Welcome to my Escape from Tarkov advanced guide on making money on the Flea Market. If you’ve read my beginner guide on market trading, you’re in the right place. If not, that’s also okay, we’ve got advanced tips for making quick money by flipping items. Read the tips and tricks below for growing your money.
If you read everything in this guide, you’ll understand how to make a million in under 30 minutes. Quick disclaimer, this guide doesn’t talk about or encourage using bots or macros.
Disclaimer (7/8/2021) – The original guide below is before Battlestate Games made several changes to the Flea Market. Such as removing locked timers on items, raising the Flea Market level, and only in-raid items being sold on it.
Advanced Tips |
| Tip 1 – Refresh the Market |
| Tip 2 – Use the W-List |
| Tip 3 – Durability Scamming |
| Tip 4 – Control the Market |
| Tip 5 – Find a Good Product to Trade |
| Tip 6 – Take Advantage of Containers |
| Tip 7 – Understand the Market Filters |
| Tip 8 – Don’t Compete With Dealers |
| Tip 9 – Trade at Different Times |
| Tip 10 – Changing Your Computer Clock |
Advanced Market Tips
Anyone can make money on the market, but people with more EFT experience will have a better chance. Knowing what items are in demand and how rare they are plays a role. However, if you’ve played other games with markets like Eve Online, for example, don’t expect anything near that complexity. The Tarkov market is functional but limited.
Tip 1 – Refresh the Market
The refresh button is in my beginner tips guide as well because of how important it is. If you don’t already know, at the top right corner of the Flea Market, there are two arrows circling each other. Clicking this refreshes the expiration timers, shows new items, and removes sold items. The reason this is an advanced tip is because it’s important for researching items and catching new deals.
The refresh button is a great way to see how fast items sell, how quickly they’re added, and seeing when someone undercuts the market at such a great flip for you.
Tip 2 – Use the W-List
The W-List is a tab at the top left that I assume stands for wishlist. If you right-click an item and add it to your W-List, it will appear here in the Flea Market. This is a great way to favorite items that you’re watching and frequently selling. The same applies to items you often buy.
Tip 3 – Durability Scamming
I come from Eve Online where scamming is a feature and many people make a lot of money from it. I don’t encourage it, but durability scamming is a bit of an issue in Escape from Tarkov. Be careful of what you purchase, because people can sell items on the market that aren’t full durability.
This affects anything from armor to half-eaten food. Filters can change the durability/condition of items that appear for both minimum and maximum. Access them by clicking the cogwheel at the top left. I will say, I’ve accidentally bought items below full durability and easily sold them back at the average for full ones. People also take advantage with weapons by removing certain parts.
Tip 4 – Control the Market
There are a lot of ways to control the market and Tarkov is small enough that it’s often easy. I’m sure there are real techniques and names for what I’m explaining, but I don’t know them! So here’s my ramshackle advice instead.
Buyout People Undercutting you
Calculate the lowest price of an item you can buy before you lose money in relation to how high you sell it. Then, you’ll know how low you can buy the items of people undercutting you and push buyers toward your listing instead. This is essentially a monopoly. One disadvantage, you’re raising the average and minimum price of your item, which makes it harder to buy cheaply later.
Sell at High Volume
Selling at a high volume/number of items is a way to control the price of an item for a while. This prevents the price of a product from rising above that spot because there’s no reason for consumers to buy higher than it. This can help stabilize a market’s average and requires more money to do efficiently.
Be aware of other people selling multiple things at once. Pricing above their price will take longer for people to get to your item.
Tip 5 – Find a Good Product to Trade
I enjoy flipping Mosins since they’re a popular rifle that often has people undercutting.
A good way to find a product is to look for an item with a lot of listings and large differences between the minimum and average price. Study the item with a few refreshes and watch how the price fluctuates. The next test is to buy one and see what the fee is at the price you want to sell. Some items will screw you over as mentioned in my beginner guide on Tip 7.
Tip 6 – Take Advantage of Containers
If you’re like me and started with the Standard Edition for Escape from Tarkov, you’ve got limited stash space. Whether or not that’s the case, you’ll want to use containers that help organize your stash and add extra space. Some examples of cases you can use are:
| Slots Taken | Slots Inside | Stores | |
| Items Case | 16 | 64 | Bartering Items |
| Meds Case | 9 | 49 | Medical Items |
| Weapon Case | 10 | 50 | Weapons, Ammo, Mods |
| Mr. Holodilnick Thermobag | 9 | 64 | Food Items |
Fair warning, most cases are expensive, but some can be gotten through tasks.
Tip 7 – Understand the Market Filters
One of the most important tips is knowing how the filters work. I mentioned them briefly, but these are accessible from the cogwheel at the top left in the market. Examples of what filters do:
- Only certain currencies
- Minimum and maximum prices
- Minimum and maximum quantities
- Minimum and maximum condition/durability
- Removing bartering offers (good for quick flips based on money)
- Display listings only from Dealers/Traders.
- Showing items about to expire
Tip 8 – Don’t Compete with Dealers
This is a short tip that speaks for itself. Dealer items appear on the market and in most cases decide where the price stays at since they’re often unlimited. This makes it impossible to beat the competition.
Tip 9 – Trade at Different Times
People aren’t always going to be online trading the same things as you. This creates an opportunity for trading at different times and profiting when the competition is lower or higher. Alongside that, when more people are playing, there are likely more people supplying the market with items. A lot of people want their money quickly and will undercut hard. That’s where we come in.
Tip 10 – Changing Your Computer Clock
I heard about this on the EFT forums and didn’t look into it until I stumbled across a video explaining it. The concept behind this tip is moving your computer clock forward to speed up the locked timer on the market. The only reason to do this is because the time to an item becoming available is based on your computer’s clock. It doesn’t go by the server’s time.
To clarify a little further, there is a set time an item becomes available, but the game doesn’t show you that time. It shows whatever time your computer is set to. If you move your clock 30 seconds backward, you’ll see an item become available 30 seconds after it’s been available. The goal is to move it a second or two at a time in either direction to match your computer clock to the actual time items go live.
For instructions on how to do this, YouTuber Onepeg explains it in the video below. It’s time-stamped to 3:03 when he walks you through the process.
I’ve tested this and it’s probably the only way you have a chance at buying Labs Keycards.
There’s a lot to know about the market and some other tricks I have up my sleeve, but I didn’t want to make this article longer than it already is. If you have any questions, comment below and I’ll help out. Be sure to let me know what your best flip on the market is! Mine has to be buying a Labs card for 13k roubles.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.