Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

In late 2021 I started trading. I made about 10 trades that went well. However, there were flaws in my trade list. Now I have almost doubled my trade stock to about 28,000 and want to try trading again. I know members do this their own way, but I have two areas of concern for me. I searched the forums but did not find an answer.

1. I collected years before TCDB existed and my sorting is old school. For me, Flair and Ultra are with Fleer. Finest and Stadium Club are with Topps. SP, SPx and SP Authentic are with Upper Deck. Do you sort your trade list according to TCDB (Which should make it easier to pull cards) OR do you sort in another way that makes it easy for you to locate cards? Trying to sort two collections in two different ways makes my brain hurt!

2. Multiple listings - Some cards on my trade list have up to 20 copies. This makes trade matching a pain in the a**. Someone needed about 10 of my Reds duplicates, but the list showed over 30. A member had a good comment about listing them one at a time and add as one is traded. This seems a bit tedious but...

Any guidance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

I’m not sure if this will help because I’m not sure if this is the issue you’re having in #2, but if you’re seeing multiple entries for the exact same card in your FS/T or in your Collection, there is a tool in your collection page to “consolidate quantities” (I think that’s what it is called)

I have found that if I have one copy of a card in one collection and move that whole collection to my main collection it has that card listed as two separate records (instead of having a 2 by the card). But consolidating quantities fixes that. 

again not sure if that’s the issue for #2 but maybe it will help 

Found the consolidate quantities section. It says everything is consolidated. It shows quantities of a a player's card for trade. However, trade matching shows 5 separate listings for this same card. It skews my totals. Thanks for the consolidating info though.

1. I'm exactly like you, I used to have the major manufacturer's sub-brands kept with the parent company, just as you described. I have eventually morphed into the TCDB order, where Finest and Ultra and Collector's Choice are their own entities, for the reason you described, to make pulling cards easier.

2. You can definitely have one instance of a card, with 'quantity' set to however many you have of it, rather than having separate instances for each, assuming the conditions are the same (or you aren't marking them with conditions anyway). It definitely cleans up the matching lists. I would think that 'consolidate quantities' would do it correctly for you, but it may be necessary to do it manually for each card (maybe just the ones you have dozens of?). I did try the other method you mentioned, keeping the rest in my collection while always keeping one on the FS/T list, and then moving one in from the collection to replace one that is traded, but yeah, that was kind of a pain and is ripe for error (that is, forgetting to replace the one that was traded).

i am sorted like TCDB order. Basically they are  Alphabetical.. Except for me.i put. Topps brands  always at the back of each Binder.. each year is separated by year then the ABC order(approx lol).. If a brand of traders is to large in quantity, then they get boxed. all duplicates are in one fs/t collection.

I also had them sorted according to the brands parent company. But since I started adding them to TCDB I’ve changed it to make it easier. 
 

As far as dupes getting separated into different trades, I’m not sure if this helps. I edit the quantities under edit details. But I haven’t entered too many dupes yet either.

This is THE dilemma I face as i have wanted to use the power of TCDB but in my case where practically everything is random, I found it impossible to print something out to pull the cards, didn't mind adding an inventory position but that doesn't show up unless i go back and click on each item which was really long on a recent 200 card transaction, If someone has a good idea without putting 4 million cards in order please let us know.

Thank you  

I have considerably less traders than you (~10K) and have them sorted out by parent company in monster boxes.  I've labeled the boxes so I know what is in them.  I also use a shoebox for stars and oddball cards that is sorted by year.  Any really low quantity sets or random cards end up in a "misfit" jewel case.  I have found that these help me pull cards more efficiently.

Like others who commented, I still look at Ultra and Flair as Fleer... But when it comes to sorting my PC and my traders, I have them sorted as shown in any list on TCDb. I have this for all of the companies and their major brands. All 400,000 of my traders are sorted this way other than my HoF / Star cards which are in their own shoeboxes. I only list one of any one baseball card I have whether I have 2 or 1,000 to trade. I add another one when the first is asked for. Because they are all together, I know if I have another one available. Yes, a bit more time required when pulling cards for a trade but there are advantages to doing so, themain one being that when you add cards for trade, many members who want the card will get a match alert. Surprising how many trade offers I get while pulling a larger trade.

One more point to consider as you get organized - if you are going to list the correct VAR of those crazy late 80s early 90s sets, store them separately in their boxes, i.e. I use a separator (cereal box board) marked with the VAR type (e.g. "INC. / INC no dot). All of the one VAR are together followed by the other one. This makes pulling cards much faster. Of course, the TSC cards with the sheet identifier are not so easy to do this way.

I have said it often on here in the Forums - organization does take time but it is well worth it when it comes to alleviating frustrations when trading. Though nothing is ever perfect, I rarely cannot find a card asked for in a trade. I just pulled 386 cards for someone loaded with those VAR and every one was found.

After some thought I am going to delete my trade list and start over. Too much work on changing the duplicate totals. I agree with sorting the trade list according to TCDB. I also like the idea of the smaller and misc brands separate and definitely the VAR cards. Listing duplicates one at a time or all at once is still to be decided.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Hopefully my next trade list will be a lot easier to manage. My current Reds want  list is about 7K. My trade list will be about 25K. I hope to be trading again in a few months.

Brian