Ways of trading cards and their associated risks. Factors to take into
account when arranging trades, both in person and online, and how to avoid
the risk of being ripped of your collectible cards.
You can trade your cards in two different ways: face to face, or by postal
mail. The first type of trading is performed at tournaments, at schools,
or at the local comic shop, and you arrange the trades by checking the
other person's cards directly, holding them in your hands. Otherwise,
cards are traded by mail when the parties can not meet because they live
far apart from each other.
Both ways of trading have their own risks and you can be ripped in both
situations if you don't take the necessary precautions. Trading face to
face is normally less dangerous, because you are seeing the material you
are getting, and you receive it at the same time you give yours.
Nevertheless, you can still be cheated in two ways. You may get
counterfeit cards, or you may get cards whose value is far lower than the
value of those you give.
Counterfeit cards are normally easy to tell apart for a person with
experience with the real ones, but many young traders do not know enough
about the cards they are trading, so they can be fooled into believing
they're some special kind of legitimate cards. And there are also very
good counterfeits out there that are really difficult to distinguish from
real ones even for an experienced player.
Cards from each collectible card game have different details you should
check to validate their authenticity. For Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, for example,
which is one of the games that is suffering most from these deceiving
practices, one of the main tell-tales is a small hologram at the bottom
right corner, which should show the Anubis eye, or the word YuGiOh
depending on how the light shines on it. But also the coloring scheme of
both sides of the card and even the general layout may be different in
fake cards. You should always compare the cards you are getting with the
ones you have and make sure the consistency of the cardboard and the
quality of the printing are similar, as counterfeit cards are normally
made with cheaper materials, including paper, ink, glue, etc.
Nevertheless, most trades involve only authentic cards. But there is
another thing you have to be aware of when trading your cards. In every
trade, the value of the exchanged cards should be equivalent. But
determining this is not an exact science. The worth of a card depends on
parameters like its rarity, and its condition. Rarity is determined by the
frequency of printing, and the condition of conservation is important
mainly for collectors. But the value is also relative and sometimes
subjective. The same card may have different value for different people.
For example, a collector may value a card much more than a player when it
is difficult to find but it is not all that useful in the game. Also, the
value of a card changes with time, as new game strategies are explored or
new cards are published.
However, you can always determine a general value for a card based on how
desirable it is for the average trader. That's why most people will
generally agree on a trade being balanced or not. So, if you are unsure
about the value of your cards or the ones you are going to receive, you
should ask someone else to evaluate the trade.
Summing up, if you have a minimum of experience and can value the cards
and distinguish fake ones, you should have no real problem when trading
cards in person with any other trader.
But nowadays it's getting much more frequent to arrange trades on the
Internet and performing the exchange by postal mail. People are meeting on
the net, checking their haves and wants and arranging trades, all remotely
and without meeting. Then they swap addresses and send their cards by
postal mail.
In these cases you don't know anything for sure about the other person,
just whatever they want to tell you about them. You don't know if they
really have the cards they are offering, or if the cards are authentic and
in the agreed condition. Here you can not see nor touch the cards before
agreeing to the trade, and you can only verify if the cards are authentic,
and in the right condition, once you receive them in your mailbox. If you
have already sent yours, it could be too late by then.
In trades by mail you run a greater risk, therefore, if you send your
cards before receiving those from the other trader. That's why there is a
lot of discussion, when arranging a trade through the web, about who will
send his cards first. The most usual way to determine this is by resorting
to references. References are votes of confidence given by someone who has
traded before with this person and was satisfied by his performance. It is
assumed that the greater number of references a trader has, the more
reliable he is. Consequently, the rule is that the person with fewer
references should be willing to send his cards first if required to do so.
Nevertheless the sheer number of references is not guarantee of a perfect
trader. You should always check one or more of the references to verify
they are authentic and recent. A reference includes a way of contacting
the referrer so he can explain when and how the trade took place. You
should ask politely and thank any replies you get.
Even after verifying references, you may end up not getting the cards you
wanted. You may have fallen pray of a ripper, or the other person may have
simply forgotten about the trade. Or they may have sent you fake cards
believing they were real, or damaged cards they had rated as fair. If you
can still contact your trader you may reach a second agreement to fix any
deficiencies in the trade, though this will imply more expenses and time,
and may need of a lot of negotiation. You should always try to be as
polite as possible even if you are discussing what you think is a
misbehavior. Upsetting your speaker won't improve your chances of getting
a good resolution to the problem.
Most people use Internet forums to get in contact with other traders. They
post their lists, exchange messages, match their collections, and arrange
trades all in the same format, as board messages. Everything is manual and
users need to keep visiting the forums to check for new users and visually
identify the cards they are looking for. To ease this process, a few
specialized web sites have emerged that allow users to input their haves
and wants in a standard way so that the system itself can match their
collections and tell them about possible traders and wanted cards that are
available. This way the search for trades gets automated and a lot of
effort is saved. Nevertheless, users must still visit the sites
periodically to check for new matches. Trade Cards Online
(http://www.tradecardsonline.com) is
the only site which offers their
exclusive Automated Report on Possible Trades, alerting their users
whenever any of the cards they are looking for becomes available for
trading. Users receive an e-mail message without having to visit the site
continuously for this purpose.
So finding the best trades is getting much easier thanks to the Internet
and its global access. The web is also making the trades by postal mail
much more frequent. Unfortunately, it is not reducing the associated
risks. Forums are getting full of messages complaining about this or that
user who has cheated someone. Special forums are created to post the names
of those people deemed to be bad traders. There is in fact a web site
dedicated to fighting bad traders of collectible cards: G.A.B. (Good
Against Bad traders:
http://www.gabtraders.com) is a community of
volunteers who investigate reports of misbehavior in card trades, and
maintain a list of confirmed cheaters. The minimum precaution you must
take before initiating a trade with someone is checking that they are not
already listed in that website as bad traders.
But if you are really concerned about safety, then Trade Cards Online is
the site for you. Trade Cards Online (http://www.tradecardsonline.com) is
a feature-rich site dedicated to facilitating your trading of collectible
cards and which has made every effort to increase your security when
trading. There are several features that make it the safest place to trade
on the Internet:
Spam-free: your e-mail address is never shared with anyone else, as all
messages are exchanged through an internal messaging system which directs
them to your mailbox without disclosing your address to the other user.
You can also decide whether you want to receive messages only from
registered users, or also from external traders. Trustworthy: the site
features an easy-to-use reference system that lets users give references
to each other and keeps track of them and the time they were submitted.
Checking the number of references a trader has and contacting a few of
them is all easily done from within the website. Protected: the site
offers the exclusive Protected Trade service which guarantees you won't
get cheated or ripped. The site acts as intermediary and checks that the
cards are in fact sent and are the correct ones before resending them to
their final owners. This way you get your own cards back if the other
party on the trade does not meet its commitment. You will never lose your
cards again to a dishonest trader. Free of rippers: there is no bad trader
list, and that is because bad traders are simply removed altogether from
the site, so it stays free of cheaters. Whenever a user thinks he has been
ripped in a trade with another user, they create a Bad Trader Report which
is investigated based on the internal records of messages exchanged. If no
resolution is reached, offending users are automatically expelled from the
site and banned for life. Users who get listed at G.A.B also get
immediately removed from this site.
Trading online is full of advantages that make trading cards much easier
and more convenient, but you need to be cautious and use all the available
services that reduce your risks of being ripped of your precious cards.
