Im not even gonna say who i think the best are tbh, im just gonna give my opinion (well more like oberservations) of some merchants i've come across across the past couple years. Like actual ones, not no one hit wonders.

Darkarkangel was the only outstanding merchant in this game imo. Even better than myself, i only merched for the profit to get better gear. He did it more for helping others and didnt really care about how much profit he made as long as he wasn't losing. He'd also go out of his way to help you find what you're looking for/to sell, and was easily approachable inside and outside game.

Me (Mini-The-Monsta) I always bought items for 20-40% below market value, then sold them at market value or slightly below. IF anything, im known as the lowball merchant who buys cheap and sells cheap. I merched as a pawn shop/business. I'll straight up tell you the real value of your item, but then im straight gonna offer 20-30% less because i need to make something off it. And idrc what people think cuz at the end of the day it was a business i ran and thats how it works in real life. Walmart doesnt buy their shit at the price they're selling it for. But i've certainly made lucky scores off uneducated players who list a sale price below or well below the items value. I learned my lesson 6 years ago when i unboxed a twilight aura from my very first iron lockbox, and sold it for 2mcr right then and there totally oblivious that was half the value. "You learn not to put your hand on the stove by putting your hand on the stove." And honestly those who get spoonfed pricechecks etc wouldn't make it in the real world, they need to learn to rely on themselves and their own information gathering. credible sources, etc. like real actual life stuff.

Hunterxxy is only in the game for profit and will only sell you items if you're gonna overpay. he wont sell at market value, oh you didnt list him.

Legobuild is alright, though he didn't have to grind like many merchants. He just had resources available and the mindset to flip it.

Thoranhippo - alright guy, prioritizes profit. i noticed that if he gets lucky i.e. crafting gear with random good uv or gets something dirt cheap, he'll offer it to friends cheap which i liked. he also had a nice inventory back in the day so i could at least say he helped the economy.

revolutional - back in the day they had a nice inventory and when she started out she did nice deals and helped a lot of people. But over time she got conceited once she started making money. revolutional didnt come back to earth until she decided to host a quitting sale.

fayeth - nice inventory, nice personality, horrible prices xD but to be fair fay's prices werent always bad. Fayeth really merched back in the day, and back in the day fayeth was on top of shit and doing a great job. then eventually the game started dying out and the economy changed, however fayeth still tried to sell items which deccreased in value for the price they were going for 4 years ago. How do i say this, i guess fayeth didn't keep their knowledge about prices updated and blew their merch career that way. Then probably said "screw trying to learn prices for a dying game, i have a life to live" and that was that, right.

admirer-si this guy was reliable asf. like he barely speaks english but he knows how to do business with anyone. Only problem i had with this guy was overpricing items. and just so i get this clear, what i mean by overpricing items is like selling a 10-12kE crown accessory for 15kE firm. or anything else with a 25-50% markup. All you got with that extra price was reliability. i've mailed him currency and he mailed back items, he is trustworthy. Bur meh, trust wasnt an issue with anyone mentioned here anyways, and honestly any reputable merchant probably got screwed over more than they screwed anyone over simply because we rely on the community to keep us in business.

i feel like im forgetting someone, but nobody else really stands out. even in your list.
cheschirecats prices are just astonishing, honestly i couldnt even call em a merchant just cuz i've only seen them advertise things for ridiculous amounts and havent actually seen an inventory change ya know? with everyone else listed i see things come and go actively whether or not prices are ideal. But cheschire i havent seen anything pop with em. and i had em on my friends list for years..

like petater was a merchant? the guy sits in haven talking about his stupid computer and bragging about how he wants to control ce markets XD im sure you remember those times.

spiral-market i straight just beefed and haven't even dealt with. Not long ago i saw him in talking in haven with this narcissitic attitude. Someone unboxed a diamond aura with other good items from the event, spiral told him to sell it for 15kE. I'm like you should hold onto the aura until the event ends, so the value will increase back to 20-25kE. Then simply sell off the wings and tail in the meantime. use that money to keep crafting/playing, do basic merching and sustain yourself til you're ready. Then this spiral guy gets all up like "i'll give you 15ke right now, dont listen to him etc" its like... honestly it's one thing to claim that you wanna help people, but it's another thing to claim to help someone but really just wanna finesse them for an aura at practically half price. But im'm just talking from personal experience, obviously for you to list him as a merchant he musta done deals with other people so maybe they didnt have a bad timee. It's just unfortunate because im sure that's his personality and not a "one time thing."

And idrc if people see this as me ripping on people, im literally reviewing them for what i've personally experienced and seen with my own eyes.
Hopefully it didn't sound negative, i just stopped sugar coating things and started saying things how they are. Wish i had this mindset when i first started playing. But nah, i was too focused on trying to be liked by everyone that i lost sight of my straightforward cut the bs nature.

Oh and @the part where i say "honestly any reputable merchant probably got screwed over more than they screwed anyone over simply because we rely on the community to keep us in business." Most of us have given items on payment plans and didnt get paid back in full. Or held onto an item even though we had a good offer on it, because someone came to us first with an offer so we respect it. Or we bought something for someone because they wanted it but couldnt afford it, so we grab it for them and wait til they have the money. only to find out they either bought it from someone else, or dont want it anymore. And the sum of all those, have happened much more than us getting a lucky score off some idiot who forgot to price check their snowfall aura before advertising it for 400k on trade channel.

Anyways, im off to bed now. message me on discord if something juicy pops up cuz i don't keep updated on forums @ragga

people dont play the game to accumulate digital wealth, they accumulate digital wealth to play the game.
I mean, unless you just wanna bust out a credit card. Some people legit play this game only to look good in expensive costumes, acquire those rare reskins and just have an aesthetically stacked account. some people call them fashion knights, some call em collectors.
Then some only play the game to acquire badass gear such as double and triple max/high armors, asi/ctr vh weapons, and use them to set speedrun records or help them become exceptional players in pve/pvp.
But of course, you need "digital wealth" to do so.

How do i put it. There are people who go above and beyond, and then there are those who are satisfied with being mediocre and not advancing at their full potential.

This never was a competition or a thing to brag about who's crown/ce digit dick was bigger.
In fact, a few merchants actually listed the sale price of their items and still have them up there to kinda help people price check things. Of course time changes values but l-o-l-o-l.

holy shit it wasnt spiral market, it was this guy named sk-buy-sell LMAOOOOO.
YOOO spiral market i remember that guy!!! he was bankingggg, i was friends with him too. I literally had to think about it. But yeah the guy i got into the altercation with was sk-buy-sell. he had this field cap with this weird armor with divine drags. yeah spiral market was back in the day, he normally wore a shadowsun slicker and i forgot the helm. was it volcanic demo? but yeah bruh he was merching before i even began.

And at your last point, i feel you to an extent like there were certainly things i woulda redone. But all of those mistakes helped me grow into who i am now. I started playing this game 6 years ago, if i didn't make mistakes and handled situations incorrectly at times then that would make me something other than an adolescent human being.
And @paying half price, lol but business is business. A pawn shop can tell you they'll have an official person appraise your jewellery but will offer you 50% of the value. It's up to the customer if they wanna shop there. It's not like any of us gave false prices to get high value items for less, so in the end we still played legit.

@Ragga-Prince
"Chesh just sells UVed 1*, 2*, and 3* Shields and Armors which unfortunately aren't the most sought-after items."

Maybe you missed the specific link I listed. I shared a 2015 thread about how he offered a "market appraisal" service for 10kcrn. While he didn't profit extensively from this, he definitely made an impact on organizing an idea of predicting market value that was unbiased.

@Nacl-Magnet
"A pawn shop can tell you they'll have an official person appraise your jewellery but will offer you 50% of the value."

This is not a good analogy, because I was targeting the concept of a dishonest appraisal (of which both players I mentioned have put substantial effort against). If a buyer tells the seller that an item is worth 50% of what it actually is and offer 90% of that (45% of actual value), the offer looks more enticing and therefore more likely to get the sale. Not telling the true known true value (100%) and purporting that the value is less (50% of actual) is dishonest.

They also use wording such as "I'm doing you a favor by buying this" and "you got ripped off if you paid more than xxxx crns for this".

Why do you think I hosted some of the supply depot sale logs? I'll note that there are a select number of forum merchants that are missing from supporting those threads.

@Ragga-Prince
"Like Mini said though, business is business and making a profit is how business has always been and how it always will be. The businesses that run this planet and put a phone in your pocket and a computer on your desk and food on your table and a roof over your head and clothes on your back simply would not be able to operate if they did not gain a profit on their investment."

Nonprofit Organizations exist and refute this statement. I'd also like to point out that you are falling into the a whole list of logical fallacies making those statements. I suggest that the reader take a course in economics to gain a better understanding of market dynamics because the capitalistic viewpoint (alluded to be exclusive in the statement above) is a very incomplete method of modeling the world.

My analogy was a agreat analogy because i was targeting the concept of people who will give an honest appraisal and be up front about the fact that you could get more for it but the offer is take it or leave it. Personally i thought that nobody here including myself or ragga is the type of personwho gives a false value when appraising items. So of course your situation may be true with some players, but i strongly didnt think that applied to anyone listed so that's what has me confused.
i can vouch for anyone except for petater, spiral, and count, that we build our business relationships aroaund trust, andreliability. So frankly i don't see how being a disohnest appraiser to acquire items below value fits any of those traits. I guess just like my bad experience with sk-buy-sell, someone tried to punk you or you saw them being dishonest.
It's just odd because none of them really struck me as that kinda person, but its not like i monitor them 24/7 so obviously a lot of stuff happened behind my back that im unaware of. Oh well. That's why i say people who rely on pricechecks won't make it in the real world, because you need to rely on yourself to gather credbile information and use it properly. Having someone else think for you is kinda cringey now that i think of it. like.. "hey, im trynna start merching but could you tell me what everything here is worth and what to sell it for.."
it's like, shouldn't you be studying on the forums what things are selling for, so when you're in a real time trade you know what things are worth and dont make a fool of yourself saying "hold on lemme talk to my friend about this." Or that you won't fall victim to false appraisales and smooth talkers?
Cuz i sure as hell learned i can't ask if buying a twilight aura for 1mil cr is a good deal because i know most people will put themselves first and try to hop on that deal by saying no and picking it up for themself if they have the ability to do so and aren't necessarily chummy with you.
idk maybe im getting off track, the point is dishonesty will always exist, but real eyes realize real lies. #StayWoke #DontSlip #IfYouConfirmYou'reAtFault

It is naive for me to claim someone doesn't do something when i'm not that person so i'll simply take that back what i said about other people not being guilty and only clear my own name since i know what i have and haven't done hehel. So yeah, what's hypocritical is the people like you mentioned who partake in trades where they are at a significant defecit and are unaware about it. But then may complain in the future about being "scammed" or "ripped off" when they were the one who proposed the idea, and didn't get a proper price check. The ones who weren't fed lies on item value, or anything of the sort and was literally unknowledgeable. You say that we all minced the truth occsionally, that may apply to others but to me that doesnt apply at all with straight up pricechecks. The only dirt i have ever done in this game in terms of dishonesty was taking people up on offers where they were oblivious to their defecit, and me fully knowing that didn't tell them and continuingthe trade. I.E someone says "WTS BKC 6kE" i'm not gonna tell them they can easily get another 4, im just gonna take them up on it. I've never miced truth in my dealings, i just treat people like adults and expect them to know how to handle themselves. "I expect them to read the course outline before starting the course." Honestly I know the prices of at least 90% of in game items in cr value so people did come to me a lot, but eventually i stopped making myself approachable for price checks because i don't need to be involved in any stigma that goes "mini told me this." I'd only do them if someone literally comes up to me and asks, but im not gonna say "feel free to ask me for price checks." At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where the information comes from, what matters is the vailidity. So thanks for reminding me that it's improper to speak of others as if you know them because in a video game i could be talking to their gemini split personality for all i know right.
Oh, and hopefully you also realize that as well.

In the end i treat others the way i want to be treated, with a grain of salt. That permafroster example is no different than what i mentioned way earlier about oblivious traders being taken up on offers they propose because they are satisfied in the present and don't see the bigger picture.

Back on topic anyways, let's all take a step back and think about this topic. We're only acknowledging the big and famous merchants, but to become big and famous wouldn't they have had to do some "truth mincing" like you said? or some "leaving uninquired details out" like i have, to get to the top and become "a big and famous merechant?"
IF so then should we look towards those esmaller down to earth players? those who just like to help knights and or guildmates get accessories and gear to help them enjoy the game? Perhaps we need to give attention to those who's hands are cleaner than our own?
You know what i mean?
I'm gonna try and stop pointing fingers now, and just say that we should look for someone who does it more for helping than for profit because at the end of the day that will reflect on how they deal. Their prices, their leniency with payment, their willingness to go out of their way to help you find/sell something, you know?

You're not looking for the most successful merchant, because they'd have considerable dirt on them. known and unknown.
You're also not looking for the most reliable merchant, because they may not be genuine in their price.
You're looking for the most empathetic merchant. A Saint, really. One that has the best ratio of good to bad qualities.
In that case, the title of thread could be more defined as to what "best" is. Since it's apparent that traits have a huge part in deciding who "deserves some recognition" ya feel?

Mention everyone who is a pillar of a community. whether the sk as a whole, or within a guild etc like expand this from DEDICATED merchants to players who've left an impression on you due to how they are/trade. Not saying list rich people who always give you free stuff, but those good friends who you know help make the community good.

I can agree that there are dishonest appraisals in game, but honestly unless you're/the person is getting pricechecks from uncredible sources, i don't understand where the "undercut appraisals" come from like... Straight up if the pricecheck is off by that much then the person is uncredible. Whether or not they are known and "trustworthy", whether or not they know the LEGIT VALUE of that item or every single item. A source that gives false information is still uncredible. The moment they do it once. Also, you do gotta understand that a lot of people may have ideas of what items are worth, but aren't certain about how the market affects their value. Ignorantly someone may just tell you numbers for the sake of trying to help.
"hey bro how much is a crown of summer worth?"
"like 8kE"
Which is an alright average to buy at yeah, but off peak they easily sell for 10-11 and on peak 6 so. Of course not everyone will think about things like that, but that also affects their ability to give accurate info.

TO SUM IT ALL UP: You are responsible for choosing who you get your information from. And as much as the form of dishonesty you described is true and is happening in spiral knights, it won't be able to affect you directly in a negative way if you're scrupulous with your interactions. I hate sounding like this but honestly if someone just believes everything they hear simmply due to someone's reputation or "word," they deserve to be screwed over.
And i say so Because i WAS that person who trusted people easily so i know first hand what it's like. It's the best thing that can ever happen to you, because it makes you stop sounding and acting like a naive kid who believes everyone will treat you with respect. That everyone will treat you with honesty. That everyone cares about your well being and your success. That everyone cares about YOU.

Like that is some real life stuff man, people need to stop being sheep and start being shepherds.

Of course i'm not calling YOU naive. I'm certainly agreeing that you have a valid point about something that happens, but you need to KNOW that those being affected by it need to learn a lesson in growing up due to being naive themselves. And those who have REALLY grown won't be affected.