Probably Stolen Money Guide: How to Make Money Fast, Best Margins and Side Income

In Probably Stolen, the fastest money in version 1.0.0.6 comes from Water Purifiers running on free tap water, with chemistry paying the most per item and appraisals the best income that costs nothing to stock. Underneath every strategy, you profit by buying below base value and selling above it: wholesale and stolen goods take 10% to 25% off, and every sale to a normal customer adds your Retail Markup (+15% on Mark Up). Every number on this page is real in-game data, version 1.0.0.6; the profit calculator below works out any single trade.

What is the fastest way to make money?

In version 1.0.0.6, the strategies players rely on are these. The earnings are worked out from real in-game data on Mark Up, at base value, before Retail Markup and haggling:

Which one to pick depends on your start:

• Water Merchant start: run purifiers on tap water from day one and keep stock for shortages.
• Chemist start: Dream Dust is your main income; keep it out of sight during inspections.
• Any other start: join the Appraisal Board, buy the Furnace on Dr. Jackson's first visit, and trade wholesale. Add water once you can afford the taps.
• Thin Margins and Red Ink: there is no Retail Markup, so wholesale, market events and production are the only margins.

Keep enough cash for the rent every seventh day before you buy any machine. The beginner guide covers the first two weeks day by day.

Which money advice is out of date?

Much early advice comes from the playtest or launch week. These changed before or in 1.0.0.6:

• Mass-producing water with Moisture Farms. A farm now makes 850 ml a night and several farms share their output. Players now call it the weakest water machine; the Water Purifier replaced it.
• Filtering tap water straight into High-Quality Water. The Water Filter does not remove microbes; you need the UV Lamp or purification tablets as well. See the water guide.
• Old prices. The Moisture Farm now costs 350 (was 650), the Water Filter 25 (was 50) and the Water Purifier 250 (was 300). Dr. Jackson charges +15% on Mark Up, not +25%.
• Reloading to reroll locked crates and free power from a Current Converter in a locked crate were fixed in 1.0.0.5.

Also not worth it on most runs: reselling goods bought from the Supply Runner (you pay +50% and sell at +15%), scratchers and the lottery, and the Landlord's Vending Machine, which adds 150 to every rent payment.

How are buying and selling prices calculated?

Buying and selling use the same price. The game starts from the item's base value, applies its quality, then adds up every market modifier, and finally applies haggling:

Price = base value × (1 + quality bonus) × (1 + market modifiers) × (1 + haggling)

The market modifiers are added together, not multiplied. A Mid Level contraband item (+70%) sold on Mark Up (+15%) during an event that raises its type by 30% sells at +115%, so 2.15 times its value after quality.

Quality is applied first. A Lab Pure chemical gets +135%, Pure Water +100%, a Rusted item −40%; the chemist guide and water guide list every grade.

Some buyers do not pay Retail Markup at all: the Merchant, the Shady Merchant and a few dealers. They still pay the contraband markup. Heat does not lower the price when you sell; it only lowers what you pay when you buy.

How do you buy below base value?

Profit is decided when you buy as much as when you sell. The cheapest sources:

• Wholesale. Many sellers offer a discount if you buy everything they brought (the Accept Wholesale button). Miners and Scavengers offer 15–25%, water sellers 15–40%. The discount is taken off the whole lot after every other modifier, and you need the full amount in cash.
• Stolen goods. The Five Finger Discount takes 10–25% off by Heat. Stolen goods sell at full price, but they can be found during an inspection until their Heat drops to 0. See contraband and Heat.
• Phone suppliers. Wild's Network introduces four suppliers you can order by phone. Their courier only sells wholesale at 20% off, and the first delivery is free.
• Buying: Demand Discount. Works like a markup in reverse; see the haggling section below.

Avoid buying from sellers who charge extra unless you need the item: the Supply Runner asks +50% on Mark Up (more on harder difficulties), the retired suppliers +15%, and Dr. Jackson's shop +15%.

Prices are before any market event. Dream Dust is Mid Level contraband, so it sells at +70% to the buyers who accept it. Each supplier unlocks double orders after you have spent 350–500 with them.

Is haggling worth it?

The haggling buttons change the price after everything else. Two of them always work:

• Selling: Offer Discount lowers your price and raises the customer's budget by twice the discount.
• Buying: Offer Markup pays the seller more. Both earn extra reputation with the customer's faction.

The other two can fail. Selling: Add Markup and Buying: Demand Discount succeed at 100% − 2 × the percent, plus 1% for every 6 reputation you have with that customer's faction (negative reputation counts double). If they refuse, the customer either keeps trading at the normal price or walks out:

Haggle	Reputation
	-50	0	+50	+100
10%	64%walks out 28%	80%walks out 12%	88%walks out 4%	96%walks out 0%
25%	34%walks out 46%	50%walks out 30%	58%walks out 22%	66%walks out 14%
50%	0%walks out 76%	0%walks out 60%	8%walks out 52%	16%walks out 44%
75%	0%walks out 100%	0%walks out 90%	0%walks out 82%	0%walks out 74%

At 0 reputation a 10% haggle is the only one worth trying on a valuable sale: it is accepted 80% of the time. At 50% or more the customer never accepts without reputation. Successful markups and discounts also cost faction reputation on every item. The Awful Negotiator perk removes haggling entirely and takes 5% off every trade.

Why do customers pay less than the price?

Every customer has a budget. If what you sell costs more than they have left, the game warns that you will miss out on credits. If you go ahead, each item is paid only up to the budget that is left, and the items after the budget runs out are given away for free.

When a customer is over budget, try Selling: Offer Discount instead. It lowers the price but raises their budget by twice the percent. With a 120-credit budget and a 150-credit sale, a 10% discount gets you 135 instead of 120. The calculator above finds the best discount when you enter the customer's budget.

Budgets grow with:

All bonuses are added together. Endorsement III with 600 Store Attractiveness gives every customer 2.25 times their normal budget. When you buy from a customer who both buys and sells, half of what you pay them is added to their budget.

Which production line makes the most money?

Production lines turn cheap inputs into goods worth more. The figures below are profit at base value, per night, for one machine: the product's value minus what its inputs are worth. Retail Markup, haggling and the Power Service come on top or off it. In practice the limit is usually how many buyers you get, not how much you can make.

For a first line with little cash, the Furnace and wine cost the least to start; water and hydroponics need a scenario or a few hundred in upgrades. Lab Pure chemistry earns the most per input but needs about 2,000 in modules and carries contraband risk. Each line has its own guide: water, chemistry, DNA and plant traits and machines.

How do market events change prices?

Market events are the only thing that moves prices from day to day; there is no random daily drift. From Day 6 (from the start if you skipped the tutorial) the game may start one each morning: a 50% chance when none is running, 35% with one, 25% with two, and never more than three at once. Each event changes one or more item types by a fixed percent for a few days, and that percent is added to the other market modifiers on both buying and selling.

Read the newspaper each morning. Stock up on a type when an event drops its price and sell into events that raise it. Two events that push the same type the same way add up. The Vending Machine ignores events, so sell event goods over the counter.

What can you earn while the store is closed?

Vending Machine

The Vending Machine (1200 in Wild's Network, or the Vending Machine starting perk) sells goods overnight at your Retail Markup plus 10%. You cannot set the price, and contraband cannot go in. Each night every item gets one chance to sell, based on the machine's own attractiveness, which starts at 15 and has nothing to do with Store Attractiveness. Each Electronic Parts (Common) adds 5, up to 100. Each Metal Ingot adds a row of space, up to 96 slots, but every upgrade raises its nightly power use from 2 up to 12.

Item	Price	Machine attractiveness
		15	50	100
Food or drink, value 20	25	20%	66.7%	100%
Food or drink, value 100	125	13.8%	46.2%	92.3%
Food or drink, value 300	375	7.8%	26.1%	52.2%
Other goods, value 20	25	13.3%	44.4%	88.9%
Other goods, value 100	125	4.6%	15.4%	30.8%
Other goods, value 300	375	1.3%	4.3%	8.7%
Material, value 50	63	3.8%	12.5%	25.1%
Luxury item, value 300	375	0.9%	2.9%	5.7%

Food and drinks sell 1.5 to 6 times as often as other goods at the same price, so they are what to put in it. Spread the stock over different items: a second copy of the same item is only checked half the time. If too little sells, the machine always sells one to three cheap items (worth 50 or less) as a minimum. The money stays in the machine until you press Transfer All.

The Landlord also offers a Vending Machine or Vending Fountain from Day 43, every two weeks while you rent. Accepting adds 150 to your weekly rent for good, and that 150 rises with every rent increase.

Vending Fountain

The Vending Fountain (1200) sells water overnight from three slots: Basewater, High-Quality Water and Pure Water. It sells a fixed amount each night instead of rolling: 750 ml from the Basewater slot and 450 ml from the High-Quality slot at the start, and up to 4.75 liters and 2.45 liters with full attractiveness. The Pure Water slot starts selling at attractiveness 20. Water in a higher slot than its real grade sells at that slot's price, but counts as a wrong label. See the water guide.

Appraisals

With an Appraisal Board certificate in the Display Case, an appraisal customer comes on 33% (Junior) to 55% (Master) of days, more after days without one. Each customer brings two to four items, and each pays a base fee plus a share of your estimate:

Perfect means within 5% of the true value, so an estimate at 105% pays the most. A Junior who appraises a 100-credit item at 105 earns 35 for it. Joining costs 85 on Mark Up (×2 on Thin Margins, ×3 on Red Ink). Appraisals cost nothing to stock, which is why they are a common second income on hard runs.

Marketplace Requests, bounties and Georgio

• Marketplace Requests (250 in Wild's Network, from Day 8) post orders for specific items. They pay the item's base value times 1.2 to 3.5, plus faction reputation.
• Wanted posters pay a fixed bounty of 100 to 1500 when you report the right customer. The Model Citizen perk raises bounties by 50%; Convict lowers them by 25%. Reporting a seller who carries contraband pays 50 plus 25 / 40 / 60 per Mid / High / Critical item. A wrong report costs 8 Security reputation and a 50-credit fine.
• Georgio visits on Day 43 and asks to borrow a quarter or half of your cash. He pays back four times as much, on a rent day when you are short of money (at least 5 days later) or after 25 days.

Scratchers and the lottery

Neither makes money on average. A Scratcher Ticket costs 20 and pays back 11.92 on average; 48% of tickets win nothing and the 350 jackpot comes up 0.8% of the time. A Lottery Ticket costs 25 and pays back about 14 on average. Only high luck improves either.

Which Wild's Network upgrades pay for themselves?

You pay for upgrades with Wild's favor first, then credits. Favor comes from the introduction (200 on Mark Up), from 5% of every trade on Mark Up (10% on Price Gouge, none on harder difficulties), and 40 for every point of Lower Levels reputation you gain. Upgrades cost 1.5 times as much on Thin Margins and twice as much on Red Ink.

Renovations and Endorsements are the long-term multipliers: more and richer customers make every other method pay more. Shareholders and Power Line Hijack are slower, but they pay back with no extra work.

What eats your profit?

Skipping the Janitorial Service is false economy: every night without it adds two trash levels, and from level 3 each level takes 5% off your Store Attractiveness, which costs you customer slots. The deed guide shows how rent rises week by week and when buying the store beats renting.

A money plan by stage

1. Buy only what you can resell, take wholesale when it is offered, and sell to normal customers for the Retail Markup. Scavenge at night: your first ten searches cannot injure you, unless you skipped the tutorial. Haggle 10% at most.

2. Buy the Furnace on Dr. Jackson's first visit and join the Appraisal Board when it comes. On a Water Merchant or Chemist start, your production line is already your main income.

3. Water Purifiers on tap water are the strongest choice right now; chemistry pays more but carries inspection risk. Buy Power Line Hijack once you have spare favor.

4. Store Renovations, Showcase Expansions and a clean store raise both the number of customers and their budgets. Add a Vending Machine full of food and drinks.

5. Wild's Endorsement I–III raise every budget, and rent stops. See buying the deed.