Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

Ok, I have given up on having people identify their trades as I am still getting more that are unmarked than those that have the ID # inside.

This post is asking traders to take the time to organize the cards int he trade in the same order as they are on the list in the TM. Small request.  Petty? Well it may alleviate some problems that many have most likely had happen to them.  I received several trades in the mail yesterday.  Some of the trades, I spend more time organizing the cards than I do actually putting them into my sets collection.  But today, one trade in particular emphasizes why you should do this.  18 cards from 2 different sets.  Should not be a difficult trade to fill, right?  Well, I got 2 of the same card and was missing one of the other cards in the same set.  A count of the cards verified 18 cards as per the trade but because they were not organized in numerical order, it was not seen that there were two of one card therefore one must be missing.

Is this so difficult to do?  I like to think that the cards are pulled in the same order as they are listed.  Why can't they stay in the same order when you package them? Really, why not?

Rant for the day is over.  Thanks for listening just like when I asked that traders identify their packages. Happier times are ahead for today as I am picking up a 1956 Clemente today to add to my set. 

Little things like that make all the difference. I think that might be a message you should send before accepting any trades, same as having the "is PWE cool"? conversation. 

isnt this one of the reasons why Admin put in place the feature to be able to checkmark the cards on the transaction page?

i use that all the time to double check as i am packing up cards for trade...simple feature that works great and saves a lot of headaches if used correctly..

I didn't think I would have needed to raise this issue for that reason. But I find in more trades than not, the cards are not in any particular order.  It is like buying a stack of cards at a yard sale and then having to put the in order yourself.

I just pulled 469 cards for someone.  When he gets them, other than the first 30 that had to go in a separate package, the remainder are in the order that the trade lists them in.  He will be able to confirm the trade in minutes.  But if I did like so many seem to do, he would need to organize them first by set then # before he could do much else.  I didn't think any one would ever need to do that first but I find I wrongly assumed things again.

I always package them in same order as trade posted, and take an index card cut in 2 and use that for the ID # and a thank you.... sometimes the simplest things are most challenging for some...

The thrill of the hunt in set building often includes much more than acquiring needed cards.  The sorting, crossing them off my lists, and inserting them into their respective sets is a process that I've found to be rewarding.  I have often thought of whether I'm doing a diservice to the other side of the trade by sorting the cards for them.  

I get a trade of 35 or 40 cards a few weeks back and it was like they shuffled them. Very annoying. I had to put them in piles for their sets, then get them in order, then count them out. Just found it a waste of my time. 

Trade ID# should be with the trade. it's nice it is written as a tip to do. But the word "tip" needs to be dropped. It should read "Needs to have."  It is there for a reason. 

im going to throw some caveats to play devils advocate to this.  

First, I havent done a lot of large trades so it may be a larger problem if i had mega trades going but,

1. I start from the bottom up from a set of cards, if i start getting into inserts, my inserts may not be in the same order as the trade is listed.  
   1. that may throw the sequence off a bit, and i realize i could re-sort at the end
   2. if the 87's are in front of me first i will start pulling those and then bounce around the transaction until all have been pulled.  Then go back to the 85's and so on. 
2. some times a one off card for me may be in a totally different box than the one i am pulling from.  Not likely, but sometimes it happens.
   1. again, i could take the time to resort and i understand that
3. when packaging say A&G minis..... I am going to try and protect them as best i can... if there are regular sized cards in the trade, that sequence goes out the window as protecting those cards is more important imho.
4. When I recieve cards i typically put into sets from the highest card # to lowest.... or backwards.  
   1. depending on how you pull those cards it could be backwards to the users preference anyways. 
   2. kind of like the placement of card #s on the back of cards should always favor left hand to right hand card shuffling.....
5. I will say as well i typically recieve a couple of trades of the same set i am building on at once, so i have some reshuffling to do anyways

Now if it was a huge 100+card trans.  I would expect some sort of cadence that i could figure out.      

But really for me its about

1. getting the cards to me in great condition (dont lie) *99% success rate with members on here for me at least
2. getting the cards we agreed to.  (I normally just count the total unless i am expecting some bigger value cards)
3. getting the cards in a timely manner.
4. communication if any of the previous three are not met. 
5. some sort of message so i know whom they are from without a lot of searching (tr# or member ID on the envelope)
   1. i have really tried starting to put the tr# in my trades since the complaints a bit ago.

I agree that maybe there should be some sort of agreement or message on the sorting of the cards if that is what one would expect .

I often don't put a transaction number because my name is on the envelope. Lately I'm trying to remember to add the number inside too because I just don't know what another trader is doing once they rip an envelope open. Sorting I have to admit has been hit or miss from me so I will work on that one. Sometimes I try to "hide" rare or pricier cards in the middle if using PWE to keep edges from getting wrecked. Thats my main excuse for mixing things up...

Ron, yes you and a few others, I don't need an ID or Trade # to know what trade has come in.  But most of us have ID that are not evident to our name.  I also use return address labels that were created for my ex-wife nad my daughter (surprised no one has mentioned it before).

Parsley24, in what order you pull your cards is no matter to this problem.  I too pull them in a somewhat random order because I have them sorted and stored by company, year, set, #.  So when I start into the Bowman cards being asked for, I pull all the years of the Bowmans. In this latest trade, that was from 1993 to 2020.  Then I pull the next company, and so on and so on.  But when I am done, I do two things whether it is a trade of 6 cards or of 500 cards.  I count them to make sure that I did not miss any (today, when I pulled the Bowman 2020 cards out, I had missed one and only discovered it because the count was not right), and second, I put them in the order of the transaction list, checking them off as I go to make sure they are all there and that I did not duplicate any.

In the trade that I received that caused me to post my original post, though the member may have counted the cards, 18 to match the number in the trade, he did not pick up that there were 2 of the same card in his pull and one was missing.  So now I have an extra 1994 UD Minor league card up for trade.  I already have some 400k cards to trade; last thing I need is to add more in trade.  Worse is that when I notified him about the error, I got no response or apology.

I am not saying we don't all make errors but if there is a system in place to avoid some errors, then we should use it.  And if we still make an error, then acknowledge it and make it right.  Had he at least acknowledged it, I would have been satisfied.  But like one other who never acknowledged the fact that he had sent me a card that had been separated from a brick and had very visible damage, I rather not trade with such people who cannot at least show proper manners.