Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

Hello to all members. My name is Don and I am new to this site and community. I have been collecting mostly basketball cards and some baseball & football cards along the way in the mid 90s - early 2000s and is getting back into the hobby. I currently have between  4,000-7,000 base, inserts, and autos. Wanted to know what is the best way of inputting all of my cards into the database? Do I enter one brand at a time? or by player? Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

Also, I would like to start trading among the community and would like to know the general rules and etiquette on how to propose, counter, evaluating card value and best method to ship to each other and anything else I may have missed. 

Thanks for the replies in advance and hope to part of this community long term.

Welcome aboard. I glanced at your collection and it looks like you are getting started right as you have a collection, a want list and a for sale/trade list. I assume you have seen some of the trade links on this site for finding matches and proposing trades and such. I don't know that there is right or wrong answers to some of what you asked so I would say just keep entering as you have and try to keep things organized. Maybe start out making a few small trade proposals to get started and to start building positive feedback. You are going to want to build a good feedback record for others to feel comfortable trading with you. You may even be asked to ship your side before the other member ships to you until you build your reputation so be prepared for that. Enjoy!

First off welcome to the site! I personally prefer to enter mine by manufacturer, year, and set but some people do it by player. Personal preference mainly though I think by set is faster. There are many tools to help speed things along. If you explore the drop down menu you can add whole sets or from here if you have a large chunk of consecutive numbers. The add multiple feature helps when adding all your traders. Trading is great I’ve done over 120 in almost a year. Using the transaction manager is easiest once you have all your wants and duplicates added. As far as shipping there have been many forum threads on that subject. If you search shipping and PWE you’ll find a lot. You can safely ship up to about 20 cards in a PWE(plain white envelope) more than that most people use bubble mailers or boxes depending on the size of trade. Good luck and enjoy!

Thanks for the greetings BSwagger. I am slowly entering my collections. lol

What is the acceptable method to ship cards to each other? I use to sell cards on eBay and ship with penny sleeves, top loader, and bubble mailer. I read in another Thread that PWE is acceptable, is this true? Coming from eBay it was a NO-NO. Anyways, thanks for the greetings and hopefully we can make a deal with one another in the future once I have cards updated.

Thanks for the greetings Lugnut80. I will try your suggestion and start inputting by the manufacturer and see how it goes. Thank you for answering the PWE question. Do you usually ship the cards with penny sleeves and team bags in the PWE? 

I have received cards in PWE enclosed in cut 9 pocket pages. It seems to me this works pretty well with 3 pockets with 2 cards each. It keeps the envelope firm and protects the cards.

If you ship them in a way that you feel you would like to have the cards shipped to you, so that you recieve them in the best possible condition, barring a major incident, then you've mailed it properly.

@Ravenfaith77 Thanks for the 9-pocket page suggestion. Going to give that a try. 

@Kaline6 True. I always handle the cards as to how I would want to receive them but never tried the PWE method. First time for everything. 

A #10 envelope works perfectly for the 9-card pages. Cut the pages into 3-card rows, and I use cereal boxes cut to size for backing to stiffen the envelope... also use PAINTERS tape it works better than scotch tape and much easier to remove