballista | 1.28m gp | +0.3% | 1,061 |
| Bagged magic tree | 57,435 gp | -0.8% | 1,077 |
| Uncooked dragonfruit pie | 2,008 gp | -0.7% | 17,930 |
| Mind altar teleport (tablet) | 3,155 gp | -0.5% | 14,223 |
A falling item can still be a good buy, but only once the selling has stopped and only with gp you can leave in it for a while. If you are unsure, wait: missing a recovery costs nothing, buying a crash does. The dump glossary entry and the market indices help with the bigger picture.
Offerbook is gp only and has nothing to do with real-world trading. Prices move, so nothing here is a promise of profit. Every trade is one you make yourself in game.