Black Market Crafting in Albion Online: What Sells and How to Find Profit
Black Market crafting means crafting gear and selling it to the Black Market in Caerleon instead of to other players. It makes silver when the Black Market's price for your item, minus the 4% sales tax (8% without Premium), is higher than what the craft cost you: materials after resource returns, the station fee and journals.
The Black Market buys weapons, armor, off-hands, bags, capes and gathering tools in very large numbers, most of them at tiers 4 to 6. That makes it the main buyer for anyone who crafts gear in bulk. To find a craft that pays, start with AFM's Profitable Crafts list filtered to the Black Market, then check that one craft in the Simple Craft Calculator with today's orders before you buy materials.
How the Black Market works
The Black Market is an NPC merchant in Caerleon. The game describes it as "Sell Equipment - it becomes part of Albion's loot": when a creature drops an item as loot, that item comes from the Black Market's own stock. The gear you sell to it ends up in mob drops and chests all over Albion, so it keeps buying as long as players keep looting. In the game's own words, an item can be sold for more silver if the Black Market is short of that item.
- You can only sell to it. Players cannot buy from the Black Market.
- Sell at once or post a sell order. Selling to a buy order pays you immediately. A sell order waits until the Black Market's buying price reaches your price, and it expires if it does not.
- A better quality fills a lower-quality order. A Black Market buy order accepts its own quality or any better one, so an Excellent item can fill a Normal order when that order pays more. The Royal city markets only match the exact quality.
- Enchantments .0 to .4. The Black Market buys tiers 2 to 8 at every enchantment the item has, except gathering tools, which it only buys at .0.
Selling to the Black Market costs the same as selling anywhere else:
| With Premium | Without Premium | |
|---|---|---|
| Sales tax, paid when the item sells | 4% | 8% |
| Setup fee, paid when you post a sell order | 2.5% | 2.5% |
Selling to a buy order costs only the sales tax. A sell order costs the setup fee and then the sales tax. The selling guide explains orders and taxes in every market.
What the Black Market buys
The game data marks which items the Black Market trades. It buys:
- Weapons of every line, including artifact weapons, War Gloves and Shapeshifter Staffs
- Off-hands: shields, tomes and torches
- Cloth, leather and plate armor, helmets and shoes, including artifact pieces
- Bags and Satchels of Insight
- Capes, from the plain Cape to the city capes (such as the Bridgewatch Cape) and the Undead, Keeper, Avalonian and other special capes
- Gathering tools: sickles, skinning knives, pickaxes, stone hammers and axes, at .0 only
It does not buy:
- Crystal weapons and off-hands, such as the Infinity Blade and the Unbreakable Ward, and the Black Hands
- Gatherer gear (the Harvester, Skinner, Miner, Quarrier and Lumberjack sets and backpacks), Avalonian gathering tools and fishing rods
- Beginner's (T1) gear
- Anything that is not equipment: mounts, food, potions, resources, refined materials, artifacts, journals and furniture
To check a single item, open it in the Price Checker: its overview lists Black Market as Eligible or Not eligible. The game also gives these items an Estimated Black Market Value, based on average trade prices on the Black Market in Caerleon. AFM shows it as Black Market EMV to signed-in players.
What sells: tiers, enchantments and categories
The shares below come from four weeks of Black Market sales history (5 October to 1 November 2026) for every item the Black Market buys, on all three servers, as recorded by the Albion Online Data Project. The three servers look almost the same.
| Tier | Items sold | Silver paid |
|---|---|---|
| T2 and T3 | 3.5% | 0.1% |
| T4 | 29.2% | 5.7% |
| T5 | 32.0% | 18.1% |
| T6 | 28.3% | 42.8% |
| T7 | 5.3% | 18.8% |
| T8 | 1.6% | 14.5% |
| Enchantment | Items sold | Silver paid |
|---|---|---|
| .0 | 76.6% | 57.4% |
| .1 | 20.1% | 27.1% |
| .2 | 3.0% | 10.9% |
| .3 | 0.3% | 3.7% |
| .4 | under 0.1% | 0.9% |
| Category | Items sold | Silver paid |
|---|---|---|
| Weapons | 21.0% | 31.6% |
| Body armor | 20.5% | 19.9% |
| Helmets | 19.5% | 9.4% |
| Shoes | 18.3% | 9.8% |
| Bags and Satchels of Insight | 10.0% | 17.5% |
| Capes | 6.3% | 9.4% |
| Off-hands | 4.5% | 2.5% |
| Gathering tools | under 0.1% | under 0.1% |
What this means for a crafter:
- The volume is at T4 to T6. Nine of every ten items the Black Market buys are T4, T5 or T6, and T6 alone brings in more than 40% of the silver.
- T7 and T8 sell few items for a lot of silver. They are under 7% of the items but a third of the silver, so a large T8 batch can take a while to sell.
- High enchantments are rare. .3 and .4 together are less than half a percent of the items sold. They pay a lot per item, but there are few buyers.
- Bags and capes are the best sellers. The Expert's Bag is the most sold item on every server, and the next places go to Adept's, Expert's and Master's Bags and Capes.
- Weapons and body armor pay more per item. Helmets and shoes are almost 40% of the items sold but less than 20% of the silver.
- Gathering tools hardly sell on the Black Market.
The history only includes what Data Project users uploaded, so read it as shares, not exact totals. For one item, check its Daily Sales in Profitable Crafts (see below).
Craft in the bonus city or in Caerleon?
Crafting in a Royal city gives an 18% production bonus, and the city that specializes in an item adds 15% more. So you have two ways to supply the Black Market: craft in the item's bonus city and carry the gear to Caerleon, or craft in Caerleon at the base 18%, right next to the Black Market.
| Where you craft | Return rate without Focus | Return rate with Focus |
|---|---|---|
| The city with the item's bonus (18% + 15%) | 24.8% | 47.9% |
| Caerleon, with no bonus for the item (18%) | 15.3% | 43.5% |
| Extra materials used in Caerleon | +12.7% | +8.5% |
The last row compares the materials a craft really uses, which is the recipe amount × (1 − return rate). The Resource Return Rate guide shows the formula with a worked example.
- Bonus city: cheaper crafts, but Caerleon is surrounded by red zones, and every trip with finished gear risks the whole load. The Transporting Guide covers safer routes into Caerleon.
- Caerleon: you sell without carrying finished gear, and with Focus you only use about 8.5% more materials. The materials still have to reach Caerleon: buy them in the Caerleon market or carry them in. Materials usually weigh more than the gear they make: in the calculator, 10 Master's Broadswords crafted in Lymhurst take 218 kg of inputs and come out at 117 kg.
- Caerleon is the bonus city for War Gloves, Shapeshifter Staffs and gathering tools, so these items get the full bonus right next to the Black Market. Capes and bags have their bonus in Brecilien.
The city bonus guide lists which city has the bonus for every item.
Quality, specialization and Focus
Crafted quality is random. With no quality bonus, 68.9% of crafts come out Normal. Your specialization on the Destiny Board adds extra quality rolls, and Focus adds 50 quality bonus points on top. The crafting quality guide has the numbers.
- Price your batch by its likely quality mix, not as if every item were Excellent.
- Check every quality's buy order before you sell. An Outstanding item sometimes earns more in the Good or Normal order than in its own.
- Focus pays twice here: it raises the return rate (see the table above) and improves quality. The Focus guide helps you decide where your Focus earns the most.
Find profitable Black Market crafts with AFM
Profitable Crafts
Profitable Crafts prices thousands of recipes for every server twice a day. Each result is one exact plan for 10 runs: recipe, craft location, sale market and Focus choice. It uses Royal Estimated Market Value (EMV) for the materials and Black Market EMV for the finished item, with Premium taxes and maximum specialization. The results are part of the Masterpiece subscription.
- Open the Results tab and check your server at the top of the page.
- Set Sale Market to Black Market EMV.
- Set Craft Location to Bonus city (craft where the item has its bonus, then transport) or Caerleon (craft next to the Black Market).
- Set Focus to With Focus or Without Focus.
- Set Min Daily Sales so you only see items the Black Market buys in volume. Daily Sales counts the units sold on the Black Market per day over the last 14 days.
- Sort by Profit, ROI or Profit/Focus.
- Open a row in the Simple Craft Calculator, or tick several rows and use Open in full calculator.
EMV is an estimate, not an order you can fill at any volume. Treat the list as a shortlist and check each craft before you spend silver.
Simple Craft Calculator
The Simple Craft Calculator checks one craft with live prices from the Albion Online Data Project, free and without signing in.
- Pick the item. When the Black Market buys it, the calculator sets the product's Sell Location to Black Market.
- Pick the product's Price Type:
- Buy Order is the best Black Market buy order, what you get by selling at once. No setup fee.
- Sell Order is the lowest sell order already waiting on the Black Market. The calculator adds the setup fee.
- Average Price is the average Black Market price over the last 14 days. The calculator adds the setup fee, because you would need a sell order to get it.
- Estimated Market Value (signed in) uses the Black Market EMV.
- Turn on Use Focus if you craft with Focus, set your specs on the Specs tab (or sync them with the AFM Data Client), and check the Craft Fee per 100 Nutrition of the station you use.
The Breakdown shows every fee. Here 10 Master's Broadswords crafted in Lymhurst are valued at the Black Market's 14-day average, with the setup fee and the 4% sales tax taken off:
The calculator also counts journals: the empty ones you fill as a cost and the full ones as income. The laborers and journals guide explains them. For several crafts at once, use the full Crafting Calculator (tutorial).
When buying beats crafting
Sometimes a Royal city sells an item for less than it costs you to craft and less than the Black Market pays. Then buy it and sell it on instead: that is flipping. The Black Market Flipper finds these trades in live orders, and the Royal → Black Market tab of the EMV Flipper, a Masterpiece tool, compares Royal EMV with Black Market EMV. The flipper tutorial explains how to use them.
Mistakes to avoid
- Choosing by price alone. A high Black Market price is worth little if only a few units sell each day. Check Daily Sales, especially for .3 and .4 items.
- Crafting more than the orders want. Each buy order is for a set amount. Once the best orders are filled, the rest of your batch sells to lower orders or waits in a sell order. Split big batches across several items and qualities.
- Forgetting the fees. The sales tax is 4% with Premium and 8% without, and a sell order adds 2.5%.
- Assuming the best quality. Most crafts come out Normal or Good unless your specialization is high.
- Carrying everything at once. Losing one trip into Caerleon can cost more than many crafts earn.
New to crafting? Start with Is crafting worth it?, and see the refining guide if you also refine your own materials.