Every item is a claim
Stock does not arrive as a fact. It arrives as a proposition from someone who wants your money. Suppliers overstate value, customers push their luck, and contraband often carries problems you only see after the deal. Your job is not to buy goods, it is to buy claims and then test them.
The game gives each category a different verification verb. Cigarette packs are inspected visually before resale. Water must be tested and filtered. Weapons require permits and modifications. Chemicals depend on closely guarded recipes. Rare items need appraisal, and appraisal is a separate service with its own fee — it is not a button you press on every item for free.
That list is also a cost list. Each verification takes time, tools or knowledge you may not have on day one, which is why the start you pick decides which mistakes you can avoid.
Three inspectable counterfeits
Hemingway Cigarettes, Food Stamps and Immunivax Injectors are the three items that can be caught as counterfeits through the inspection panel. Each has its own tick-box list rather than a single “is it fake” switch, which is the point: the game is teaching you to look at specific features, not to trust a feeling.
For cigarettes, the panel is about the physical pack — seal, lettering, colour, logo. For food stamps, it is the document itself. For Immunivax, it is the injector. The exact boxes differ per item; what generalises is the habit of running the panel before you price, every time, including when the seller seems honest.
A failed inspection is not just a lost sale. Selling a known counterfeit moves the problem into the crime file and into your reputation, and the store page warns about mob justice on top of Security.
Three ways to move a bad lot
The store page names three: cut the product’s quality, relabel counterfeit goods as genuine, or fence discounted stolen goods. Each converts a bad purchase into a saleable one, and each carries a different consequence.
Cutting quality is the quietest. You earn a little more per unit and risk the customer noticing; the cost is reputation, slow and cumulative. Relabelling counterfeit is louder: it is a lie with a paper trail. Fencing stolen goods is the most explicitly risky — the discount is real and so is the chance that Security reaches you.
All three convert a stock problem into a relationship problem. You are not fixing the item; you are deciding who absorbs the loss.
Pricing and the haggle
Haggling is a core verb with a caveat the store page states plainly: every bargain comes with a trade-off. Winning the negotiation may cost the relationship, the repeat visit, or the customer’s willingness to bring you good stock later.
Price for the customer in front of you rather than for the item. A regular who brings verified stock is worth more than the extra credits you could squeeze out of them. A one-off buyer with an urgent need is the correct target for a firm price. The game does not publish elasticities, and any guide quoting exact optimal markups is describing a patch and a difficulty.
Refuse to sell at a price that makes the sale a loss once risk is included. If a unit is likely to generate a complaint, a return or a reputation hit, the correct price is higher than the one that ignores those costs, even if the customer walks.
Inventory as a balance sheet
Expansion is the reward loop: keep the rent paid and you can expand, run multiple businesses, and unlock new merchandise and production opportunities. Every purchase still has to earn its keep, which means new capacity is a new fixed cost before it is a new income.
Before expanding, check that current lines turn over without you babysitting them. A line that only sells because you constantly reprice it will double your attention cost and not your return. A line that sells itself is a candidate.
Keep dead stock visible. Every shop sim produces a shelf of things you cannot sell and cannot throw away; here that shelf has a rent cost, a storage cost and, if any of it is grey, an evidence cost. Clearing it at a loss is often the highest-return move available.
Lower Levels Ledger. “How to spot fake cigarettes, food stamps and Immunivax.” Last updated 2026-10-29. https://probablystolen.games/lore/items-and-appraisal/