Ever get an artifact or heavily enchanted item that's worth over 10k? Ever get it and just have no use for it? Isn't it a shame the most you can get for it is less than 2000 (in Oblivion)?

I think this needs to be overhauled somehow. Perhaps the player can put up a bulletin or notice so wealthy npc's can purchase the item if they want to. Or, you know, have richer merchants.
How would you guys "fix" this?

Maybe with some kind of pawn broker? Actually, pawn brokers in general are a good idea. It always seemed strange how any merchant, no matter what business they were in, were more than happy to buy all your crap off of you.

What if ordinary merchants were no longer perfectly happy to purchase your junk. If you wanted to sell, you would either have to find a buyer who was actually interested in buying your stuff. Namely, a pawn broker. A merchant in the business of buying low and selling high. And pawn brokers aren't just limited to whatever coin they have on hand. For your very expensive items, you might be issued a letter of credit. These letters can be redeemed at the local bank for sweet, sweet coin.

I rather prefer the notion that if the town itself is not of comparable value... then no one living there can afford the item.

One in need of a quick sale, should have to discreetly seek out buyers, and have to contend with the very real risk of double-cross ~even with the city government... and also to expect taxes for any legitimate sale. If the city is large, perhaps an auction house could be a fixture of it. Such a place could plausibly host a sale for commission; where they handle security and getting affluent buyers in the door.

It would be annoying and pointless, that's what. This aspect of the trading mechanic is fine as it is, and there's no need to change it. Just because you can change something doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.

But I would say that the issue with some items being more expensive than any merchant can possibly buy is rather absurd, and needs to be fixed. Either there should be some merchants with enough gold to buy the most expensive items in the game, or the price of high level items should be lowered to a level that someone can reasonably afford. An item's value is not some metaphysical attribute of it that everyone knows, it's the price that people agree the item is worth, so if an item costs ten thousand Septim's, then there must be SOMEONE who can and is willing to pay that much gold for it, and it's certainly not the player since, with some very rare exceptions, the most expensive items are not ones you'll find for sale in stores anyway, at least in Morrowind and Oblivion. If there's an item in the game that costs twenty thousand gold but no one can afford to pay more then two thousand, then the remaining eighteen thousand of its price is nothing more than decoration. Not that I'm saying every NPC should be able to afford my ebony armor, obviously, the amount of gold NPCs have should reflect the sort of merchandise they deal in and the sort of person they are. A food merchant in the slums should of course have a lot less gold than a smith in a an upper class district who deals in high-quality weapons and armor, I'm only saying that the game should adhere to the basic principle that if something has a high value, there should be SOMEONE who will pay that much for it.

I'd also say that you should occassionally be able to find higher level items in stores. Because part of the reason for players having a lot of gold and nothing to do with it in the Elder Scrolls comes from there being nothing worthwhile to spend gold on in the late game, since nothing you can buy at that point is worth using. If you could find some of the kind of items you might want to use then for sale, then maybe you'd have a reason to spend all the gold you have on something. Like gold, the kind of items a merchant can sell should depend on the location and quality of that merchant. You shouldn't find a merchant selling glass armor in a place where people should barely be able to afford steel. Alternately, Bethesda could do something like that smith in Tribunal where certain characters can make high quality equipment for you, for a price. This is actually probably the most logical approach, since it's mostly only special customers who could afford items like that, I'd think, so it would not be unreasonable for smiths to only provide them through special commissions.

I disagree. If some Yahoo breaks into an old dungeon and happens to return with an artifact of astounding value... No merchant at the town trading post is going to be able to afford it, and even in the biggest cities it may still be impossible to find a merchant willing to BUY the thing ~if they plan on doubling their markup. The Yahoo is going to have to sell it at a loss (perhaps an incredible loss); or have it stolen.

There was a line in some game (I forget which), where some towns-person heckeled the PC about "You heroes... always traipsing about ruining the local economies with your salvaged trinkets and gold" (or something like that). There should be things so ancient, so powerful ~so cursed, or so much trouble to keep, that the PC wants to sell it at any loss, just to profit and be rid of it. (And also things he wants to keep, and couldn't sell for a reasonable price even if he wanted to).

The world has a long history, and some things perhaps, should not be affordable to anyone. I still say an auction house might be a good thing to have in a major (or capitol) city, and it could even be it's own quest hub. :shrug:

I'm all for an auction house, Gizmo! That sounds like a great idea. It'd just be a task generating dialogue for each item.. Silent auction, anyone?

Maybe they could toss a few extremely wealthy relic hunters into the game. There'd be a couple in each city with their own tastes, and the player would have to find the right one based on recommendations from the local npcs. "Oh I hear Ergar likes, you know, bows, or something". "Thanks guy".