Trading

Trading is a feature that allows the player to buy and sell items at a shop for inventory or profit. Most stores use gols as a trading currency, although some stores also use other items, such as Data Discs and various badges. Additionally, stores that use gols as currency use market price, which determines how much items are sold for on a daily basis.

Factors that affect store prices

Market price

An 85% market price causing discounts on some items

This section puts aside any other price modifiers. Actual in-game figures will take all modifiers into account.

Market price is a value that alters the price of an item during a transaction. It only affects buying and selling items for Gols (⁠⁠), not other Currencies. If the market price is 100%, items will be bought and sold for their full buy and sell prices (listed on shop and item pages, and in-game infoboxes for items' sell values^[?]).

The current market price is visible in the upper right of the UI of all stores, and is shared between all stores for the current in-game day. This displayed market price is rounded to the nearest percent, while the game uses an unrounded value (with additional decimal places) to determine prices. All items being offered for sale in Gols will already have the market price (and any other modifiers) factored in when displaying prices.

Market prices above 100% indicate an above-average value for goods. Items sold by the store will be sold above their normal price, and items that the player sells will earn the player a better price. On these days, it is more favorable for the player to sell items to stores and less favorable than normal for the player to buy items from stores. Market prices below 100% indicate a below-average value for goods. Stores will sell their goods for cheaper prices, and offer less money to the player when the player sells his or her goods to the store.

The player can maximize profit and minimize losses by selling goods on days that have a high market price and buying goods on days that have a low market price. The player should keep in mind whether an item is seasonal or only sold in certain weather conditions, however, since the item might no longer be available if the player waits to buy it on another day. For examples of items only sold during different seasons, see the furniture sold by Best Brother.

It is not officially known what factors cause the market price to change, but there are three theories that seek to explain it. The first is that each day, the market prices change in correspondence to the season and weather. The second theory is that if the player buys items from the store, the market price percentage increases over time, and if the player sells items to the store, the market price decreases. However, reports have stated that gamers have seen both, high and low prices in each season, regardless of selling/buying in an entire month. The third theory is that it might also be a calendar dated fluctuation, as in a specific day, or nearing a holiday may fluctuate prices. _[ verify ] More testing is needed.

Discounts

The player can get a discount at many of the stores by improving their Relationship with the store owner/clerk. Contrary to how market price functions, these discounts apply to all items the store sells and not just the gol priced items. Market price and relationship discounts get applied in a multiplicative fashion. For example, an item that normally sells for 100⁠⁠ will cost 64⁠⁠ if the market price is 80% and the player has a 20% discount from their relationship with the store owner. Likewise, the Business Mind skill works the same for items the store buys from the player: if the market price is 120% and the player has the maximum 8% bonus from Business Mind, then an item that normally sells for 100⁠⁠ will instead sell for 130⁠⁠ (with the value rounded up to the nearest whole number, from 129.6 to 130).

Ratios

Ratios are used to conduct fair trading. Ratios are fair trade defined as a quantitative relation between two amounts showing the number of times one value contains or is contained within the other: in other words, selling x amount of an item provides y amount of an item in return. Ratios are read as "x:y", or "x to y".

As a result, commonly gathered items, such as Wood, must be sold in higher quantities per 1 Gol. For example, the ratio of a store buying Wood is "2 Wood:1 Gol". This means that the player cannot sell less than 2 Wood in exchange for Gols, as this conducts unfair trading (though the player can exchange Wood and Stone in a 1:1 ratio at A&G Construction each day). Fair trading is also true for trading one rare item for a large quantity of one item.

Selling items to shops

Each store in Portia sells different items and buys back items in relation to the store type; for example, Alice's Flower Shop buys and sells floral but cannot buy non-floral related items from the player.

Most items have a sell price and can be sold to shops for gols. Item sell prices are affected by market price. Additionally, some extremely common items, such as Stone, can only be sold in more than a 1:1 item:gol ratio in order to ensure fair trading.

To sell items to shops, the items to be sold must be in the player's inventory. Upon interacting with the shop, the player can select those items in their inventory menu (listed to the right of the shop inventory), then select Sell to sell the items.

To see which items each shop will buy, see Buybacks.

Inflation

All stores have a budgeted amount of Gols to buy from the player; this budget increases a small amount each day, which is the amount indicated in the Inflation field of each shop's page on this wiki. Upon reaching that budget, the store can no longer buys items from the player until the next day.

Shops

Icon	Name	Type	Owner/Clerk	Location	Daily hours	Operations
	Alice's Flower Shop	Gifts Decor	Alice	Main Street	7:00 - 19:00	Daily
	A&G Construction Store	Furniture Decor	Gust	Peach Plaza (inside A&G)	8:00 - 18:00	Daily
	Badge Exchange	Gifts	Django	The Round Table	7:00 - 22:00	Daily
	Best Brother	Furniture	Paulie	Central Plaza	7:30 - 18:30	Daily
	Church Store	Farming	Nora	Church of the Light	7:00 - 18:00	Daily
				Central Plaza Peach Plaza	9:30 - 18:00	Tuesday and Thursday
	Clothing Store	Clothing Materials	Carol	Central Plaza	7:30 - 19:00	Daily
	Dr. Xu's Clinic	Consumables	Xu	Dr. Xu's Clinic	10:00 - 18:00	Daily
	Emily's Food Stall	Ingredients	Emily	Central Plaza	7:00 - 15:00	Winter Solstice
	Farm Store	Farming	Sophie	Sophie's Ranch	8:00 - 19:00	Daily
	Food Store	Consumables	Sonia	Main Street	7:00 - 22:00	Daily
	Gift Exchange	Clothing Decor	None	Peach Plaza (Commerce Guild)	8:00 - 23:59	Daily
	Harbor Trade Station	Furniture Equipment Recipes	None	Portia Harbor	7:00 - 22:00	Daily
	Martha's Bakery	Consumables	Martha	Main Street	8:00 - 20:00	Daily
	McBurger	Consumables	McDonald	Central Plaza	10:00 - 24:00	Wednesday and Friday
	McD's Jumpin' Livestock	Ranching Ingredients	McDonald	Sophie's Ranch	7:00 - 22:00	Daily
	Mysterious Man's Store	Rare valuables	Mysterious Man	Central Plaza Peach Plaza	7:00 - 20:30	27th-28th of each season
	Oaks' Handicrafts	Souveniers	Oaks	Central Plaza	7:30 - 24:00	Monday and Thursday
	Research Center Exchange	Data chips Diagrams	None	Central Plaza (Research Center)	9:00 - 18:00	Daily
	South Block Trade Post	Gifts Materials	Yeye	South Block	7:00 - 22:00	Daily
	Temporary Store	Materials	Tourists	Abandoned Ruins	7:00 - 22:00	Randomly
	Tody's Fish-o-Rama	Fish	Tody	Central Plaza	7:00 - 22:00	Sunday
	Total Tools	Equipment Materials	Mars	Central Plaza	7:30 - 19:00	Daily