Oblivion:Independent Thievery

Detailed Walkthrough
Independent Thievery
This is an ongoing quest, triggered immediately after completing May the Best Thief Win, your initiation into the Thieves Guild. The sole purpose of the quest is to keep track of the amount of stolen goods you have fenced, as each and every 'special job', starting with Untaxing the Poor, requires a particular amount of fenced gold to become available. See quest section for requirements.

Fences
You will gain access to fences in a set order as you progress in rank within the Thieves Guild by completing the 'special jobs' offered to you by your Doyen. If you are not a member of the Thieves Guild, and select the barter option with a fence, they will claim that they do not know what you are talking about, and will not buy, or sell items. You can still invest in their shops though.


After completing the Sins of the Father quest, you can no longer use Fathis Ules as a fence (see this section for details).
An "unofficial" fence is added by the Thieves Den official plugin, named Khafiz.

Quests
Once you have fenced enough items, each of the "special jobs" will be triggered. The number after each of the following quests is the amount that must be fenced before it is triggered.
:  (50 gold fenced)
:  (100 gold fenced)
:  (200 gold fenced)
:  (300 gold fenced)
:  (400 gold fenced)
:  (500 gold fenced)
:  (600 gold fenced)
:  (700 gold fenced)
:  (800 gold fenced)
:  (1000 gold fenced)

Tips
When starting out, you only have access to one fence in Bruma. If you are inclined, subsequent Thieves Guild quests can be made a bit easier by maxing-out the fencing prerequisites there early on.
Even after you can access better fences, use the old ones for less expensive things. The "lower ranked" fences may have less gold, but they also have less Mercantile Skill, which makes it easier to get good deals for your loot. Investing in the lower ranked fences makes them much more useful.
Good sources for stolen items include:
Armor from the Imperial Armory, located in the Prison District.
The Legion Commander's chest in the Imperial Legion Offices can hold up to three pieces of armor and three weapons, with a chance of one of each being enchanted, all of which can be the highest quality available.
The basement in Drakelowe contains over 4000 gold worth of potions and soul gems (the entrance is hidden inside the unlit fireplace).
The Castle Skingrad cellar has four racks of wine filled with many bottles worth over 1400 gold, including valuable wines such as Surilie Brothers Vintage 399 and Tamika Vintage 399.
The Red Diamond Jewelry store in the Imperial City Market District has over 1500 gold in lightweight, non-random jewelry, in addition to four randomly generated counters to steal from as well.
Several guaranteed magic items are found in houses or stores and can therefore be stolen.
In Castle Chorrol you can steal a Varla Stone (base price 1000) fairly easily. The stone is located in a display case on a staircase in the audience room (the room with the thrones).
The Skooma Den in Bravil holds 38 bottles of skooma (total of 2850 gold), though most must be pickpocketed. This is fairly easy as several of the residents have 0 Responsibility (see the place page for a full list of possible people who may be present). If the residents with 0 responsibility are the only witnesses then there will be no consequences for any theft. 
After the Secrets of the Ayleids quest, stealing back the Ayleid statues and fencing them should be relatively easy, because Umbacano will no longer be in his private quarters.
Over the course of the game, several houses will become (mostly) uninhabited due to the death of their owners but with contents still marked as stolen. These include the homes of Arnora Auria (Bruma); Aldos Othran (Cheydinhal); Jakben Imbel, Umbacano, and Agarmir (Imperial City); Glarthir (Skingrad) and many of the Mythic Dawn Sleeper Agents.
There is a glitch that allows you to turn non-stolen items into stolen items.
You cannot fence items with no value, as they will never appear in the fence's inventory when sold.

Bugs
 
An advantage of this is that as long as the quest is active, your map marker will always direct you to your highest fence (which is Fathis Ules by the end of the storyline). 
 The quest can be forcibly completed using the console command  .

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