I had to copy/paste cause right before I tried to submit this to the Elderscrolls fourm they went into maintanice(SP?) and I couldn't get it asked...

EDIT: By the way, WHAT"S UP PEOPLE?!?! Hello to all who missed my pointless rambling. Unfortunatly I will be spending as much time as I can in Oblivion so no posting-whore for me today.. BYE!

Join the Thievs Guild......
It's 5 Gold a lockpick.....
You can purchase it from a ''fence''(A guy to who you can sell stolen goods).
And there is a small amount of lockipcks to be purchased from blacksmiths and other merchants.......Still i recommend you to join the Gray Fox,and than buy a LOT of lock picks.......A ''fence'' in bruma (It's Ogmar or something,he usualy hangs out in tavern)has 100 in his stock.....

Yeah If I could afford like 400 lockpicks at once I could probably make a good 15k in one night.

You dont have to join the guild. At midnight go to theImperial city island (forgot name not magic place). Look around outside the wall for a guy with a torch. He sells them. Dunno if its only if you have the letter.

Join the Theives Guild, and you can purchase lockpicks from Armand Christophe in the Imperial City Waterfront, or Ongar the World Weary in Bruma for the same price (but he can be bartered so you can get them cheaper).

Also, join the Dark Brotherhood and the khajiit in the Cheryindal Sanctuary sells them.

Otherwise, look in random barrels and you can find one or two, but I would just purchase them in bulk.

That guy is a Thievs Guild Doyen.
You are talking about Armand Christophe don't you?

Just do the Nocturnal mission to recieve the skeleton key, it boosts security by 40 and never breaks.

you must be lvl 10 to do it though

yeah, if you fast travel to the stable just west of imperial city, which i believe is called chestnut stables you can just follow the wall and you will find a guy who sells lockpicks in bundles of 30 for around $150, same as from the girl in the dark brotherhood when you finish those missions.

by the way, i absolutely despise lockpicking now, i swear i've went to these guys and bought 50000 lockpicks because i suck at it so much lol

I've found despite that my sneak and my security are at roughly the same level, an alternative to lock picking suits me much better. During the day before I'm about to hit a good raid (in order toa dvance to the next thieves guild quest), I wander all around town, sneaking, stealing people's keys. Once I have like ten I wait till night around 2 and just hit building after building finding I can get into most of them.

Then you can just do auto-attempt and have no skill at it. Um, where do I get this quest?

It's at the end of dirt path on the road out of Leyawiin, starting a ways North of the city and leading to the East.

Someone at the Leyawiin Mages' Guild can mark it on your map.

Its all about timeing, be light with the lockpick, work it jently. Use all your sences to, a tumbler makes a slightly different sound when it can easly be locked into place, it will linger at the top for a half second longer then it normaly does, allowing you more time to lock it in place.

its sort of upsetting that someone with no security can pick a lock now, but oh well .