Animal Crossing: New Horizons guide to selling Turnips

One of the long-standing features of Animal Crossing returns in New Horizons on Switch: the Turnip Market (otherwise known as the Stalk Market). It is still one of the most productive ways to make a ton of Bells in a short span of time, but like the real stock market, it’s not without risks.

Buying and Selling Turnips on Switch, explained

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Every Sunday morning, a wandering vendor named Daisy Mae will appear around your town square. Daisy Mae will sell you Turnips, but the price is variable. One week she may be selling them for 100 Bells, but the next week she may be selling them for 150 Bells.

You can buy as many Turnips as you want (as long as you have enough money). Once you have the Turnips, the idea is to sell them for more than you paid.

Every day (not including Sunday), Timmy and Tommy in Nook’s Cranny will tell you the current price of Turnips. The price actually changes twice a day (once at midnight, once at noon).

An example: Let’s say you bought 100 Turnips from Daisy Mae for 100 Bells each. You’ve made a 10,000 Bell investment. Now if Timmy and Tommy happen to be buying Turnips for 150 Bells each, selling them your Turnips will net you 5,000 Bells in profit.

These numbers can scale up into the hundreds of thousands of Bells, resulting in some enormous paydays.

But there’s always a risk of taking a big loss. If you buy at 100 Bells per Turnip and the Nook’s Cranny price never goes above 50 Bells, you’re going to take a loss. That’s just the way it goes.

Important: Whatever you do, do not hold onto the Turnips until the following Sunday. When Daisy Mae arrives in your town again, the Turnips you bought the following week will be spoiled and worthless. Taking a 50% loss with a bad Nook’s Cranny price is better than losing the whole investment.

Important thing 2: You can’t use house storage to store Turnips. If you go HARD on Turnips, you’re likely going to have to fill a room (or rooms) with them.

Best prices for buying and selling Turnips

It’s still too early to say what prices you should be looking out for in New Horizons. But if past Animal Crossing games are any indication, then when Daisy Mae is selling Turnips for less than 100 Bells, it’s usually a solid investment.

As for when to sell the Turnips, that’s trickier. Previous games have, rarely, seen Turnip prices skyrocket to 800 Bells, for a whopping 8X return on your investment. There were also price patterns you could track to help you decide when to sell. It’s currently unknown what the highest price is in New Horizons, though. If you’d like to play it safe, you should consider a 50% return on your investment a win.

The best way to sell Turnips is to communicate with friends who are also playing. If one of your buddies happens to have a great Turnip price in their town, you can travel there to buy or sell them. This ensures that you’re not as reliant on your town getting great prices. Just make sure you’re not getting greedy, or you’ll end up with a pile of rotten Turnips.

When to sell your Turnips

If you’ve made a big investment in Turnips and want to ensure that you make a large profit from selling them, it’s time to get a notepad out. Turnip prices are not completely random and there’s actually a way to predict when the highest prices will happen, so long as you write down every one of your Turnip prices for the week.

It’s time to get to know the four possible Turnip price trends: Decreasing, Random, Small Spike and Big Spike.

Note: This is how it worked in Animal Crossing: New Leaf and in our early testing it seems to work the same way in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But, as always, Turnip buyers beware, as it’s possible that the developers threw a couple curveballs in here.

Decreasing Trend

You’ll know your Turnip prices are on a Decreasing Trend if they start out low and just keep getting slightly lower throughout the week. Usually prices will start out around 80 or 90, but each price update will drop that by 5 or 10 Bells. By the end of the week, the price will be in the absolute toilet.

If you’ve been tracking every price and they’ve all followed this pattern by Thursday afternoon, you’ll know that you’re on a Decreasing Trend and should either sell immediately or find a friend to visit with better prices.

A sample week of prices for the Decreasing Trend would be:

Monday - 85 / 81
Tuesday - 75 / 70
Wednesday - 53 / 49
Thursday - 45 / 40
Friday - 37 / 33
Saturday - 30/ 29

Random Trend

While there is a slight pattern in the Random Trend, most of the week will bounce between prices ranging from 40-200 Bells. It’s particularly hard to know when to sell with the Random Trend, and if you don’t have online friends with better prices, you’re probably better off selling whenever you get above 125 with this pattern.

A sample week of prices for the Random Trend would be:

Monday - 105 / 55
Tuesday - 67 / 70
Wednesday - 53 / 45
Thursday - 102 / 85
Friday - 130 / 99
Saturday - 50 / 45

Small Spike Trend

With the Small Spike Trend, you can definitely start to make some money. The pattern you’re looking for is the Decreasing Trend followed by three price increases in a row of moderate size (20-40 Bells each). If this is what you’re tracking, the fourth price (after those three price increases) will be dramatically higher and you should sell then.

A sample week of prices for the Small Spike Trend would be:

Monday - 90 / 85
Tuesday - 81 / 75
Wednesday - 84 / 101
Thursday - 120 / 191
Friday - 108 / 83
Saturday - 60 / 55

Large Spike Trend

Here’s where the big money is made. This pattern will start as the Decreasing Trend and then you’ll see three larger increases in price. You’ll want to sell on the 3rd increased price. To differentiate this from the Small Spike Trend, keep an eye on this 3rd price. If it’s over 225, it’s best to sell. If it’s still in the mid-100s, you’re probably on a Small Spike Trend.

A sample week of prices for the Big Spike Trend would be:

Monday - 88 / 78
Tuesday - 63 / 101
Wednesday - 170 / 325
Thursday - 180 / 102
Friday - 80 / 60
Saturday - 53 / 49

Moral of the story, track those prices, and have your friends do the same. You should be able to tell when the best time to sell your Turnips is.