Rare Goods

Rare Commodities or Rare Goods in Elite Dangerous are special trade goods that can only be purchased from one place and are in short supply (often only a few units available at once per commander meaning that you cannot just wait around for more to become available).

These rare goods are unique because they increase in value the further you take them from their source of origin.

The graph on the right shows the general trend in how the payout (on the Y axis) changes depending on distance (X axis). Using the example of Lavian Brandy that costs about 4,000 credits, we can see that at about 70 to LY from the source, the price you can get for this rare good rises rapidly until it tops out at about 120 to 140LY away from the source. Although this data was for Lavian Brandy, all other rare goods follow the same trend.

As you can see, the profits can be potentially huge - it has been reported of profits of up to 16,000 credits per unit of Lavian Brandy at 140LY+, with some commanders finding routes between two different sources of rare goods meaning they can take goods back in both directions for huge profits.

Retail 1.02 introduced changes such that for each rare good you have a personal quota - once you have met this quota you will not be able to buy any more.

For example, say you wanted Altarian Skin from the station Solo Orbiter:

• When you docked there were 6 tonnes available which you purchased.
• This left the supply indication in the commodities market as “0 High” indicating that although there are none available right now, you have not yet met your quota.
• Some time later you came back and purchased another 4 tonnes, taking you up to 10 total.
• This purchase left the supply indication blank which indicates that your have met your quota for this product and, for you, there is no more supply available.
• You can infer from this that your quota for this rare good was 10 units, but it may be different for others and there is no way of knowing ahead of time.

It is not the case that you have to sell what you have before you buy more - you can, but only up to your quota, and the resupply times for the station can be very long.

As such the best tactic now is to find several sources of rare goods close to each other to collect different types of rare goods before heading off for your 140LY journey to sell them. Currently a good place to do this is Lave-Diso-Leesti-Zaonce where there are 5 types of rare goods available from 4 stations all about 10LY from each other.