It's Not A Rant. It's a Question.

[HockeyCardMan]

Well I think a big factor is, you have to realize, most people on this site have full time jobs. Trading is a lot of work and mix in a full time job, with kids to take care of and your on activities. It leaves hardly any time for other stuff. I know you have a ton of free time and stuff because we're kids :P, but you gotta kinda look from both perspectives on this matter. And I also agree with habscards, you might need to have a few more traders in order to make the amount of trades it seems you want to make.

I will be honest here. I do trade a good amount myself I think. I like to trade my bait for more bait.

With that being said I looked through your traders and the only card that I would be interested in would be your Tavares Ultimate auto. You also only have 25 cards available for trade with no higher end cards. This is not a knock to your collection at all. I am just saying that I could get that Tavares auto for $15-20 off of eBay. It is not worth it for me to trade for just that one card. It will cost me at least three dollars to ship my card to you. Even at best if I get a $20 card from you it is still not worth my time.

Now if you had a couple of cards that I like and we can make a three for three trade and I would be happy with that.

I would much rather just sell you the card and then save up a bit of paypal and buy something nice.

Once last thing. I would do a one for one trade for say your Tavares is the card that you would be getting from me will be a PC card for you. Then I know that I am helping you out.

I am just not wanting to swap an apple for an orange and having it cost me three dollars and wait time. I would rather just keep my card and sell it for $15 rather than make a trade where I send my $15 and $3 shipping for your $20 card.

Sorry not meaning to be a jerk but if you want to make a lot of trades gather up a lot of local people and get together once a month or so. Ask your local card shop(s) if they would be willing to help spread the word for you. Even ask if they will have it at their store. They just might sell some boxes when everyone is there. Trading without having to pay for shipping I will do as many deals as possible.

I completely understand what you guys are saying. I am 100% aware that my collection is not up to par. I am getting plenty in though! (:

[BackstromCaps19]

I completely understand what you guys are saying. I am 100% aware that my collection is not up to par. I am getting plenty in though! (:

No man i didn't mean it that way! Your collection is sick for the budget me and you both have :)
I just meant like you gotta remember that most people on here are adults with full time jobs and families!

[habscards]

I completely understand what you guys are saying. I am 100% aware that my collection is not up to par. I am getting plenty in though! (:

I did not mean anything bad by it at all. I just went through your PC and you have some nice cards in there.

Plus I see that you added six cards today to your traders and they are pretty good cards.

Just before when I looked at your traders and you had only 25 cards in there. 8 of which were inserts. Now they were nicer more desirable inserts but I am just not into inserts myself.

We all start somewhere and you do have a nice collection going. Just keep on building from there.

Jeff

[HockeyCardMan]

No man i didn't mean it that way! Your collection is sick for the budget me and you both have :)
I just meant like you gotta remember that most people on here are adults with full time jobs and families!

Yeah, I know that too. I really didn't want this question to come out as a rant but I think it did.

[TwoBrosCards]

For me, it is really simple as of now. It all comes down to the cost to ship. I collect pretty much any Kings card that I do not already have. So usually it is pretty easy for me to find something I could use. Before the shipping increases here in the US, I would also trade for non Kings cards just to get a trade done if I knew the other trader really wanted a card I had. I would also do a lot of low-end trades which I actually preferred because I dont bust a whole lot of high end product. But now, with it costing $7 just to ship a single card, it would end up costing way too much for me to continue trading the way I used to.

So now, I really only look for PC cards in a trade and if trading to Canada, it would have to be in the $30 or more BV range to be worth it. Really kind of sucks because I do enjoy the low end cards (inserts and lower end game-used and such).

I do also have to agree with the work and family as well. I have a 10 year old daughter who I help coach her soccer team 3 times a week as well as a 40-50 hour a week job, so as much as I do enjoy this hobby, I do enjoy my "downtime" as well. It usually takes me a couple days to respond to messages and such, so I do appreciate those fellow collectors that are patient and willing to work on a deal that might take a couple of days to finalize.

[MattDMC]

Trading to Canada isn't as cheap as it used to be for us U.S. collectors. Some post offices will let you get away with sending a thin bubble mailer as non-machinable, but mine considers every bubble mailer as a package so it costs $7.00 to send 1 card across the border. It's just not worth it to trade stuff that I don't want for other stuff that I don't want. I used to do non-PC trades to Canada all the time, but not anymore!!

If it is a collector from the U.S. on the other hand, I will make non-PC trades with them because it will only cost me around $2.00 to send the package.

This might be the problem that you're having with many U.S. collectors.

+1 on the Bolded area.

Just not worth the shipping costs anymore to trade for more traders I have no use for.

[cygnusx1]

I personally have lost a lot of interest in trading, while gaining more of an interest in both buying and selling. I find that more and more people are getting into the mentality that if they don't specifically "win" the trade, then it is not worth it to them. There have been numerous times where I have made a trade offer for a card, and I offer something I know the other person wants and has roughly the same BV and SV and the person says "Oh, well I can get it for x amount on ebay". Well then why are you even talking to me? If that's your logic just buy the card off ebay!

Same goes for the rising amount of people who state in their trade posts "If I am not getting PC in return, I will only trade if the trade is in my favour. I'm looking for Tavares, Hall, Eberle etc. My traders consist of 12 common GU cards, 100s of Victory and Score RC's, and one decent card that is not for trade. Also if I receive any PM's about inserts or base cards they will be ignored. High End Auto Patches only!"

It's been a while since I've even checked the trading boards, and it's sad because that used to be a big part of the hobby for me.

[habscards]

I personally have lost a lot of interest in trading, while gaining more of an interest in both buying and selling. I find that more and more people are getting into the mentality that if they don't specifically "win" the trade, then it is not worth it to them. There have been numerous times where I have made a trade offer for a card, and I offer something I know the other person wants and has roughly the same BV and SV and the person says "Oh, well I can get it for x amount on ebay". Well then why are you even talking to me? If that's your logic just buy the card off ebay!

Same goes for the rising amount of people who state in their trade posts "If I am not getting PC in return, I will only trade if the trade is in my favour. I'm looking for Tavares, Hall, Eberle etc. My traders consist of 12 common GU cards, 100s of Victory and Score RC's, and one decent card that is not for trade. Also if I receive any PM's about inserts or base cards they will be ignored. High End Auto Patches only!"

It's been a while since I've even checked the trading boards, and it's sad because that used to be a big part of the hobby for me.

I agree. It is much easier to buy than trade. Ask a person if they would like to trade and then they have to go through all of your cards and list the ones that they like. Most of the time they pick your very nicest cards. Then usually I find that the trade does not balance and it can be a lot of going back and forth and hopefully the two parties can come to an agreement.

For a sale you just ask a price and then it will either be a "yes", "no" or "we are close, would you take X amount?". Sale talks are much quicker to do than trade talks.

[Yzerfan]

I personally have lost a lot of interest in trading, while gaining more of an interest in both buying and selling. I find that more and more people are getting into the mentality that if they don't specifically "win" the trade, then it is not worth it to them. There have been numerous times where I have made a trade offer for a card, and I offer something I know the other person wants and has roughly the same BV and SV and the person says "Oh, well I can get it for x amount on ebay". Well then why are you even talking to me? If that's your logic just buy the card off ebay!

Same goes for the rising amount of people who state in their trade posts "If I am not getting PC in return, I will only trade if the trade is in my favour. I'm looking for Tavares, Hall, Eberle etc. My traders consist of 12 common GU cards, 100s of Victory and Score RC's, and one decent card that is not for trade. Also if I receive any PM's about inserts or base cards they will be ignored. High End Auto Patches only!"

It's been a while since I've even checked the trading boards, and it's sad because that used to be a big part of the hobby for me.

This part made me laugh out loud. It's so true!!

[CoolHandLuke]

I Get a good experience in trading. But one of the reason is that I have a huge list of traders from Victory to the cup. This does help to land deal and I only collect habs. SO if I see nothing I ask if they have some not in the bucket and if not then I pass. My time is precious and I don't trade for traders since I don't need any. I already have more then enough with 4,000 (insert,serial,rookie,memorabilia). I have close to 1,000 unique rookie so why would I trade for more.

Like most already explained, time is money, mailing cost money, so it's normal if we do not get anything we may use then why even try to trade when I could be doing something else. It's just a hobby and there are many defferent type of collectors. Some collect players and other team or set. Some have a very small want list and if you do not have what they need then you are looking at the wrong trader and need to search more.

For Instance, I use the SCF inventory and every month I do land a few trades with person that signed up on the site since they found cards I had they needed on google. Mainly the inventory is giving trade almost on the plate. But you need to have cards that these person needs. SO how many cards you have and how you make them visible does count for a lot.

I do the coding on this site and most of the time, member come to me and not me that go to them. I simply do not have the time to hunt much for cards. Maybe once a month I will do a forum search but 95% of my trade come from the SCF Inventory visibility I get or via a post in the trade forum that I bump daily and update frequently with new cards. Then member using the forum or the inventory search finds cards they need.

Mainly no one have the same need or set of rules. Some see things diffrently at time, so when this happen I just pass and move on. But I make trades at time that get me really enthousiast. Like a trade I work in the past few days were we are moving 65-75 cards on each side. This is possible because the member took time to list is cards in the SCF Inventory and then I was able to pin point what I could use and same for him. Those trade are really fun but not every one take time to list all there cards and or have enough for such trades.

Mainly it's not like it was when I was young in the school were we were trading for the fun. It's a hobby and the fun of a hobby is to have goal and try to reach them. There is some fun but the motivation and the fun is different then what we were doing at school. Also back then cards did not have much value. Today a card may be worth 5 cents or thousands of dollars. So not the same ball game either. Probably also why so many adult have fun in this hobby is that you can't just do like in the 70's, collect a set and when done your goal was acheived and did not have anything to collect until the next year.

So to resume collector all have different way to collect and different goals. The amount of trader you have. How well you can make them visible. How difficult you are in want you need. All these make or break a possible trade. But this is part of the hobby. For Instance at point I wanted almost only Carey price cards but this limit the capability to trade, now I trade for habs in general but inly interest in certain player for higher end because of the cost. This does open for more trading possibility and a member got a lot of Yzerman cards today because of my decision to open up to habs in general.

At time I see member with not many traders and while they want a card badly, a trade as to work both ways. While I understand how they feel, we all feel it some days. It will hapen to me that I am looking at Nice carey Price cards, but I know I do not have anything to trade for it, so it also part of the hobby, if everything was too easy to obtain, it would not be a hobby. Chasing cards can take years.