When Van comes to visit every 3rd and 8th day of the season he will set up shop upstairs in Ruby's Inn. If you talk to him from the opposite side of his orange crate you can trade goods for gold. Just like selling items to Won in More Friends of Mineral Town, Van's prices will fluctuate every time you ask him to give you a price estimate on items. If you don't like the offer he gives you, just decline to sell and ask him to buy the item again. To sell you first have to select the quanty of items you wish to sell (ONE or ALL), then select the item from your rucksack.
If you are trying to sell Van more than one item at a time, make sure you have selected "ALL" from the options on the left side of the sell screen and not CHOOSE. In HMDS and HMDS Cute, there is a bug in the game that if you use the CHOOSE option to select the number of items you want to sell, you will sell the selected number but only get paid for one item; e.g., Van offers 930 G for each Moondrop Flower and you have a stack of 20. If you choose to sell 10 of them, you will only receive 930 G instead of 9300 G.
Van will buy seeds from you for half the cost that you purchase them for. If you had bought a bag of Cucumber seeds for 200 G, produced 8 cucumbers, and then converted the fruit back to seeds via the Seed Maker machine, you can then sell those 8 bags of seeds for 800 G. You can also sell the cucumbers directly to Van instead of shipping them through Thomas, earning you a few more Gold if Van's price is low, or a few gold higher than the Cannery if you get lucky to settle on a high buy price.
You can also sell items to Van that Thomas won't accept through the shipment box. This allows you to convert the prizes you win from the Sprite Casino into Gold you can spend outside the Sprite Tree. If you find extra cursed accessories you can ask the Church to remove the curse and then sell those items for a hefty profit.
In the Girl version of HMDS you can not abuse the Casino to buy and sell prizes to Van. He will not purchase the Love Bangle, Truth Bangle, Red Cloak, Godhand, and Miracle Glove prizes. You can sell him the Teleport Stone and Relaxtea Leaves though.
| Item Name | Profit |
|---|---|
Crops (turnips, flowers, apples, etc.) | varies |
Animals (eggs, milk, yarn, etc.) | varies |
Cooked Food (tempura, cheese fondu, etc.) | none |
| High profit items | |
Alexandrite | 11,000 - 16,000 |
Fish Fossil | 5500 - 8000 |
Mythic Stone | 22,000 - 33,000 |
Pink Diamond | 11,000 - 16,000 |
Pirate Treasure | 11,000 - 16,000 |
| High profit accessories | |
Fast Boots | 165,000 - 242,000 |
Friend Broach (red) | 443,000 - 640,000 |
Goddess Broach (red) | ~150,000 |
Goddess Earrings (green) | 701,000 - 981,000 |
Goddess Hat (green) | ~400,000 |
Godhand | 559,000,000 - 801,000,000 |
Kappa Broach (red) | ~150,000 |
Kappa Earrings (green) | ~700,000 |
Kappa Hat (green) | ~400,000 |
Love Ring | 28,000 - 41,000 |
Miracle Gloves | 565,000,000 - 802,000,000 |
Red Mantle | 360,000 - 576,000 |
Time Ring | ~150,000 |
Truth Ring | 11,000 - 16,000 |
Witch Earrings (black) | ~150,000 |