Tanning Dragon Hides

Dragon Leather is used by high-level crafters in their quest to reach ever-higher crafting levels and experience. As a result, these crafters will buy leather in amounts of thousands at a time. They do not, however, want to take the time to gather dragon hides, take the time to tan them, and then craft.

This higher price they are willing to pay for your to tan leaves a gap for making a good deal of GP. If the market is right, we're talking 1,500,000 GP per hour! The best part about this method is that no skill are required.


This method is a bit different from the other methods, because it depends on the Grand Exchange prices to determine your profits. For this reason, you'll notice this method is on multiple sections of this site. Sometimes it can make 1.5M per hour, making it worthy of the 20M-40M section. Other times, it only makes 600k an hour, making it more suitable for the 10m-20m section. Luckily, with 3 kinds of dragonhides, there is three times more of a chance that one type will be able of make you 1M+ per hour in profits.

There are three types of Dragon Hides that can be tanned: Blue, Red, and Black. When picking the dragon hide to tan, look for the Dragon hide that has the biggest difference between hide price and leather price.

For example, when the picture below was taken, the difference between Red Dragonhide and Red Dragon Leather was about 500 GP.

Considering you can tan almost 3000 Hides per hour, you make a profit of nearly 1.5M each hour! We'll use the above image as an example when explaining the method.


Here's a step by step procedure on what to do:

1. Look for the Dragonhide that has the highest price gap between Dragonhide and Dragon Leather. Let's assume we run across something like the picture above, then we'll buy 4000 Red Dragon Hides.

2. Invest all of your GP into the Dragonhide that you found has the highest price gap between it's leather counterpart. When you are buying it, buy it for a few coins above the average price - buying it at max can decrease profits. Using our example from above, we'll buy the 4000 Red Dragonhides for 4200gp (median price was at 4048). You've spent 16.8M.

While you're at the GE, buy 80-100 energy potions. It shouldn't cost you more than 30k total. Since it's such a small expenditure, we won't include it in our calculations.

3. Head over to the bank at Al Kharid. Equip all of your weight-reducing gear. Spottier cape, boots of lightness, etc.

4. In your inventory, have 27 dragon hides and about 100k coins. Simply run to the tanner just north of the bank, tan all the red dragonhides, and then run back to the bank to deposit your hides.

5. Once you are low in run-energy, just withdraw an energy potions from the bank to recharge yourself.

6. In about 1.5 hours (assuming it takes 1 hour to tan 3000 hides), you will have 4000 Red Dragon Leather. Head over to the GE and sell them for median price. If you're lucky, they will be bought up by some eager crafter at max price.


Profits, Profits, Profits

They say that a picture says a thousand words. Hopefully this one will just say that you can make a bunch of money:



As you can see, from the 4000 Dragonhides were bought, tanned, and then sold. The profit was 2,000,000 GP! The whole process took about 1.5 hours. So you're making profits of OVER 1M GP PER HOUR.

Its worth remembering however, that this method depends on the Grand Exchange prices for Dragonhide and Dragon Leather. The larger the difference, the greater the profits. In case the difference between the two items are small (thus making your profits small), there are alternate methods you can do.

Make no mistake though. When the market is right, this method is unmatched.