I was getting excited about crafting all these cheap daggers and then enchanting them because the arcane enchanter would tell me the value of my enchanted daggers were $500+ each.... but then when I go to sell them it seems I can only get about $170 for each one from the merchants.
By the time I've bought the soul gems and the iron ore and the leather and made daggers, then enchanted them, and sold them again ... I don't get how anyone is making money???? I'm using a pretty good Drain 20 Stamina enchantment that gives me more then the Fear enchantment (recommended in most enchantment guides)... can't find the Banish enchanted weapons.

I mean, it's about break even for me. I should say, I'm spending money at the same time on Enchant Trainer in College but I'm having a hard time making enough money to pay for 2 lessons per level, let alone maxing out my 5 allowed lessons per level.

Q. Are you guys finding free gems?


Q. Is there a better place to sell stuff?

Well, a couple of things:

First, when you sell an item, the buyer will only give you a % of it's value. In Skyrim, the higher your speech skill, the better percentage you'll get.

Also, typically the people who "abuse" the smithing and enchanting skills do so in order to increase those skills, not make a direct profit. You craft and enchant all those iron daggers and then once you've jacked up those skills enough, you create a uber-weapon and enchanted armor and go make your gold raiding bandits camps and tombs using your new super-equipment.

Try fidning items that improve your prices. I use a combination of the thieves guild hood, Cicero's clothes (Dark Brotherhood questline) and an Amulet. That's 20%+20%+10% so I'm improving on my price by 50% both selling and buying. I've taken this to extremes obviously but an item or two with price percentages should yield good results

I have quite a good archery skill, with a legendary ebony bow and soul tap, I find gems as I come across them in dungeons and in the world and buy empty ones from court wizards. If you combine this with sneak attacks and a bow like mine you'll have a [censored] tonne of gems before you know it

ok thanks.

So, all the merchants will offer me the same price? And it's driven by my 'speech' attributes... gotcha.

Don't worry, you'll find soon enough you'll have more money than you know what to do with...

Don't forget to always give a beggar 1 gold piece before you go to sell things, it will give you a bonus to speech craft which will get you a little better prices, in addition to bonus items with + speech craft or + better prices.

What I do is kind of give and take and still profit. Usually I will buy a few items I might need from the merchant and then sell them what I want to get rid of and still make some cash back. The increasing problem is the higher level stuff. Also getting sick of running from town to town for an hour just to dump loot. IMO the merchant money is too low. After so long 500 to 1000 gold isn't enough to cover the cost of what I am trying to get rid of half the time. Yeah I can put points in the perks to give them more cash, but then that takes away from my combat perks. Get Volsung Mask also for more merchant cash.....20% better prices.......

give a beggar some money? where's the beggars? I only have been to Whiterun and Winterhold and Riverwood.