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5[[quoteright:349:[[WebAnimation/DorklyOriginals https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dopey_shopkeep.png]]]]
6
7->''"Tip two, pick up everything - ''everything'' - and sell it. '''''Everything.''''' Crisp Basilisk Urethra? Pick it up. Put it in your bag. There's somebody out there who wants that."''
8-->-- ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'', [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/02/02 "Internalize This Deep Wisdom"]]
9
10In video games, regardless of a vendor NPC's specialization and location, they will never refuse to buy items from you. And they will never run out of money.
11
12That's right, a bread baker in a poor village will gladly pay you for anything from ShopFodder to the InfinityPlusOneSword, as will a renowned shield crafter in a capital city. What exactly they do with these items depends on the game. If you're lucky, the same vendor will offer them for sale at triple the price (even if it has nothing to do with the items they usually sell); otherwise, they will vanish without a trace and be gone forever.
13
14It is unknown how these vendors make a living; they can't profitably resell the things you sell to them, since [[KarlMarxHatesYourGuts all the other vendors in the game usually pay the exact same prices for the same items]]. This especially applies to the vendors in [=RPGs=] that are unlucky enough to be the closest to the favorite player hangouts in a HubCity: nobody ever buys anything from them, but everyone uses them to dispose of their junk.
15
16Of course, this is done for [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality the player's own good]], so they won't have to run in circles seeking a vendor that would buy a particular item: they can just sell all of their ShopFodder and equipment that's BetterOffSold in one go.
17
18This is unrelated to the situation where, in an effort to keep the player from disposing of an unknown but important quest item, all stores either refuse the sale or pay $0 for it.
19
20Compare with WeSellEverything.
21
22----
23!!Examples:
24
25[[foldercontrol]]
26
27[[folder:Action Adventure]]
28* ''VideoGame/AnnoMutationem'' has all manner of random knick-knacks, outdated gadgets, and literal garbage whose sole purpose is to be sold for money. Realistically, they barely sell for anything more than 1-3 credits a piece, though to be fair, you can pick up a ''lot'' of them.
29* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'':
30** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'': There's a hyperactive townsman who buys anything, including icky bugs.
31** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' has the "curiosity shop", where you can sell fairies, bugs, [[RefugeInAudacity Zora Eggs]], and fish. All they ever sell during the game's events are a stolen bomb bag, a stay-awake MaskOfPower, and your own sword or bottle when it is stolen by a bird.
32** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'': Beedle cheekily says he'll buy "aaaaaanything," but so do all other merchants (except Kilton, who only accepts monster parts, ''and'' he also uses his own exclusive currency). Weapons, bows, and shields cannot be sold because you can't buy them anywhere, but all food, elixirs, ingredients for those two things, and armor parts can be sold to any [=NPC=] who sells anything. This is particularly strange because most vendors have very limited quantities of wares (usually about 1 to 5 of each item, restocking after some amount of in-game time), but they have infinite money for buying things they never sell.
33* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' has the merchant(s) who will buy absolutely everything you're willing to sell and have an unlimited supply of money just in case you want to sell off everything.
34[[/folder]]
35
36[[folder:First Person Shooters]]
37* In the LooterShooter ''Videogame/EscapeFromTarkov'', the various traders will typically only buy things that cover their interests. [[CorruptQuartermaster Prapor]] will mostly buy Russian-style equipment. [[DirtyCop Peacekeeper]] will mostly buy Western/NATO equipment. [[MountainMan Jaeger]] will buy shotguns, sniper rifles and survival gear. This is however played straight with [[FriendInTheBlackMarket Fence]] who will buy ''anything''. Empty fuel cans, broken armor, broken guns. Prior to the addition of Jaeger, he was the only one buying melee weapons. But he pays ''very little'' compared to other sellers.
38[[/folder]]
39
40[[folder:MMORPG]]
41* Used to be partially averted in ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', as vendors would pay less for enhancements that didn't match what they were selling.
42* You can sell almost anything to any vendor in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', no questions asked. You can even buy back the items you sold in case you sold it by mistake. There's also a small village in Doma that will buy your items at higher prices since you are donating them to help the village rebuild, though you can only donate as much as their weekly budget allows.
43* In ''VideoGame/MapleStory'', you can sell anything except certain Quest Items and Cash Shop Items to ''any'' merchant, even vending machines and merchants who only accept special coins for their own goods. (Although the latter still pays you in mesos, the currency of the game.)
44* Any shopkeeper NPC in ''VideoGame/PiratesOfTheCaribbeanOnline'' can purchase any sellable equipment - blacksmiths can purchase clothing, gypsies will buy guns, jewelers will take voodoo fetishes off of your hands, etc.
45* A particular example comes from ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}''. All items can be sold at a general store. However, certain shops that deal in a more specific area of business might only accept certain items; like how a shield store would only buy shields. But selling items to these specialty shops can earn more money than selling to a general store.
46* Any vendor in ''VideoGame/WildStar'' will purchase your items--whatever they may be. Crafting commodities like metals, wood, and leathers? One of the most advanced pieces of technology that exist today? [[BreadEggsMilkSquick The body parts of your fallen enemies?]] ANY person with a C over their head ''will'' buy it.
47* One must feel sorry for the vendors closest to the auction houses in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. Nobody ever buys anything from them, they're just used as dumps for whatever vendor trash an adventurer happens to have, and a repair station for gear the characters wear or are about to sell. There are a few exceptions (quest items and some unique items have no sale price and can't be sold) but considering all the garbage that vendors DO buy, it's a pretty moot point.
48** You can sell anything to any vendor, even selling epic weapons to the fruit merchant in the forest, or the poor Forsaken selling cockroach pets under the steps in Undercity.
49** Also "We repair anything". Small town tailor? They'll repair your plate mail despite the lack of a forge!
50[[/folder]]
51
52[[folder:Real Time Strategy]]
53* ''VideoGame/SpellForce'' is particularly egregious. You pick up an absurd amount of loot in this game, the majority of it totally worthless to you until you take it to a merchant. Irrespective of what he sells, he'll give you a price for it. After a couple of levels, currency becomes literally completely worthless as you have more money than God. It's less frustrating than having to find the relevant merchant (considering not everywhere has them, and Greyfall has like ''fifteen'' merchants, all selling slightly different flavours of the same worthless trash (which is worthless almost before you leave the town).
54[[/folder]]
55
56[[folder:Role-Playing Game]]
57* In ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'', merchants will buy anything that isn't a story item. This includes rotten food, random personal letters, and items that you stole from them mere minutes ago.
58* In ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'', the Poké Marts will buy any item that isn't a key item, although at half price of the original value. Oddly, they can buy the Moon Stone and Master Ball (which isn't sold in stores), but for ''free''. Then again, if you're stupid enough to sell the one-of-a-kind Master Ball, you probably deserved getting nothing for it. This only applies in ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue''. Every other game has them refuse to buy them (until, for the Moon Stone, you were capable of getting a theoretical unlimited amount of them).
59* While the SNES ''VideoGame/{{Lufia}}'' games obey this trope as far as all vendors buying what you sell without exception, they do provide an explanation to what happens to sold items: they are shipped to Forfeit Island, an island that sells exclusively merchandise you have sold in shops elsewhere in the world.
60* While ''VideoGame/ValkyrieProfile2Silmeria'' allows you to sell any item to any shop you find, in order to gain access to the best buyable gear, specific items have to be sold to specific merchants.
61* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' merchants have a finite (but renewable) supply of coins, but will still buy literally anything, including plot items and ''stock stolen from their own shop''. In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 1}}'' and ''2'' it will remain in stock for you to buy back later (usually, anyway) and certain vendors will offer better prices for certain items. Lampshaded in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', as Moira Brown cheerfully reminds you "Remember, I'll buy ''whatever'' you're selling". Of course, this is doubly fitting as she ropes you into doing field research for her book, and it's pretty easy to feed her false information.
62** One vendor in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' even allows you to steal cash, which allows you to buy their entire stock and steal all your money back in one go.
63** It's also partially justified in that there may actually be a market for random bits of junk [[ScavengerWorld in the Fallout universe]]: since there aren't exactly a lot of resources available, it's not implausible that someone might find a use for old tin cans or whatever. This is especially evident in Fallout 3, where you can craft weapons out of scavenged junk. Indeed, many ''Fallout 3'' merchants sell junk items, and one caravan specializes in it.
64** Even more strangely than this, every single friendly character will barter anything at all from you in the first two games, regardless of where they are or what they might be needing, although they usually don't have much to offer. Sometimes (if they don't have it equipped) they're willing to sell their only weapon in the middle of wilderness!
65** Perhaps the most bizarre case is in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', where you can sell items to the terminal used to buy upgrades for the Lucky 38 presidential suite.
66** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' introduces the workbenches mechanic. So all that nonsense picked up you don't give a darn about anymore? In the context of the game, someone can use it to literally improve their house. Patch holes. Maybe even fix a machine gun turret.
67* ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'':
68** You could acquire a FOR SALE sign. Using it in any location, be it a city or a secret, alien controlled cavern, will cause someone to come by, and ask what you're selling. They will buy anything from you at the same price a normal store would. Although if one is inside a dungeon, you will eventually get a call from a potential customer complaining that they couldn't get to you. How they got your unlisted cell phone number in the first place is another matter entirely. The game even jokes about the ridiculousness of the situation. The patrons to your "shop" will say things like "Thanks! This is exactly what I wanted!" and "This was definitely worth the trip out here!"
69** In the Twoson and Fourside malls there is a booth that only buys merchandise, but the sign says it is the "Returns" booth. That does not stop them from buying things you never could have purchased at those malls: chickens, snakes, deathrays, "Meteotites", as well as any food you might have (try getting refunded for a pizza at the returns center in your mall).
70** There's also a healer in every hospital who buys mushrooms, which are a status ailment. This is one of the few ways to get rid of the mushroomized status.
71* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' plays this straight to bizarre extremes. Your primary means of raising money is collecting and selling ShopFodder. Any shopkeeper, including wandering merchants, will buy ''any'' of this (as well as any old equipment or extra items you wish to sell.) Keep in mind that the loot items you can sell range from innocuous stuff like wolf pelts and cactus fruit to things like meat that is so tainted that eating it condemns you to eternal damnation, or grimoires that give details on spells that could destroy the world. Shopkeepers also have unlimited gil to buy your stuff with, which leads to some really strange sequences - you can sell thousands and thousands of gil worth of loot to a guy who ostensibly doesn't have enough gil to pay for a river crossing. (You're exempt from this fee because in order to get the crossing to run you first help the villagers with a problem they're having, but it makes you wonder how much they normally charge...) The aforementioned loot items, no matter how mundane, can be used to create all kinds of items. While they're often just potion six-packs, or something like that, they occasionally turn out to be something like the InfinityPlusOneSword, which raises the question of how a shopkeeper managed to craft Ye Olde Hammer Of Massive Internal Hemmorhaging out of pebbles and wolf musk.[[note]]Kill enough of specific enemy types and the game actually gives you answers to that.[[/note]]
72* ''Videogame/MyWorldMyWay'' does this, although you can pick up the items again from [[strike:the same]] [[PaperThinDisguise different]] merchants in other towns after you've sold them.
73* Aside from [[WeSellEverything selling every kind of weapon or armor the characters need]], Officer Kurosawa from ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' can ''buy'' anything they come across --particularly, the inexplicable equipment that appears in the inexplicable treasure chests that generate within the inexplicable, otherdimensional EvilTowerOfOminousness that appears out of thin air in place of the local high school.
74** The same happens with the owner of Daidara Metalworks in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' who takes Kurosawa's place as the game's primary equipment vendor, and will also purchase anything - and indeed needs to be sold all the ShopFodder you scavenge off of Shadows, because these new materials expand his inventory.
75** Iwai, their successor from ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}'', continues the trend of buying all your crap. Though his role is expanded compared to the previous ones, due to him being a Confidant (''5'' equivalent to Social Links). He's even acknowledged in story as buying anything, and is a rather shady guy with a lot of connections [[spoiler: and also ex-{{Yakuza}}]].
76** In ''VideoGame/{{Persona 2}}'', any shop will buy whatever you have on hand, though they only sell specific things; stuff you sell off is consigned to oblivion.
77* ''VideoGame/PlanetAlcatraz'' plays this trope straight. Want to sell weapons and armor at food vendors? No problem. How about selling old clothes, drugs, and other nameless junk at the gun shop? Go ahead.
78* Justified in ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney''. Instead of a store, your [[BaseOnWheels home base]] is outfitted with a manufacturing lab, which uses raw materials ("Forma") and energy units ("Macca," the currency of the demon world) [[WeSellEverything to produce equipment and consumables]]. So, if you have unneeded items in your inventory, you can take them back to the lab to be disposed of. While the materials are lost, you can salvage some Macca in return --in effect, "selling" the items at a loss.
79* In ''Videogame/{{Recettear}}'', you ARE the person who buys everything. You also [[WeSellEverything Sell it back to the community for profit]].
80* In ''VideoGame/ExitFate'', all shopkeepers will buy anything you sell them except ''any'' spells, even if they themselves sell spells. Possibly justified by how spells work and interact with their users.
81* Lampshaded in ''VideoGame/ShiningForce''. If you sell something to a shopkeeper that he doesn't sell in his store, he'll say "Thanks. I don't sell this, but I know someone who does!"
82* Done with all shops in the ''Videogame/MarioAndLuigi'' series, who'll buy items and gear alike with no questions asked. Okay, the ones in the Dream Worlds and the main shop in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' have seperate 'items' and 'gear' menus for this, but they'll still buy pretty much anything you can ever find the game, even the one time exclusives.
83* In ''VideoGame/FantasyLife'' there are about half a dozen different types of stores selling weapons, clothes, furniture and crafting material for different jobs. Each will take items that are be sold by one of the other stores.
84* In ''VideoGame/LuxarenAllure'', any store that sells anything will buy everything in your inventory, except for key items.
85* ''VideoGame/MasterOfTheMonsterLair'': The weapon/armor shop purchases any items/equipment you find.
86* In ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'', this includes half-eaten, rotten fruit and bones left over from chicken or lamb.
87* In ''VideoGame/RavenswordShadowlands'', no matter the merchant, they always buy anything you sell to them.
88* ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' plays this trope straight, as any merchant will buy any item you wish to sell, even if you're offloading an assault rifle at the local medical clinic. It's averted in the second and third games, but only because you can't sell anything at all in either game due to the way the inventory system changed.
89* You can sell any non-key item to any vendor or person in ''VideoGame/DivinityOriginalSinII'', but they need to have the gold themselves to buy it off you. So if you manage to empty their pockets through honest commerce, you'll have to wait a while (or level up) before you can sell stuff to them again, unless you buy something from them first.
90[[/folder]]
91
92[[folder:Simulation Game]]
93* ''VideoGame/{{Aerobiz}}'': The "World Lease" corporation will purchase any aircraft and at any quantity from you. Got a '40s era, piston-powered Douglas DC-4 to sell in 1975? We'll buy it for half the price you purchased it! Got 20 brand new B747-400's? We'll buy them for half the price you purchased it, no problem!
94* In ''VideoGame/{{Littlewood}},'' you can sell absolutely anything in your Marketplace, including weeds. This is justified in-universe as the primary buyers of your goods being Gobbys, who are {{Extreme Omnivore}}s whose favorite foods are, in fact, weeds. No one in-universe is quite sure why Gobbys buy things they don't seem to eat, but it does mean they help keep the economy going.
95* In ''VideoGame/NoUmbrellasAllowed'', Hanja's JunkJunk Shop buys any of your items that have been in your inventory for more than 5 days at half their appraised prices.
96* ''VideoGame/{{Spiritfarer}}'': Unlike the Raccoon Inc. vendors, Francis will gladly buy anything from Stella except for most Special Items. She can even sell her [[GratuitousRussian "tchochke"]] (treasures) to him [[ShopFodder for a high price.]]
97* ''VideoGame/TomodachiLife'' has a pawn shop that will buy your treasures no matter what it is, even if it's something bizarre like a dirty diaper.
98[[/folder]]
99
100[[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]]
101* In ''VideoGame/{{Chulip}}'', it's possible to sell the Poopie you fish out of garbage cans to the various stores scattered about Long Life Town.
102* ''VideoGame/{{Necesse}}'' has a Pawnbroker who occasionally visits settlements and can exchange any item for gold. He can be made a permanent resident of a settlement if you meet the right conditions. Other shopkeepers will only buy certain items related to their business.
103* All the traders in ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'' will buy anything you offer them. You can buy the items back for the same price until you close the interaction window, at which point they'll be gone. They even accept items that are considered worthless, but they won't pay for them. You'll have to, though, if you want them back, as they have suddenly gained value.
104* In ''VideoGame/TheSimsMedieval'', you can sell most of the things you gather, even byproducts that seem worthless. You can sell ''pond scum''.
105[[/folder]]
106
107!!Non-video game examples
108[[folder:Literature]]
109* In ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' books, Harry King buys anything, or charges a fee to remove it, which amounts to the same thing. He started with the bucket latrines outside seedy taverns (hence his old slogan, "Taking the Piss Since 1961!"), then moved on to every other kind of trash collection imaginable and became one of the wealthiest men in the city because he's getting paid on both sides: people are paying him to take the waste away, and other people are paying him FOR it. (The tanners use urine, the farmers need fertilizer and there's ''nothing'' you can't sell to the Alchemists. He also recycles rags and old paper into new paper.)
110[[/folder]]
111
112[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
113* One of the newest types of reality TV shows centers around people who will buy and sell all sorts of weird odds and ends, which often seem worthless but can be resold for a high price to the few people who are willing to pay for them. ''Series/PawnStars'' centers around a family-owned pawn shop whose staff will buy just about anything they think they can resell in their shop, while shows like ''Series/AmericanPickers'' and ''Series/AuctionHunters'' center around people who visit rural communities or bid on the contents of unclaimed storage bins and buy a wide variety of things that they then resell to interested buyers.
114[[/folder]]
115
116[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
117* ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'': Members of the Satrapy of Pearls take a [[MagicallyBindingContract binding vow]] "to never turn down an offer to buy, barter or sell", though they can haggle at their discretion. With the magic of faerie, they can potentially deal in ''anything'', from the exotic to the [[InsubstantialIngredients insubstantial]].
118[[/folder]]
119
120[[folder:Webcomics]]
121* Parodied in [[http://gcc.goldcoincomics.com/?page=41 this]] ''Gold Coin'' strip upon trying to sell off a weapon in an item shop.
122* In ''Webcomic/TheNoob'' a shopkeeper [[http://thenoobcomic.com/comic/17/ complains]] about the devs forcing him to buy useless junk so new players would have a source of gold. He is especially unhappy about having to buy smelly diseased rat livers.
123[[/folder]]
124
125[[folder:Web Original]]
126* ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' Photoplasty advertises such a shop in [[http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_273_26-ads-products-that-must-exist-in-video-games_p26/#11 Ads for Products That Must Exist in Video Games.]]
127[[/folder]]
128
129!!Exceptions
130
131[[folder:Adventure]]
132* ''VideoGame/RandalsMonday'': [[AvertedTrope Averted]]. Mel thinks everything Randal offers is junk, except for the ring.
133[[/folder]]
134
135[[folder:Hack And Slash]]
136* In the very first ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'', two of the three vendors in Tristram will only buy certain types of items from you. Griswold, the blacksmith, will only buy weapons and armor (his stock in trade) from you, while Adria, the witch, will only buy mage items like staves and books, as well as any potions you may have. Pepin can't buy anything from you at all, but is your primary supplier of healing and rejuvenation potions.
137* In ''VideoGame/DiabloII'', there is an upper limit on the amount of money a particular vendor will pay, depending on the player's location. In the FirstTown, items cannot be sold for more than 5000 gold, but this limit scales upwards in subsequent towns, to a maximum of 35000 gold. In addition, since trade screens are limited in size in this game, vendors will accumulate items sold to them by the player as long as there is enough space for them on the screen, and subsequent items will disappear. They'll still buy ANYTHING mind you, and they still have infinite cash reserves. The limit only applies per item.
138[[/folder]]
139
140[[folder:MMORPG]]
141* In ''VideoGame/{{EVE Online}}'', there are very few NPC vendors. You can, however, manage to find other players willing to buy pretty much anything, from [=NPCs=] to other players' frozen corpses.
142* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', stores will buy Enhancements, but not Inspirations. You're less likely to want to get rid of excess Inspirations, however. As well, while any store will buy any Enhancement, you'll get the best price if you sell at a store that sells the same type of Enhancement. Contacts won't buy either, but ''will'' buy recipes and salvage.
143** However, they will buy recipes and salvage at a set price, which is often FAR below the going market price if you sell them to other players.
144*** Some recipes and salvage are in such low demand that they are effectively vendor trash much of the time. Especially most recipes found before level 20.
145** Also, a few areas have a single store that pays the same price for anything you bring them. This is mostly for practicality as it makes little sense to have five vendors hanging out in the Vanguard base to do the job of one.
146* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' parodies this trope with the "autosell" function, which allows you to sell items from your inventory to a bizarre randomly-generated passer-by. This has the same result of arbitrary amounts of worthless items magically becoming money, with "hotel detectives", Dutch Elm Disease-riddled Ents, intelligent shades of blue, and other surreal entities taking the place of the all-purchasing vendors.
147* In ''VideoGame/{{Tibia}}'', few shopkeeper [=NPCs=] actually buy from the player, and even then, you'll usually have to talk to a different NPC about selling weapons than selling armor. Prices also vary from town to town.
148* In order to avoid the MoneySpider trope, many monsters in ''[[VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft WOW]]'' tend to drop [[ShopFodder useless items instead of money]], some of which are pretty bizarre goods. But hey, the NPC vendors buy anything (even the mechanical repair bot that can be crafted by experienced engineers, which is mostly there for, as the name implies, repairing your equipment in the middle of nowhere (usually raid dungeons).
149** Anything you sell to a merchant can be bought immediately back for the exact same amount of money they bought it for.
150* Ditto in ''[[http://www.runesofmagic.com Runes Of Magic.]]''
151* ''VideoGame/{{Achaea}}'' has almost no ShopFodder, and the only opportunities to sell items come during quests or when trading with other players. Quest {{NPC}}s are only interested in the particular item they asked you for in the first place, but do seem to have infinite gold.
152* While shops in ''VideoGame/{{Flyff}}'' will buy most of the stuff you pick up, there's quite a bit of items - certificates, maps and letters for example -- that they won't touch. Wandering sellers don't buy anything from you. Shows they're not complete idiots.
153* Although merchants in ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' will buy pretty much anything, most of them pay only a trifle unless you bring them something of the type they specialize in, in which case they pay market value, based on the supply and demand of other players buying and selling the same item. (The items still cost more if you're buying than if you're selling, though.)
154[[/folder]]
155
156[[folder:Real-Time Strategy]]
157* While not an RPG ''VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun'' averts this: If you want to sell something, someone has to be willing to buy it. Usually this is not a problem, but it is possible to start producing say, cars or airplanes before POP's start demanding them.
158[[/folder]]
159
160[[folder:Roguelike]]
161* In ''VideoGame/NetHack'', most shops specialize, and will neither buy nor stock items that don't match their theme. Of course, that doesn't preclude the existence of the occasional General Store... Also, shopkeepers can run out of money, but will offer you credit if they do. Keep in mind that, even though shopkeepers won't ''buy'' what they don't specialize in, if you accidentally leave anything on their premises (such as [[ShopliftAndDie all your possessions and your corpse]]...) they will gladly take those possessions and start selling them. Even if such items are so worthless even general shops won't buy them. Yes, you can, in fact, purchase your own corpse, or at least the your corpse from a previous game.
162* RogueLike ''VideoGame/AncientDomainsOfMystery'' also has specialized shops that tend to only buy the type of item they sell. For example, the shopkeeper in the first town will only buy food (even if it's inedible rotten meat), not weapons or other supplies you may have picked up along the way.
163* In ''VideoGame/CastleOfTheWinds'' you can only sell goods you find in the dungeons at the same shops where you might buy those things (i.e. you can only sell swords to a weapon shop, or a suit of plate mail to an armor shop). Additionally, they won't buy items you know are cursed, or unidentified items if you've sold them too many cursed items (you can get around this by SaveScumming). There are, however, junk shops that will buy anything for 25 copper pieces or its market value, whichever is lower. A few items fetch more money broken than working, but you can't break them yourself.
164* Completely reversed in ''VideoGame/DungeonCrawl'': You can't sell items, period.
165* ''VideoGame/{{Angband}}'' and its variants mostly avert this. There are 7 separate shops, and only the black market buys and sells everything, but the prices there are much worse than in the specialist shops. The shops never run out of money, but each shop has a cap on how much a they will pay for a single item. Shopkeepers also [[UnknownItemIdentification identify]] every item they buy, and it's possible for you to sell them {{Poison Mushroom}}s or cursed items if you don't know what they are beforehand.
166[[/folder]]
167
168[[folder:Role Playing Game]]
169* ''[[VideoGame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura]]'' has nearly all of the shops specialize, only buying or selling certain items (with the exception of the junk dealers, who exist in-game for the sole purpose of buying everything). Tailors will only buy or sell clothing, a gunsmith will only buy guns, a blacksmith will only buy weapons, armor, and the stuff required to make them, etc.
170** Unless you have training in haggle, then it is a proper example.
171* ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'': Heavily downplayed in both games.
172** ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosEternalWingsAndTheLostOcean'': Shops will buy any magnus, even the rotten food, but they will pay a pittance for it. In particular, any spoiled item costs only 1G. Even legitimately good equipment will net you merely a few hundreds of G at best. The only thing that will bring you ''real'' money is [[ShopFodder photos]] of various monsters, that you [[FirstPersonSnapshooter have to take during battles]]. The game also lacks {{Money Spider}}s, making taking said photos a necessity.
173** ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'': Selling items is flat-out useless in this game. Any sold magnus will give you exactly 10G - no matter if it was a generic attack or InfinityPlusOneSword. In fact, magnus marked for sell are described as "discarded", making it clear that the selling feature's only purpose is to clear your deck. The game also brings back {{Money Spider}}s, who will drop hundreds of G even in early game.
174* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'':
175** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'':
176*** [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-Zagged]]: Any shop you find will only be able to barter in the types of goods that they sell; e.g., an alchemist will only buy and sell ingredients and potions, clothiers only buy clothes and accessories, etc. The only exception is pawn shops, which play the trope straight and will buy anything you have on you. However pawn shops will almost certainly give you a worse deal than if you were to sell anywhere else. What makes it worse is that there are certain valuable trinkets you can get as random loot, but can only be sold at a pawn shop, meaning you're guaranteed to get a bad deal for them.
177** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'':
178*** Almost completely averts this trope. The majority of shops only buy and sell in one type of product, so a jeweller won't buy armor and a book seller won't buy weapons. They also only have a limited supply of gold to barter with after which they will not be able to purchase anything until the player purchases items from them or 24 hours passes. There are a few general traders and pawnbrokers who will buy and sell in nearly anything, but they often have significantly less gold to barter with.
179*** The two major exceptions are the talking Mudcrab Merchant and the talking Scamp, Creeper. They have 10,000 and 5000 gold respectively, and will buy almost anything you attempt to sell them. (For comparison, the next richest merchant in the vanilla game has 3000 and is an alchemist, so she'll only buy/sell ingredients and potions.) [[DownplayedTrope Still]], these amounts of money are well below the cost of the game's most valuable items, so it will take some creative bartering to get anywhere close to full value for them. (For example, it takes several in-game days and a very good knowledge of math to sell and barter for anything extremely valuable. This begins to get absurd once you start trying to sell stuff worth over 100,000 gold to a scamp who only has 5000 gold and all the junk you sold to it before.) Also, while the Mudcrab Merchant has more gold, he's on a remote island in the middle of nowhere. Creeper is much more practical, being in a city that is part of the Mages Guild teleportation network.
180*** Another notable aspect of the aversion is that things sold to merchants are not lost forever, but rather enter the merchant's inventory unless the merchant ''decides to equip the item and wear it'' (thus forcing you to kill the merchant if you ever want it back). This is particularly jarring when you sell, say, a set of Dark Brotherhood armor to a merchant, who promptly dons it and then resumes business as normal [[HighlyVisibleNinja while dressed as a stealth assassin]]. It's also rather amusing to see poor pawnbrokers pimped out in full Glass/Daedric gear. Merchants also keep the money you pay them with. This comes in handy when you went to have an Enchanter make a particularly expensive magical item for you. After paying, you can sell the Enchanter, who now has 300,000+ coins, a stack of the Daedric {{Infinity Plus One Sword}}s that had been clogging up your inventory, and get all your cash back.
181** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' has this to a degree. Initially vendors will only buy and sell whatever category of items they specialise in. If the player has sufficient "Mercantile" skill, they will begin accepting other kinds of items. Additionally, there is a curious limit on the amount of cash they will pay for a single item. The highest limit in the standard game is 1200 gold, so if one tries to sell an item estimated to be worth 2000 gold, one will only get 1200 in the best case. Yet if one has two such items and sell them separately, one will get 1200 each time. Effectively, merchants have unlimited cash, but only part with it in rather limited chunks. A fact of much debate among some players is that several of the downloadable content packs for the game introduce vendors who have a cap of 2000 gold. Also, vendors generally will not buy anything that has been stolen. To sell stolen goods, you will need a fence and without one of the DLC bases, you can only access fences by joining the Thieves Guild.
182** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' keeps to this theme - if you are not skilled in Speech, you'll have to content yourself with the usual ways, but as soon as you get halfway to the max skill level you can unlock a perk that makes it possible to sell anything to anyone. At 70, you can invest money into specific shopkeepers to make them have more gold for you, at 90 you can sell ''stolen goods'' to any vendor and at 100, the max level, every merchant in the world gains a large increase to their permanent available gold. Yes, ''everyone''. Amusingly enough, this means that you can now walk into any shop, even taverns, travelling merchants or random street peddlers (who normally have a very low amount of gold and mostly sell food and drink) and sell them stolen, high-level magical armor for the highest price possible. Why exactly your average street vendor suddenly decided to accept these kinds of items is never explained. Perhaps, as the skill implies, you're just ''very'' persuasive.
183* ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' has a very slight aversion: although any shop will buy any item, they do ''not'' all value them the same; there were at least two money-making schemes in-game that relied on this.
184* ''VideoGame/SaGaFrontier'' and its sequel subvert this trope by making only specific vendors for the express purpose of selling items (and only certain ones, at that). Other vendors will only sell goods.
185* ''VideoGame/JadeEmpire'' averts this trope entirely, as Essence Gems are the only non-quest items in the game, and so everyone is willing to buy and sell them.
186* ''VideoGame/{{Fable|I}}'' subverts this by having traders only buy items they're interested in, but as an apology the traders are often especially interested in other items and will offer a higher sell price.
187** Also, in ''VideoGame/FableIII'', you can sell your items at a pawn broker, who will usually take anything you have, but has a limited amount of money to give you.
188* In the ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' series of games shops will usually only deal in their specialty, weapons shops will only buy weapons, armor shops armor and magic shops magic item. There are general stores, but they buy at much lower prices than the other shops.
189* The ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}}'' series has only specialist stores (though "specialist" varies pretty widely), who only buy the sort of items they sell. However, since they'll pay for anything as cheap as a small bundle of arrows (2 gold) to expensive as a phaser (about 45000 gold), even though they personally only carry a small amount of money (that you can steal), it fits the trope otherwise.
190* The ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'' toolkit allows module builders to place restrictions on the types of items that their merchants will buy, and they can also be given a finite gold supply. And in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'', merchants have a finite gold supply even in the official campaign, although they still buy anything.
191** ''[=NWN1=]'''s main campaign played this straight... except for {{Booby Trap}} construction kits, which were always flagged as "stolen". You know, as opposed to everything else your {{Kleptomaniac Hero}} is pawning off.
192** In ''Hordes of the Underdark'' and ''Neverwinter Nights 2'', vendors would have an infinite total gold supply, but would have an upward limit on the gold they would offer you for a single item. A merchant not willing to pay more than 10,000 GP for 99 arrows will have no problem paying 10,000 GP for 33 arrows three times.
193* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' you have two or three different types of shops, typically divided between Items and Weapons.
194* Most shops in ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIII'' fit this trope, except the Junk Shop in the Faerie Village. Certain items will sell for ''much'' more there.
195* ''VideoGame/UltimaI'' had a cute response if you tried to sell food back to the food vendor: "Used food? No thanks!" The rest of the games (until, at least, Ultima VII) averted this as well: you could only sell weapons to a weapon shop, and armor to an armor vendor.
196* Mild aversion in ''VideoGame/DivineDivinity''. The merchants will buy anything, but they have limited gold, and certain shops will only sell certain equipments (late game not counting).
197* In the original ''VideoGame/{{Gothic}}'', traders would buy anything, but some items were 'junk' and worth zero (although the trader would still take it from you if you offered it). Traders could run out of money, and by the end of the game, usually did. In the sequel, the trading controls were fixed to be more intuitive, one of the side effects being that traders now have infinite gold.
198** On a different note, vendors buy items at reduced price, but specific ones accept certain items at full price, for example, the master hunter of Khorinis buys pelts; although most of those are quest-related.
199* In ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'', you can't sell your goods to a vendor. You have to sell it to, um...the ''trash can'' icon on your pin menu, which will accept anything.
200** Except for your non-pin items and the pins that are "more valuable then all the money in the world", which includes [[PoisonMushroom the Red Skull pin that drags down your speed]].
201*** And [[spoiler: brainwashes your sidekick. And half of Shibuya with it.]]
202* Averted in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate''. Shops won't buy non-magical projectiles, (they probably get arrows the same way everybody else does - off bandits' corpses), Cursed Scrolls, or pathetic weapons like Quarterstaffs or Slings. Not all shops buy weapons or books either. And if you sell them an unidentified magic weapon, they'll buy at the price of a regular weapon, identifying it at the same time, while you stare and say, "I just sold a +2 Long Sword for 37gp?!" Also, different shops offer different prices on items and after ten game days they'll sell what you sold them, unless it's an item vital for game completion, in which case you'll just have to buy it back.
203** Both ''VideoGame/IcewindDale'' games also had an amusing "supply and demand" mechanic : if you kept selling the same kind of item to a vendor over and over, the buying price would go down. Meaning eventually, merchants could offer you less gold for the ubiquitous +1 Longsword then for a regular Longsword. Equally amusing, the prices would only go down after a completed trade, so hogging hundreds of +1 Longswords in a Bag of Holding and selling them in bulk was much, much more profitable than selling them one by one. Oh, and of course, even if you drove one merchant's prices down to ridiculous levels, the merchant 5 feet away would still be more than happy to offer you the full price.
204* In ''VideoGame/{{Crystalis}}'', you can only sell your items in specially-marked pawn shops that will take any unwanted armor or items off your hands.
205* Quasi-inverted in ''VideoGame/GreatGreed'' for the UsefulNotes/GameBoy, a JRPG with an environmental slant, where shops ''recycle'' (it's still gone for good) your equipment and any of the useless flavor items (like that [[PimpedOutDress fancy dress]]). This is also the '''''only''''' way for you to get rid of any [[StuckItems TRASH]] you picked up in a [[InexplicableTreasureChests random chest]], and thus free up your very limited inventory for something useful. All you have to do is pay a sizable fee. (Since you don't have a portable [[BagOfHolding garbage dimension]], you cannot leave Trash alongside a road -- unlike your heal potion or dentures. It also comes off as ''[[{{Greed}} the stores are penalizing you for recycling]]''.)
206* Slight aversion in ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia''. There are a set of items known as trading items which you find scattered around the world; each town will pay a different price for them, and the trick is to know which items to sell where.
207* In ''VideoGame/{{Geneforge}} 1'' and ''2'', each vendor only has a certain amount of gold. This will go up when you buy things from them, and go down whenever you sell something to them. It is possible for every vendor in the game to run out of money, making it impossible for you to sell anything (of course, that means you have all the money, so you don't really ''need'' to sell anything). The gold limitation disappears in later games.
208* In ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'', all merchants will buy everything. If the thing you're selling is in some way unique, you ''can'' buy it back, but only from a shop that sells the corresponding type of item. Any shop of that type. How exactly your InfinityPlusOneSword instantly teleports from the hands of the cute item shop girl to every weapons salesman in the world isn't exactly clear.
209* In ''[[VideoGame/MountAndBlade Mount & Blade]]'', every merchant has a set amount of money, so you can't sell too much (unless you buy some stuff at the same time). Moreover, some items will sell for different prices in different cities, and if you sell several of one thing you'll lower its price. (Works the other way too.) However, if you leave a city and spend a little time away, when you come back the merchant will have a refreshed inventory (the stuff you sold will be gone) and he'll have some money again. Because everyone buys everything, if you happen to clean out the goods merchant for example of all his silver denars but still have a few items to sell, then you can turn around and sell the rest of your items to the horse merchant, the arms merchant, or the armor merchant, regardless of whether you're selling oil, linen, or armor acquired in battle.
210** Should be noted, however, that they buy it at a lower price.
211* Averted in the first ''Aretha'' RPG for the original Game Boy. Equipment can only be sold at pawn shops and each pawn shop will only accept three particular items, and they only start showing up a considerable distance into the game. It is not the best system of its kind ever implemented.
212* Partially averted in ''VideoGame/LandsOfLore: The Throne of Chaos''. Blacksmiths and fletchers will buy any unwanted equipment you care to sell them, but fletchers will pay more for bows and other ranged weapons than blacksmiths will, and blacksmiths will pay more for melee weapons and armor.
213* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Wasteland}}'', in which stores will only buy items that they sell. Stores even keep track of inventory, including the items you sell to them. This can be a great way of storing items in excess of your carrying capacity - selling items to stores and then buying them back later when they are needed.
214* In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'', certain items (typically, those you can't buy in stores) will devalue if you sell too many, but you can keep selling them anyway if you like. Interestingly, the upgraded herbs sell for drastically ''more'' than the starting price if you sell enough of them, which makes for an interesting (if extremely time consuming, given the mechanics of the alchemy pot) money-making scheme.
215* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' makes a point to avert this. Every shop does have a "sell" option, but picking it will just make the shopkeeper complain, since they're just trying to get rid of their own useless junk themselves. You can even do this at a ''hamburger restaurant'', which causes the [[BurgerFool unfortunate employee]] to freak out a little bit. [[spoiler: There is one shop in the secret Temmie Village where you can sell things. Some things that you can sell here will actually sell for more than you buy them for, including an item which you can only buy at that shop itself. To top it all, this, along with the fact you can sell things in the first place, is justified by the shopkeeper being [[TheDitz a moron]].]]
216* ''VideoGame/{{Transcendence}}'' averts this: Every station has a limited number of credits to buy your goods, which slowly replenishes; most stations have a limited range of items they will buy at different rates. A medical station for example pays a decent rate for food and luxury goods, but won't buy any weapons, ore or medical goods (it produces its own medicine). The general Commonwealth stations play this almost straight, as they buy almost anything at a fairly low rate. If the player doesn't identify a PoisonMushroom like a barrel of radioactive waste, these stations will happily buy it. [=SmartCannon=] ammo is sold to the player at 1 credit per round, so no station will buy it from you. Once a station has enough of any particular item in its inventory, it will pay less for the same item, and eventually won't buy any more.
217* Enforced in ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey''. The shop initially carries very few items (in some cases, they can even run out of basic medicine) and require the services of your guild to venture into the various Labyrinths to farm the necessary materials to expand their product line. The more giblets, minerals and flowers you sell them, the more armor, weapons and medicine they offer.
218* While the vast majority of vendors in ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' play it straight, the game also includes a few aversions. Some vendors that specialize in consumables like food or medicine don't give you an option to sell other kinds of items to them. Makes sense given the context, though; what the hell would a doctor or restaurateur want with 5 pounds of Mole Rat teeth or half a dozen military-grade circuit boards?
219* ''VideoGame/BugFables'': The Golden Settlement's shop owner refuses to buy anything from Team Snakemouth. Outside of this, the trope is played straight, and there is another shop a screen away from the Golden Settlement one that buys from the party anyway.
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222[[folder:Simulation Game]]
223* ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'':
224** In ''Wild World'', Mabel will buy shirts, hats, masks, and umbrellas, because that's what she sells. On the other hand, Tom Nook, who runs the general store next door, will buy shirts, hats, masks, and umbrellas, and nearly everything else. He'll even accept ''valueless items'' which would normally have to be disposed of in the Town Hall's recycling dumpster: In fact, if you attempt to sell him ''nothing but'' worthless items, he'll rather ecstatically comment that the disposal of such items is yet another of his many services. (The more attentive player has to think, ''"Why is he still willingly buying millions of dollars worth of peaches?"'')
225** In ''New Leaf'', this role is taken over by Reese at Re-Tail, since Tom Nook now works exclusively in real estate. Unlike Tom Nook, she requires players to pay a disposal fee if they try to sell her garbage. Players can also sell items at Timmy and Tommy's store, but they pay less than Re-Tail so they themselves can sell it there for a profit.
226** Played straight in ''New Horizons'', where Timmy (later Timmy and Tommy, once you've built the general store) will buy anything you want to sell him, including garbage and weeds. As Tom Nook [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]], this isn't a particularly sound business plan, but considering that they're all living on a deserted island, they have to get the economy started ''somehow''.
227* In the ''VideoGame/RailroadTycoon'' games
228** Stations will only buy commodities if a local industry needs them. Only a station with a bakery will buy grain, and so on. Also, stations must reach a minimum population size before they will buy passengers, mail, and other goods. (At normal difficulty levels. Easier levels enabled WeBuyAnything mode.)
229** You can no longer haul passengers and mail anywhere in 3, since they have specific destinations. However they will be accepted in intermediate stations, provided they can work as hubs in the system.
230** Market saturation happens in 3, but only for processed goods. Commodities and intermediate resources will happily pile taller than a mountain as inputs for industries, which have infinite demand.
231* In ''VideoGame/SidMeiersPirates'', each town you visit has a limited amount of gold that it can pay for items with (and limited supplies to sell). However, leaving the town and immediately turning your ship around lets them restock their cash reserves and supplies, Also, the shipyards will ''always'' make repairs to your damaged ships (usually giving them cash so they can buy your unwanted ships from you), though you can ''only sell'' cannons to them (you have to defeat another ship to get more cannons, especially ones destroyed in broadsides shooting).
232* In ''[[VideoGame/HarvestMoonBackToNature HarvestMoon: More Friends Of Mineral Town]]'', you can unlock a feature where you can sell items to Won instead of shipping them. Won usually pays more for them and also buys some items that you cannot ship. Even though Won apparently doesn't even have enough money for a proper stall or his own house.
233* In ''VideoGame/MyTimeAtPortia,'' vendors will only buy items in their specialties. Only the construction worker will buy stone and lumber, only the tailor will buy cloth and pre-made clothes, only the flower seller will buy flowers, and so on. There is a "general store" that buys the widest range of items, but all vendors ''also'' keep limited money on hand, so if you sell too much to them, they won't be able to pay you any more, and you'll need to move on.
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235
236[[folder:Turn Based Strategy]]
237* Justified in ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'', as you can only sell pieces of alien tech or alien remains. As expected, there are always buyers for these items. Strangely, you aren't normally able to sell the items you make yourself unless a country requests them.
238[[/folder]]
239
240[[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]]
241* In ''[[{{VideoGame/SpaceRangers}} Space Rangers 2]]'', you can sell any type of goods (like food, medicaments, drugs, etc.) and equipment (including [[UnusableEnemyEquipment unusable Dominator equipment]]) on any planet. However, some goods are marked as "illegal" on some planets (drugs are banned almost everywhere) meaning you cannot sell those without ruining relations with that planet, and Dominator parts sell as junk, unless given to science stations, which specifically ask for those.
242* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Stalker}} S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl]]'' different [=NPCs=] will not buy certain types of items, and most whom you meet in the general world have a finite supply of funds. Only the major questgivers have unlimited funds.
243** ''S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat'' takes this even further, as [=NPCs=] will refuse to buy weapons and armour that are below a certain threshold on their condition level. As most levels of damage below this threshold will cost more to repair than the weapon sells for, this significantly cuts down the amount of money you get from grabbing every dropped weapon in sight.
244* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'''s villagers only sell and buy specific trades, although they do all seem to have infinite gems to give you in exchange for easily renewable resources like grain or wheat, leading to players often exploiting a single villager for his cheap gems, then use those to buy what they actually wanted.
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