I was unaware these existed until yesterday.

Some stations have rare commodities, which are unique to a station – and can be sold for a greater amount, based on distance travelled away from the source station.

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Rare_Commodities

I ended up doing this, just for a bit of a change from bounty hunting and found it to be relatively profitable, with a few requirements:

• Cargo space of at least 12 tonnes – each station seems to have 5-12 tonnes of their rare commodity
• A good range FSD. Mine was at 15.7 ly (fully laden) when doing this.
• A fuel scoop – not so much the cost of fuel, but rather not having to stop and being able to pick up fuel in systems where there are no stations
• a detailed planetary scanner…. as if your making these multi-system trips, it makes sense to maximise profit via cartographic data at the same time
• Change the galaxy map to use the fastest route, rather than most economical – saves quite a few jumps

First I tried (based on a forum post I saw, but cannot seem to re-find now)

Altair – Solo Obriter station – 8 Altarian Skin

to

Toxandji – Tsunenaga Orbital – sold 8 Altarian Skin for 128,024 profit and also sold cartographic data for 98,000 (approx.) credits

That wasn’t too bad. Travelling/discovering is kind of boring… but this way I can watch the cricket and play elite…. while its raining outside…. so that’s a pretty good use of a few hours while the kid is sleeping 🙂

Next up, I was trying to find more rare commodity locations – eventually I found this http://www.elitetradingtool.co.uk/ – then click on the “rares” section and enter a starting system – in my case Toxandji. So next up I ran

Toxandji – Tsunenaga Orbital – Buy 11 Toxandji Virocide

to

Any Na – Libby Orbital – Buy 6 Any Na Coffee, Sell cartographic data – approx. 66,000 credits

to

AZ Cancri – Fisher Station – Buy AZ Cancri Formula 42, Sell 11 Toxandji Virocide: 174,000 profit, Sell 6 Any Na Coffee: 77,604 profit, Sell cartographic data – approx. 33,000 credits (got bored of all the scans by this point – had reached the exploring rank of “surveyor”

At this point, I travelled back to my starting system (Altair)…. happy that I tried something different in the game.

The exploring side is a very grindy process, the scans and the required distance (<5ls for many planets) just make it a bit painful.

I noticed that if I now try and plot a route from Altair to Toxandji, that it is unavailable (as before) and I need to plot a route part way there – and repeat (as I did the first time I made the trip). Considering I have already travelled between the systems, surely It makes sense that I should be able to plot that route automatically using previously gathered data.

The rare commodity side is a good addition, but just like trading in general, its pretty dull!