Selling Animal Crossing Turnips is Literally Hell

I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and loving a lot of it. I'm not a seasoned veteran, so much of the game is new to me. One thing has quickly become clear, though: selling Animal Crossing turnips is a janky mess. If you are somehow unfamiliar with Animal Crossing, it's an adorable game where you can customize a home, recruit villagers, and do daily collection tasks like fishing and bug-catching. Animal Crossing: New Horizons also added several new features, such as the ability to terraform your island.

A new game on a new console means a new multiplayer experience. I had to venture into the fast-paced world of selling Animal Crossing turnips. It was... troublesome, to say the least.

Lions and Tigers and Turnips, Oh My

One other series mainstay is the mechanics around turnips, jokingly referred to as the "stalk market." Here's how it works: Turnips are only sold on Sunday morning for around 100 Bells (the in-game currency). Your first step in making the big bucks involves purchasing one or more of these vegetables.

From Monday onwards, Nook's Cranny offers to buy turnips at varying prices. These prices can be as low as 50 Bells (roughly half of what you paid) or over 600 Bells (six times what you've paid). One can certainly make their money back several times over.

The stalk market has a complication, though: Turnips go bad in a week. The key is selling Animal Crossing turnips for as high of a return as possible before they spoil. It's a risky bet, but I'd argue that it's worth the trouble.

Although I've been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons for about a month, I've only just recently decided to take my first dip into this perilous endeavor. I made a bunch of Bells in the end, but getting there has been a massive pain in the ass.

Finding a Place For Selling Animal Crossing Turnips

I spent 400,000 Bells buying up a full inventory of turnips this past Sunday morning. I then tossed them all on the floor in an empty room in my house (and took extraordinary care not to accidentally eat any of them). My next step was to find a place to sell them.

Thankfully, there are several fan communities set up for selling Animal Crossing turnips. Here are just a few of the options:

• /r/acturnips on Reddit
• The Stalk Market Discord server
• turnip.exchange

Each of these communities has their own rules. turnip.exchange, for example, allows hosting islands to demand "entry fees," some of which range into the hundreds of thousands of Bells, several Nook Miles Tickets, or both. Sellers with high turnip prices are always in demand, and some of them aren't shy about exploiting this fact.

On the other hand, /r/acturnips and The Stalk Market Discord do not allow entry fees, although the former does suggest that you leave a 10% tip after making a sale. It was here where I started my sales efforts.

Ringing My Bells

/r/acturnips was my platform of choice for my first foray into selling Animal Crossing turnips. My first step was actually getting my foot in the door.

Trying to reply to any of the submissions on the frontpage is pretty much an impossibility—you'll have to monitor the /new section and jump on a new submission with a good price right away.

Even then, there are no guarantees. I looked at one such new submission with just two comments on it. Upon refreshing, there were 30 new comments in the space of a second. Much like real-world trading, the stalk market moves at a lightning-fast pace.

I ultimately tried my hand in four different submissions for selling Animal Crossing turnips. Three of the hosts still haven't replied to me, but one of them did. This particular user requested any kind of sports-themed items, so I donned an American football outfit, loaded up my inventory, and tried to connect to this other person's island.

It failed.

The Madness of Mediocre Multiplayer

My initial attempts at selling Animal Crossing turnips were fruitless, but I did finally manage to get into a game after the host restarted the multiplayer session. This is where I butted heads with the terribleness of Animal Crossing: New Horizons' multiplayer.

In an ideal world, I would join the other player's island, walk to the Nook's Cranny Shop, sell my items, leave the game host a tip, and go home. Here's how it actually played out:

1. Attempt to connect to the island and fail.
2. Repeat step 1 several times.
3. Actually connect to the island. Endure a minutes-long cutscene while connecting.
4. Exit the airport. Be notified that another player is connecting, and get frozen in place.
5. Walk to Nook's Cranny.
6. Once inside, be prompted to close the sale window because someone else is connecting.
7. Close the window out of politeness.
8. Watch another several-minute cutscene as someone else connects.
9. Walk two inches towards Timmy Nook.
10. Be notified that yet another person is connecting.
11. Contemplate suicide.
12. Sit through the same damned cutscene one more time.
13. Wonder whether selling Animal Crossing turnips is worth the trouble.
14. Finally talk to one of the Nook Twins.
15. Ignore the prompt to close the sale window so I can actually sell my turnips.
16. Sell my turnips and make a massive profit.
17. Walk outside.
18. Receive a notification that someone is now leaving the island.
19. Endure a shorter (but nonetheless aggravating) cutscene.
20. Immediately afterward, someone else connects.
21. Move any sharp objects out of my reach.

The above pattern continued for some time. I am not exaggerating when I say that a process that should take no more than 2–3 minutes ended up taking around half an hour. A good chunk of that time was lost to goodness knows how many people coming and going, each with their own stupidly long cutscene.

My pain didn't end there. My profits are not secure until I can actually leave the island; if the game were to disconnect, I could potentially be reverted to an earlier save and have to do the whole process all over again.

I had more pressing business before attempting to leave: I had to leave a tip for the host. While it is not necessary (and forbidden by the rules of many communities focused on selling Animal Crossing turnips), it is still recommended and considered good form.

It took me about a minute to separate out 10% of my profits and remove my clothes (as they too were part of the tip I was leaving for the island host). I faced several more prompts to close the window and I ignored at least three of them. Sorry, future turnip sellers—if I wait for absolutely every person to come on board, I am going to be here all day. You will please have to wait for one more minute.

Haggard and broken, I quickly ran to the airport with another person trailing behind me. Even exiting the island proved a challenge—as other people were coming in, it hampered my ability to actually leave the island and make it home with my profits safe in hand.

In the end, I turned a 400,000 Bell investment into a return in excess of 1.6 million Bells after paying out a tip and buying replacement clothes. It only cost me a couple of hours of my time, the literal clothes off my back, and the last remaining vestiges of my will to live.