Couple tips...
1) Don't be afraid to put cards on your want list. The more matches you have, the more likely people are willing to make trade offers to you. And occationally if you have obscure cards that most people don't bother listing, you might find someone with them hit you up for a trade because they have them and finally found someone interested. Same goes for commons.. list them because not everyone does and people always want to finish sets.
2) As you put cards up to trade (also as said in #1, list as many as you can for the same reason) keep them sorted and labled. I have a couple 2,000 count boxes that I have the cards in, separated by slips of paper marking what they are and what years. Makes it a lot easier to pull trades for offers.
3) When you get a trade offer, pull the cards before accepting. It's annoying to have both sides accept then to have one person say a card is damanged or lost or whatever after the other party mailed their cards out already.
4) Don't be afraid to ask questions or ask for scans. People here are very good about working together. No one wants the other person to feel screwed in a deal so if they want to make sure the cards are in a condition they would accept, that's not unreasonable.
5) Don't be afraid to counter or even turn down a deal. Sometimes people will put together what I like to call a conversation starter offer. You might have a bunch of cards matching either way so they'll pick 10 cards they want the most and put out any 10 random matches back. There's nothing wrong with countering and picking cards you would rather have instead or even expanding the trade to a larger selection from either end. But sometimes people will throw out a crazy deal for a card they really want in hopes that you feel generous and accept it. I've been on both sides of deals like that.
