The brine sabre is a weapon in Old-school Runescape that allows you to kill a certain slayer creature without the use of its usual slayer tool - in this case, instead of using a bag of salt to kill a rockslug, you can use the brine sabre to kill rockslugs outright and save time and money. The name, description and location of this item indicates that it's been left sitting in salty water for a long time - but instead of rusting, it's been imbibed with the properties of salt, and so you can kill slugs with it.
I'm gearing up to do a brine sabre grind. It has a 1/512 chance of dropping from an enemy called a Brine Rat, which sounds like a lot until you realise that this weapon only drops from brine rats, there's only one area in the entire game world where brine rats spawn and they're definitely not the strongest mob in the game (level 70). Because of its rarity, utility and awesome look, this weapon currently sits at a value of approx. 289,000 gold pieces on the Grand Exchange.
But what's the history of this item's value throughout its lifespan? This post is all about that, at least according to oldschool.runescape.wiki.
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So, the brine sabre is currently coming down from a record peak of its value. Here's the chart for the past month vs the past six months:
So you can see that the brine sabre was at its peak in early-ish September, trading at a value of 310k~. Some time in July, it took a sharp dip to a value slightly north of 170k. The market has been a bit unstable; maybe there was a rash of availability, like someone grinding for brine sabre drops and mass-selling on the GE.
What I find interesting, though, is the lifetime sales of the brine sabre.
The lowest price that the brine sabre ever traded at was 50,000 gold pieces on Wednesday, 31 January 2018.
The highest it ever traded at - leading directly in from its low point - was 700,000 gold pieces on Wednesday, 21st November 2018.
The next highest peak of value was 314k~ on Saturday 9 September 2017:
And the spike in brine sabre's value this past September is the third highest price this item has ever been at, at approx. 310k~.
So why is this the case?
You might think that the brine sabre itself changed - and you'd be right. In July of 2016, the brine sabre gained its ability to kill rockslugs without the use of an extraneous salt item:
But that was in July of 2016. The value of the item reached an all-time high in September 2017, over a year after the change occured, and the price subsequently bottomed out in early 2018. It only reached its all-time peak value of 700k~ at the end of November 2018, almost an entire year after it had cratered to a value of 50,000 gold pieces.
I don't know why any of this happened. Maybe some players grinded brine sabres to the point of deflation, causing ownership to increase so dramatically that the value of the item plummeted. But maybe after the item had lost its value and the glut of brine sabres had dwindled, other players began searching for the sabre on the GE and created new demand, causing the price to surge.
But I'm doubtful of that because the price took eleven months between January and November to go from rock-bottom to all time peak.
A factor that may have played into this is an emote clue for the master clue scroll, requiring you to go deep into the wilderness with the sabre and a bunch of other expensive gear to fight a double agent in the lava dragon pen. That's way fuckin up in the wilderness, close to the very top of it, making you extremely susceptible to pkers as well as risking a violent, dragonfire-fueled death in the search of treasure.
I don't know when the clue was added, but the master clue scroll was added to the game on the 6th of July 2016. At any point past that date, the emote clue requiring the brine sabre could have been added to the game, causing players to look for one on the Grand Exchange.
And why has it peaked again now, six years after it initially broke 300k in 2017? I have no idea, but the value seems to be dropping right now.
What gets me is that the rockslug is a very low-effort and low-value slayer monster. The average value of a rockslug drop is like 112 coins, and the rockslug itself is level 29. To get a brine sabre, you either need to shell out a six-figure sum for it on the Grand Exchange or grind a particular mob that's level 70, over twice as strong as any given rockslug.
I think it's a combination of rarity, its necessity for the master clue scroll and because it looks fucking awesome.
