Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

Agree... I have yet to initiate or inquire about trades because I'm still finishing up my sale/trade list, and I haven't even begin to look into the "wants". 

With that said, I don't want to keep people waiting if they find any cards on my sale/trade list that they want, so by all means, let me know if you're interested and we can work something out. 

That is a good approach - you may wish to add somethign to your profile page saying something like "I am adding Traders and have not yet built my wants; if you see somethign you want on my list, PM me and we cacn probably build a trade from what you have to offer."

at first i was afraid, i was petriefied....

but i started organizing.  I have a 130k (count) collection that was literally i bought a pack looked at it and put it in a box.  I started inputting everything in zistle but that site was bought by some magazine company...so i started moving everything here.  once here i discovered a lovely community with members that I engage with here, on ebay, on facebook, and youtube for trading, buying and selling.

That being said when i started exploring moving my duplicates, I went out and  bought another storage box and started separating out keeps vs trade bait.  As I bought new cards I started updating the inventory and moving the tradeable ones to my FS/FT list and keeping them seprate from my keep box.  Sine the pandemic started and i found myself "working" from home more often i have been going through the original collection where all my cards (dupes and keeps) were just dumped in my collection. I have been sorting the base set and adding to the FS/FT  and now almost 30k cards are listed on my fs/ft list.  I know most are 90's base commons but i want them separate from my main collection.

I too have encountered a few trades where you cant counter b/c they dont have anything else to offer.  they often dont have much in their collection at all.  I know it takes time to "build" your inventory on this site, but if you take your time and build your inventory (and keep it orgainzed) you will have TONS of trades!  I often cant even keep up.  i have 12 pending on my list right now.  

If I am understanding you correctly, then I am not the type of member you are talking about.  I have a wantlist but none on my FS/FT list, however I'm not seeking out trades with members.  So I don't think that is what you are discussing. If I was an active trader on here, that would bother me a lot too.  In fact I have looked at members profiles to see what they have to trade and  surprised to see so many wanting to trade that have such a small list of cards on their FS/FT list.

jupiterhill - no you are not the type of member I refer to. How you use the site is how many here do, a place to track their collection.  They don't look to trade with anyone but list their haves and wants so they can either print them out or refer to it when looking at potential buys.  It is a great way to use the site and I fully respect that.

The members I refer to are the ones who build their want list here but not their for trade list, yet want to trade so they only add the cards they are willing to offer in a trade.  I even have one who doesn't enter the cards he offers me though he does select those he wants from my traders.  For the ones he offers me, he simply types in the year and number of the cards - no player name, just card #.  So it leaves me having to look up the cards he is offering to see if they are really worth in trade for what he asks.  He uses another site for his collection but comes on here looking for trades.  Lately I have had a couple of others do that and that is why I have posted this.  If you want to trade fairly, let others see your inventory so they too can get the cards they really want and not just what you offer them.

I will say, some may not have their full trade list on here but when they offer a trade it is unquestionably fair or even generous.  It is those who quote "book prices" or even worse, prices listed here to justify their often unequal trade in their favour.

I am not lacking in trade offers, surpassing 11,000 cards going out and over 10,000 coming back in the last 10 months so I don't need to consider these traders who think they should control all aspects of the trade.  The Decline option is getting more consideration than it ever had before.

I will piggyback a little on what Mark(mzentko) said earlier in this post.  We've all joined at different stages in our trading/collecting lives.  For me, I joined TCDB late in my collecting life, I've been trading on the net since 1994, Sportscardfun.com, started by Darcy Elliot and a private group, "TradingBases", started by Kevin Martens.  I was like everyone else, kept my wantlist written down, then did the spreadsheets. But there was never a way to keep track of all the thousands of dupes/rraders that I had. Back in 2004 a local friend and  trader said he had joined Sportlots and I should try it to sell off some of my dupes.  I build sets, buy collections,  and even bought the leftovers from a shop that closed, so I had well over 2 million cards.  I got tired of digging through boxes to see if I had cards for a trade, so I decided in 2005 that I should check out Sportlots.  After I looked over the site, I quickly realized that not only could I sell a few cards, but it could also be used as an inventory tool, and I wouldn't have to check boxes first. In April of 2005, I dabbled with loading some stuff, but didn't get serous about it until I bought around 250,000 cards from a guy in Jacksonville in 2007.  I started loading tons of cards, sold some, and could trade easier, without digging through boxes.  Over 13 years, I loaded over 1.7 million cards, selling 280,000 cards, making hundreds of trades on 4 different sites and Facebook.  Then I find TCDB, late, in my collecting life.  I joined here, I thought, another trading site to complete sets and help others with their sets.  I didn't know about the matching system, I thought everyone traded like me, from the wantlist they kept.  When I joined, I was told I needed to load my wantlist, and get all my dupes loaded, if I wanted to trade.  When I said I couldn't reload over a million cards, it took me years to load them the first time, I was told nobody would trade with me if I didn't have a trade list.  I have loaded a few dupes from small collections, but not a lot.  Fortunately, most of the proposals I've put together and offered have been accepted.  I've made close to 600 trades here in 2 1/2 years and made some great trade partners.  Granted, it's tougher not having matches for my side, I have to initiate the trade most of the time.  Usually, I get match alerts for my wants, then I search that traders wants, and put together a fair trade. I sometimes send a message first to see if there is interest.  Sometimes I see that the trader has over 200 pages of wants, and I move on. I try to find other set builders, it's easier to pull set cards, they're usually all in the same box.  It's been fun finishing up a bunch of sets, starting new ones, and helping others do the same.

I said all that, just to let others know-you can trade here any way you can make it work.  The system makes it easy to trade for those that have loaded their wantlist and traders. If I didn't have my dupes loaded elsewhere, I would load them here. If it was only 50,000-250,000, I'd reload them here, but 1.4 million is too many.  If I had found this site first, all my dupes would be loaded here, a lot easier to trade.  But for guys like me that took years to load cards elsewhere, you can trade too, you are welcome here.

I totally understand all the replies posted so far. But I am also with Bruno on this one. You need to have lots of traders listed to make even trades that make both sides equally happy to make the trade. I don't like ho-hum trades where I get some random team cards from my wantlist as much as I like trades where I get the specific players that hold the most interest for me. I'd rather get 5 missing Ozzie Smith baseball cards than 5 Mark McGwire Cardinals cards!!! I'd rather get 5 Muhsin Muhammed football cards than 20 Jake Delhomme cards!!! I want options for what I've spent the time to list as traders instead of being told "This is what I'll give you for those cards". If I get what I feel like is a forced option, I'll either decline immediately or switch it to a sell-only option.

As for those saying they added everything to another site first and don't want to do it again... I had over 30K cards to list on Beckett when I started there in 2003 and it took what seemed like forever to load them all on there. When I found this site, I got all those cards listed in a quarter of the time it took me to add them to Beckett originally and it would have been done even faster with the tools that have been added here JUST in the past 2 years! AND I was still constantly acquiring cards during the whole process and also adding them to Beckett when they came in as well. I acquired an extra 30K cards from an estate auction 2 years ago and had all of those cards added in about eight months while also selling some and trading some. Again, I was adding the cards to both sites at the same time, box by box. Then I acquired another collection of about 30K cards back in July! I turned off trades at that moment but still made a few trades through PM's. After a month and a half of sorting those cards, I started adding them on here and Beckett at the same time. Then Beckett jacked up the price of their OPG's by double of any previous price-hike. So I'm done adding to Beckett now. But I continue to add to TCDB. Since I started adding the newest acquisitions in late-August, I've added over 20,000 to my total collection here and most of them are traders. I'm still not close to done, but I'll end up with well over 100K total cards when I'm done. And I've done all this while still having a full-time job that I have to go to 6 days a week throughout the pandemic. I don't have children though and that's a great reason for it to take much longer for some to add FS/T cards on TCDB. But people finding time to add Wants instead of FS/T cards and still not taking the time to add to the FS/T list before looking for trades bugs me. I've ALWAYS had the Match system turned OFF since it became a feature. I don't want to know everyone that lists a card on my wantlist to their FS/T list. I don't have time for that extra distraction. It's the same reason that I don't go to ebay anymore. Too much distraction from the important things about my collection. Plus, buying and selling here is so much better than paying ebay for other people selling their stuff at a higher cost to cover the fees. Okay, I got into a bit of a rant, but I don't think that was in a bad way this time.

@BobbyL: If I had a million+ cards, I wouldn't add every single card either. Same goes for the collection that BOBZCARDS has. I just wouldn't do it, UNLESS I used this site as the ONLY outlet for cards. Personally, if I had a million+ cards, I'd work on getting funding to finally start my dream store.

BobbyL - It is not members like Mark that I refer to.  I have completed 11 trades with Mark and I have never had to question any of his offers.  He is one of the best traders on this site. Truthfully, I did not know that he did not list his traders here as what he offers me in trade is always comparative to what he asks for (vintage for vintage, modern for modern, stars for stars) and more than fair.  It is those who think they can offer less and don't allow for a reasonable counter offer that I am referring to.

I totally agree.

Bruno is eons ahead of most of us in organization, wish I could say the same. His suggestion is great for the well organized, but some not, that includes me.....I try but never seem to gain much ground.

Someday ! 

It does take time, which I know is easier for some than others. All I can do is add my voice to the chorus of folks who have taken the time, and I can say it has been AMAZING. I've been a member of The Bench for years, and I've had a ton of success and made lots of great connections there, but my volume here is so much larger because the matching system is *fantastic* here.

But the matching system only works if there are things to match. :)