Every Sunday, Animal Crossing: New Horizons players can purchase turnips from Daisy Mae, Sow Joan's granddaughter. The purchase price fluctuates, but usually sits in the 90-120 Bells range and players can purchase as many as they can afford -- but only in stacks of 10, which means buying turnips is a pretty serious investment and an equally serious gamble. Luckily, there are tools for players to track turnip prices and sell at the highest possible price each week, which means they can quickly become multi-Bellionaires if they play their cards right.
Here's a step-by-step guide to buying and selling turnips in New Horizons for the best possible profit.
Buying Turnips
Players who want to buy turnips en masse should start saving Bells as soon as possible. It's up to each player how to go about saving, but a good rule of thumb is to set aside a certain amount of Bells each day using the savings account in the Nook Stop inside Resident Services. On Sunday morning, players should withdraw as many Bells as they want to put toward turnips and track down Daisy Mae, who wanders around the island when she visits. Note: Daisy Mae only visits until noon, so it's important to talk to her before she leaves in order to participate in the Stalk Market each week.
In general, it's best to buy turnips for less than 95 Bells each. Anything more expensive minimizes potential return on investment and ultimately feels like a waste of time and Bells. If Daisy Mae offers turnips at a higher rate, players should consider purchasing on another island -- whether a friend's or a stranger's.
Tracking Turnip Prices
Timmy and Tommy at Nook's Cranny will not purchase turnips on Sunday because that's the day Daisy Mae comes to the island to sell. Starting on Monday, the Nooks will offer players two turnip prices each day: One before noon and one after noon.
According to fans, there are four known "patterns" for turnip prices on each island and the pattern changes each week. Prices will fluctuate without a pattern, generating a small profit; prices will steadily decrease throughout the week, generating no profit; prices will decrease at first, then jump three times before going back down, generating a decent profit; or prices will jump three times, with the third marking the highest offer for the week.
Ideally, players will get the fourth pattern and be able to sell turnips for upwards of 400, 500, or even 600 Bells each. The fan-created ACNH: Turnip Calculator allows players to track daily prices and determine which pattern they have each week. Similar calculators exist on turnip exchange sites, where players can line up in queues to go to islands where turnips are selling for huge profit.
Selling Turnips
While it is possible to profit from turnips by purchasing them at 90-95 Bells and then selling for a small bump -- say, 100-150 Bells -- many players hope to make significantly more Bells by playing the Stalk Market. If turnips aren't selling for high prices on their own islands or friend's, then they have the option to turn to the internet, where players with price spikes frequently offer Dodo Codes, sometimes for an island entry fee. Not only does this lead to some interesting opportunities to meet other players in-game, it creates a Stalk Market economy that thrives on New Horizon's Switch Online features.
Sites like Turnips Exchange allow players to open their islands via Dodo Code for others to come sell turnips or visit special NPCs, like Celeste. Typically, up to three players can visit an island at one time (to prevent lags and system crashes) and "hosts" tend to ask for entry fees, ranging from Nook Miles Tickets to Bells. Most of the time, these entry fees are reasonable -- 2 NMT, for example -- but other times, hosts ask for 300,000 Bells or more, which makes it counter-intuitive for players looking to turn a profit on their turnips to go to that particular island, no matter how much the Nooks are paying.
Risks & Rewards
Aside from price gouging or potential scams, which can be reported to turnip exchange sites, players also run the risk of waiting in a queue to get to a high-price turnip island for hours, only for the host to close their gates before the entire queue can get in. It's completely valid for hosts to set firm boundaries for when their islands will close -- everyone has lives outside of Animal Crossing -- but this can be particularly frustrating for players who join queue after queue, only to miss out on selling each time.
While researching this piece, we joined three separate queues on Turnips Exchange, but only remained in two. One host asked for an exorbitant entry fee that would have been more than we gained from selling our turnips on their island, which made no sense. We waited in the first queue for two hours, but unfortunately the host's system crashed and they had to close down early. We waited in the final queue for two hours and made 508 Bells per turnip, for a low island entry fee of two Nook Miles Tickets, which was more than worth it.
It's important to keep in mind that profiting from the Stalk Market isn't the only way to make money in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and it's also important to remember that buying and selling turnips isn't mandatory. Players should keep in mind that turnips rot after one week if they aren't sold. Time traveling backward will also cause unsold turnips to rot, which means players can time travel forward as much as they want -- but if they return to the present without selling their turnips, that counts as traveling backward, so the turnips will still rot. Becoming a multi-Bellionaire is certainly possible through the Stalk Market, but it's a pursuit that takes time and plenty of patience.