COAL

Coal is the cheapest offer a freshly claimed workstation tends to carry. Five different jobs buy it at their opening or near-opening tier, an Armorer, a Butcher, a Fisherman, a Toolsmith and a Weaponsmith, which makes coal the one item almost any villager hall ends up selling on day one whether or not that was the plan.

The rate is not identical across the five, though. A Fisherman at novice only asks 10 coal for 1 emerald, a noticeably better deal than the other four jobs quote for the same handful of coal.

Five buyers, and the rate splits into two groups rather than one flat price. An Armorer takes 15 coal per emerald at novice, a Butcher the same 15 at apprentice, a Toolsmith the same 15 at novice, and a Weaponsmith the same 15 at novice. A Fisherman breaks from the pack at novice, paying only 10 coal for the same emerald, the best rate of the five.

No villager sells coal back to a player at any of these five stalls. Every row runs one direction only, coal out of your inventory and emeralds into it.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 10 coal, from the Fisherman, and 7 of the other 10 pay out faster. No villager sells coal back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Fisherman takes 10 coal a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 diamonds against 384 flint for the same 16 emeralds, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Leatherworker at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Coal itself pays 10 an emerald, so 31 of the 72 ask less and 36 ask more.

Coal sits early on most of these five sheets. An armorer, toolsmith, or weaponsmith carries it from the moment it claims its workstation, no leveling required, and only the butcher and the fisherman ask for one completed tier first.

Once open, each slot sells 10 coal at a time for 16 uses before locking, and a restock brings the same rate back rather than rolling a new one.

16 coal close out one Fisherman slot, and it needs 2 real minutes back at its barrel before the offer reopens. A Minecraft day runs 20 real minutes, room for exactly two of those refills.

One fisherman camped for a full day moves 32 coal for 2 emeralds, the ceiling for that single workstation. Running all five jobs at once during the same day multiplies the coal moved, though not the emeralds, since the other four quote a worse rate for it.

Sell to the Fisherman first if more than one job is buying coal. 10 coal per emerald beats every other seller of it on this site, so route spare coal there before an armorer, butcher, toolsmith, or weaponsmith gets a chance to quote a worse deal.

Where they go back: buckets of cod is the cheapest thing that same Fisherman sells you.

Also on the Fisherman's list: cooked cod, raw cod, campfire, cooked salmon, raw salmon, and enchanted fishing rod.

One coal makes four torches, smelts eight items in a furnace, and stacks into a block that burns far longer than the loose kind. Very little else in the game is useful in three directions at the same time, which is why almost every profession that buys raw material buys this one.

Charcoal from burnt logs does the same work for fuel and torches, so a mine running dry is not a crisis. What charcoal cannot do is be sold: the villagers who buy coal will not take it, which is the one place the two stop being interchangeable.

What it pays in is emeralds, which is why a coal seam near a village is worth more than one out in the wild.

One coal and one stick give four torches, which is the recipe every world runs on, and a stack of coal is therefore a stack of light rather than a stack of fuel.

Nine coal make a block, and the block burns far longer than the nine loose pieces would, which makes blocks the sensible way to feed a bank of furnaces.

The wither skeleton and the ordinary skeleton both drop coal occasionally, and a coal ore vein with Fortune gives several per block, so nobody who mines ever runs out.