PoE Trading Guide (3.29): How to Sell Items and Buy Currency

Quick answer

To trade in Path of Exile you list items in a public Premium Stash Tab, price them in Chaos or Divine Orbs, and they appear on the official Trade site (pathofexile.com/trade). A buyer whispers you in-game, you invite them to your party, they walk into your Hideout, and you complete the swap in the trade window. There is no auction house and no gold-for-trade: PoE runs on a pure player-to-player barter economy, and every price is set by the players who list. This guide covers selling, buying, price-checking, the Currency Exchange, and the etiquette that keeps traders from ignoring you. Everything below is current for League 3.29 "Curse of the Allflame."

Key takeaways

• Selling needs a Premium Stash Tab. Set the tab to public, price each item, and it lists on the Trade site automatically. The cheapest entry is a single $5 tab upgrade.
• Currency trades go through the Currency Exchange, not whispers. It is the fastest way to move orbs, fragments, scarabs and essences in bulk.
• Chaos Orb is the unit of account. Think of Chaos as $1 and a Divine Orb as roughly $100; almost everything is priced in one of the two.
• Price with the live economy. Search comparable listings on the Trade site and cross-check poe.ninja; never guess.
• The buyer always comes to the seller's Hideout. Whisper, invite, trade, verify the currency amount, accept.

Path of Exile's economy is one of the deepest in the ARPG genre, and Maxroll puts trading front and centre: "Trading with other players is one of the most important aspects of Path of Exile." Learning to trade well is, in their words, "as much a skill as learning how to build your character." Here is how the whole system works.

How does trading work in Path of Exile?

Path of Exile has no gold currency for trade. Everything is bartered in currency orbs. Chaos Orbs, Divine Orbs and the rest of the crafting-orb ladder double as the money supply. When you "buy" a rare ring for 1 Chaos, you are literally handing over a Chaos Orb.

There are two things you can trade and two systems that handle them:

• Modifiable gear — weapons, armour, jewelry, maps, unique items. These are sold through the searchable Trade site using a Premium Stash Tab, one whisper and one face-to-face trade at a time.
• Stackable, unmodifiable items — currency orbs, fragments, scarabs, essences, divination cards. These flow through the Currency Exchange and Bulk Item Exchange, which behave like an order book and complete without a manual meet-up.

Trading exists to save you time. As Maxroll frames it, you could farm a low-drop-rate item or craft a resistance ring with a pile of Fossils and Harvest reforges — or you can trade one Chaos Orb for the finished ring in thirty seconds. That trade-off is the whole reason the economy exists, and it applies to 3.29's league loop too: many players simply sell their Charts, Voyage loot and Ducats rather than hunt every upgrade themselves.

How do I sell items in Path of Exile?

Selling is the single easiest way to build currency, because PoE's economy runs on players farming specific content and selling the drops to people who can't or don't want to farm it. (If you want more to sell, our best currency farming strategies for 3.29 covers the lanes that print the most.) Here is the standard flow.

Step 1: Get a Premium Stash Tab

The searchable Trade site only reads from Premium Stash Tabs (or Merchant Tabs). Without one, your loot is invisible to buyers. The cheapest possible entry is to buy $5 (USD) worth of points and upgrade a single existing stash tab into a Premium Tab, which alone unlocks selling. A Currency Tab or Quad Tab is a quality-of-life upgrade later, not a requirement to start.

Step 2: Make the tab public and priceable

Right-click the tab's name tag and:

• Give it a name and colour.
• Check the Public circle.
• Choose "each Item Individually Priced" if it is your only tab (later you can flat-price a whole tab of identical items).
• Click the check-mark in the bottom-right to save.

Step 3: Price the item

Drop the item into the tab, right-click it, and set a price:

• Choose Exact Price (or Negotiable if you're happy to haggle).
• Enter the number of Chaos Orbs you want. Chaos is the default unit and the standard "$1" of the game; a Divine Orb is the big note, worth roughly a hundred Chaos. (For why those two orbs became the currency standard, see our Divine Orb vs Exalted Orb guide.)
• Most players only trade in Chaos or Divine — list in one of the two so buyers can actually pay you.

Your item now appears in Trade-site searches within a couple of minutes. When a buyer messages you, an in-game whisper pops up with a pre-written line (the Trade site copies it for them). Right-click their name, invite them to your party, and be quick, because if you're slow, they'll buy from the next seller on the list.

Step 4: Complete the trade

• The buyer always comes to the seller's Hideout, so you never travel to them.
• When they arrive, right-click their portrait or the chat box and select Trade.
• Put the item in the window; wait for them to add the currency.
• Hover the currency and confirm the amount is correct before you accept. This is where scams happen.
• Accept, and say thanks.

The 24/7 option: Faustus and the Merchant Tab

If you hate being whispered while you map, a Merchant Tab lets you list items with the NPC Faustus as an asynchronous store. Drop an item in, set a price, and it stays listed even after you log off, and the sale completes without you being online. It costs a separate tab upgrade, but it is the closest thing PoE has to a "set and forget" shop for gear.

How do I use the Currency Exchange?

For orbs, fragments, scarabs and essences, skip whispers entirely and use the Currency Exchange. It is the fastest way to sell and buy stackable items, and it functions like a real market order book.

• Click the "I want" box to choose what you're receiving.
• Click the "I have" box to choose what you're giving.
• Read the Market Ratio, the current buy-order price. Hover it to see existing sell orders, and use that to decide your ratio.
• The gold cost of the trade shows above the Place Order button (every exchange trade costs some Gold, earned in Kingsmarch).
• If your price can be filled immediately, it completes on the spot. If you're asking above the current market, the exchange creates a listing and fills it when a buyer meets your price.

The Bulk Item Exchange is the same idea aimed at volume: the go-to when you're liquidating a stash of Charts, scarabs, fragments or Voyage currency in one sweep. You cannot trade gear, weapons, jewelry or maps here; those stay on the searchable Trade site.

How do I buy items and price-check?

Buying is the mirror image of selling, and it lives on the same Trade site.

• Open the Trade site, pick your league (Curse of the Allflame for 3.29 softcore), and search by item type or by specific modifiers. The site supports pseudo mods (like "+X total Resistance"), so you can search a combined stat instead of hunting each individual roll.
• Sort by price, low to high. Ignore the very cheapest few, which are often stale listings or price-fixers who never respond.
• Click the whisper button; the site copies a message into your clipboard. Paste it in-game, and wait for the invite.

Price-checking your own drops is the skill that decides whether you get rich or leak value:

• Search comparable listings. Filter the Trade site for an item with the same key modifiers and read what real sellers are asking. This is the ground truth, because it is the live market.
• Cross-check poe.ninja. poe.ninja aggregates the 3.29 economy for currency, uniques, cluster jewels and more. Use it to sanity-check a price and to track which currencies are inflating as the league ages.
• Never quote a static number. Prices float hard through a league as currency floods in. A Divine that costs 130 Chaos at week one can be very different by ExileCon. Always verify the current rate live.

If price-checking and re-listing sounds like more time than the loot is worth, that's exactly the calculation that drives most of the economy: many players just buy the currency they need and skip straight to gearing.

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Trade etiquette and staying safe

The economy runs smoother when everyone follows the same unwritten rules. Break them and sellers will simply stop inviting you.

• Respond or move on quickly. Sellers list dozens of items; if you whisper and then go afk, you're the reason they hate trading. If you get the invite, show up.
• Don't lowball live. Haggling is fine on expensive or "Negotiable" listings; it is rude on a 5-Chaos item priced Exact. If a price is set Exact, pay it or skip it.
• Verify the currency in the window every time. The most common "scam" is a buyer swapping the currency amount or type at the last second. Hover it, confirm the count, then accept.
• You cannot split currency stacks after the trade window opens. Sort your currency before you invite, not during the trade.
• Beware off-platform "deals." Legitimate PoE trades happen in-game through the trade window. Anyone pushing you to a third-party site to "verify" or pay outside the game is fishing for your account.

A genuinely useful recent change: Trade site search URLs no longer use short IDs. GGG now encodes the entire search in the link, so a shared trade link no longer expires and you can share a URL without running the search first. Old short-ID links still work for now but are being phased out, which matters if you follow build guides that paste trade searches.

A quick reference: which system for which item?

You're selling…	Use this	How it completes
Rare/unique gear, weapons, jewelry, maps	Searchable Trade site + Premium Tab	Whisper → invite → Hideout trade
Currency orbs, fragments, scarabs, essences	Currency Exchange	Order book, auto-fills
Bulk stacks of the above	Bulk Item Exchange	Order book, volume trades
Gear you don't want to babysit	Merchant Tab (Faustus)	Asynchronous, sells while offline

For 3.29 specifically, that means your Voyage and Chart loot (Ducats, scarabs, currency) is fastest to liquidate on the Currency and Bulk exchanges, while any chase rare or unique you craft or find goes on the searchable Trade site.

FAQ

Do I need to spend real money to trade in Path of Exile? To sell on the searchable Trade site, yes — you need at least one Premium Stash Tab, and the cheapest route is a $5 points purchase to upgrade one tab. Buying items and using the Currency Exchange do not require a Premium Tab, only the in-game Gold fee on exchange trades.

What is the best way to sell currency fast? The Currency Exchange. It works like an order book: set your ratio against the live Market Ratio, and if you match a standing buy order it completes instantly. Whispering individual currency trades is slower and only worth it for very large or exotic amounts.

How do I price-check an item? Search the official Trade site for the same item with matching modifiers and read what real sellers are asking, then cross-check poe.ninja for the current 3.29 economy. Ignore the handful of suspiciously cheap listings at the top — they're often stale or bait. Never rely on a fixed number from an old guide; prices float all league.

Why is nobody whispering me about my listings? Three usual causes: the tab isn't set to Public, the item isn't actually priced (an unpriced item in a public tab won't list), or you priced it above the market so buyers scroll past. Re-check the tab's Public and price settings, then compare your price to live listings for the same item.

What is the standard trade currency in PoE? The Chaos Orb is the everyday unit — think of it as $1 — and the Divine Orb is the high-value note, worth roughly 100 Chaos in 3.29 (verify the live rate on poe.ninja, as it shifts weekly). List almost everything in one of these two so buyers can pay you without splitting exotic currency.

Can I get scammed while trading? The trade window itself is safe — nothing changes hands until both sides accept. The real risks are last-second currency swaps in the window (always hover and verify the amount) and off-platform "deals" that ask you to pay or log in somewhere outside the game. Keep every trade in-game and you're protected.

Trading is the connective tissue of Path of Exile: every farming strategy, every crafting project and every build upgrade eventually passes through it. Set up one Premium Tab, learn to price against the live market, respect the etiquette, and the whole economy opens up.