As with Buying or Selling Knowledge is Power.
But the other power is SPEED!
When you come across a deal, you need to be able to in just a few minutes decide Yes/No and How Much. If you spend a day and a half fiddle farting around you can forget about it, someone will have beaten you to it.
There are several places online that are Ultima Rares forums, however hands down the best is www.tradespot.net
Go to tradespot and the shard your interests in Searching in, with your Browsers find function type in the name of the rare, or something a newbie rares hunter might call it.
When you find a rare, odds are the other person hasn't named a Price.
The reason people don't name prices is they are afraid they wont get top dollar.
When a rare hits tradespot that I want, I will immediately search the other shards to see if the rare is listed there, (and maybe had a Price attached to it) If the Price is a low price I will offer that same price to the seller, then suggest they look it up on such and such a shard and that its a take it or leave it offer. Its not necessarily a take it or leave it offer, but if the price you offered them is low for the market the longer they sit around thinking about it, the better the odds are someone else will have offered more.
Unless the seller has mentally drawn a line in the sand Usually we make a deal within 5 minutes.
If I cant find anything I will just send them an out of the Blue offer. If the seller is new always offer a tad lower, not that your getting yourself a great discount, rather the seller really doesn't know what they want, so whatever your first offer is they are going to ask for more.
So If I want something for 125k I'm going to offer 110. If however its an Experienced seller that I know, I will usually give them my final offer right off. (If its an experienced seller that I know to be a negotiator, I will use every trick in the book to try NOT to get shafted! lol But I certainly wont make my final offer my opening offer.
NEVER negotiate a deal that is favorable to you then say "Ok great, I will meet you tonight at such and such a time" Meet them now. If you're not ready to buy it until later, don't make the offer until later. If you get in the habit of this you will loose out on a lot of rares, or have to put up with the "I'm sorry, but I have been offered more"
"I'm sorry, but I have been offered more" is a poorly thought out little trick you should be aware of. Sellers will say "so and so has offered me more can you at least match it?" First off, If so and so offered them more and they are only asking for the same amount then so and so doesn't exist, or so and so backed out of the deal. The way to get out of that is to say: "I would like to pay more however I cant, but I have the amount I offered available and can pay right now". Sellers don't think of it when they start off this ridiculous conversation, they would be happy to sell at whatever price you agreed upon, but they are just chiseling for a tad more. The thing they don't think of is if you say no, then they will loose some face if they give you your Price because according to them there is someone willing to pay more. So as the buyer, your Job is to Stress "Now" that you can pay "now". This allows the seller to back away from their story and sell to you without losing face. FACE is EXTREMLY important. Its not the kind of thing that will "make" a deal, but it can easily "Kill" one.
As a business person, Never Ever back out of a rares deal. If your buying or selling ingots its still a bad thing to do, but the rares market is a much smaller crowd and you do that once or twice your reputation will be destroyed with the person you dealt with, their friends, and their friends. If you are fickle people aren't going to deal with you one way or the other. So once you make an agreement Stick to it, even if a better deal comes by before you have finished the transaction.
When negotiating, basically any tactic that you can live with is fair game. But think of the Long term not just the short term. For me I don't make my deals too sharp, I'm known as Thoth-Ammon If I routinely Buy too low, and sell too High I would develop a reputation as a Shyster in no time. Even though I could conceivably fleece some newbie once, word would spread and I wouldn't have the opportunity to even do a Modest deal with many other people. All in all you will make SOOOO much more money being fare in your prices because you will get more Business and repeat business.
As for buying and being fare in Prices. If your buying a monthly spawning rare, be ready to pay some money for it. A cool Million would probably be too much for a rack of full vials (Its happened), but 500,000 wouldn't be outrageous. If you could get it for 100k that would be great, and if you're the first rares buyer the seller talks to you just might. However if you offered the poor person 25k for it, you deserve the next speeding ticket you get in RL.
There is no Monthly spawn that should go for under 100k and there are several that could easily go for a million. A Statue (not the monster statues, although the Lich and the Dragon can go for over a million), The small statue that spawns about as often as he%% freezes over in Deceit could get a Million on most shards, easily.
The trick to getting a Good deal, and keeping a good reputation is to be the first one to contact the seller.
IF the seller leaves their ICQ then you need to contact them the Moment you decide what you want to pay.
This is done by ICQ if the seller leaves their Number. You could do it e-mail, and you might find a real good deal that way. Personally I wont do a deal over e-mail. Communication is clumsy at best, and it takes forever.
A friend of mine sold his account by making a brief announcement over ICQ of what was characters he had, what money and what shards, and that he had rares. He said the price is $100 first person to agree to send it over a Paypal gets it.
I added up what I could get for his Chesapeake and Siege gold on ebay, and found that the gold alone would be worth over $300. As I was typing in the ICQ message (11 minutes after he sent out the mass message that his account was for sale) another Mass message ICQ came in saying the account was sold. I don't know the extent of the Rares he had, he had a Gm Fisherman on Chessy and a GM Mage/Master tamer on Siege. All assets total would have been well over $500 on Ebay, so I basically missed out on $400 profit by just a few minutes.
Negotiating is Great, but Speed will get you far more deals than convincing the other person that they need to Sell for less. Use your negotiating prowess for Selling that is when its going to come in handy.
For Buying Speed is your Ally, Find a deal and Move immediately on it.
Best place to Buy is www.tradespot.net (Best place to sell is any bank in Briton, on your vendor, www.tradespot.net) Rares are a sellers Market you can afford to take your time with them, but for buying you need to be all over any good deals that happen to pop up.
Also another thing. Earlier I said that a Million would be too much to pay for a rack of full vials. For clarification, It would be too much for me to personally buy them for. However If I bought a set at 350,000 eventually I or anyone else could get a Million for them.
Getting a good price for a rare when selling is a matter of salesmanship or Time. If you don't want to spend the evening convincing a Buyer that the price your asking if reasonable, just post your bottom line on a message board. If it doesn't sell in a few days post it again. If its a true rare (Monthly spawn/Server Birth/ well kept secret) eventually your going to get your Price for it.
Now as for buying semi rares, that is totally up to you. If you are buying them to put them in your house, then pay whatever your comfortable with and its over. But if you're buying them to sell them you're going to need to get a good Price on them. Buying in bulk certainly helps.
Say colored wire, a very popular item. That can be found on Vendors for 2000 all over the place, it can also be found on vendors for 1000, and 5000. Take the lowest price you have found it being sold for and figure you will need to buy at about 1/2 that. Your not going to get your Price by walking up to Professional rares sales people at the West Bank in Briton, but you might get your Price by going to the spawn sight and giving your ICQ to the rares hunters camping that spot. You will also have a good chance getting your Price if you post messages at www.tradespot.net saying "Semi rares wanted" then List the Price your willing to pay, the Minimum amount you will deal in, and that the Price is firm. (If you don't say the price is firm, you will be bombarded with ICQ's of people wanting to sell but for a little more than your offering. If you ever spend 20 minutes haggling over $500 gold, you would be better to pull $1k out of your bank drop it on the ground and walk away. Time is worth MORE than money, you can get more money, but you only have so much time. The reason you would buy semi rares in the first place is to save on time, so don't get in the trap of spending to much time on one deal.
Now some items are "not for sale". To put it tactfully, everything is for sale. Not necessarily for gold, sometimes not for RL $ either, But their is a Price that everyone has for something. Find out specifically what it means to them to hang onto an Item.
Usually most rares that are not sold even when obscene amounts of money is being offered, then their is something intangible in play. Say someone has a ratman statue but isn't interested in selling for any amount of gold, they might be willing to take a Lich statue for it. (Unless you had 2 lich statues on hand that's not really a recommended trade).
A lot of people in UO, especially rares collectors have been playing the game for 2 or 3 years, they literally have more gold than they would ever be able to spend, Gold isn't going to do the trick for them, so what would? Weapons might. Tonight I saw a Blessed Sliver Kryss of Vanquishing sell for $455 on ebay. I think it had 13 Bids too. That is the kind of thing that might be "cool" for some people but an Absolute Dream weapon for another. If you can talk with them about what they value in UO. After you have listened to them for a while see if you would be able to provide that to them in exchange for the item. It will Probably be another no, but that's ok. Let it sit for a while and casually ask again in a few weeks.
I have been in negotiations before off and on for months, only to developed life long friendships with some of the people I'm negotiating with.
RL cash. Its up to you if you want to spend RL cash for rares or not, but I can tell you it will shorten the time something will take to get, and a lot of people not willing to sell for in game gold will give you an excellent deal for RL cash.