You do not gain any Mercantile points for giving items away. If you try to 'sell' any of these items to a merchant, you will be prompted to 'give away item'. Most of these fall in the category of Clutter. You will notice items in your inventory that have a base price of zero. However, base prices are still defined for each of these items (and are the prices listed at the provided links) these base prices are adjusted by haggling in the same way as all other items in the game. Haggling is governed by your Mercantile skill.įor some items, such as spells and upgrades for houses, you never see the base prices of the items (i.e., after you have purchased them, you do not see their price listed in your inventory). The only exception is once your Mercantile skill reaches 100 (without the help of Fortify Skill effects): you are then able to buy and sell items at their base price.

You can think of this as the merchant's profit margin. If you are buying an item, you will always pay more than the base price. If you are selling an item, you will always receive less than the base price. When interacting with merchants, you need to haggle with them to negotiate the price at which they will agree to buy or sell items. You will generally never be able to buy or sell items for their base price. The prices provided in all of the tables on this website are base prices. In Oblivion every item has a base price that is listed in the inventory.

Oblivion trade and commerce