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Card Trading
By Clemente Zamora, Fri Dec 9th
Card trading: risks and precautions. Abstract: Ways of trading cards and their associated risks.Factors to take into account when arranging trades, both inperson and online, and how to avoid the risk of being ripped ofyour collectible cards. You can trade your cards in two different ways: face to face, orby postal mail. The first type of trading is performed attournaments, at schools, or at the local comic shop, and youarrange the trades by checking the other person's cardsdirectly, holding them in your hands. Otherwise, cards aretraded by mail when the parties can not meet because they livefar apart from each other. Both ways of trading have their ownrisks and you can be ripped in both situations if you don't takethe necessary precautions. Trading face to face is normally lessdangerous, 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 getcounterfeit cards, or you may get cards whose value is far lowerthan the value of those you give.
Counterfeit cards are normally easy to tell apart for a personwith experience with the real ones, but many young traders donot know enough about the cards they are trading, so they can befooled into believing they're some special kind of legitimatecards. And there are also very good counterfeits out there thatare really difficult to distinguish from real ones even for anexperienced player. Cards from each collectible card game have different details youshould check to validate their authenticity. For Yu-Gi-Oh!cards, for example, which is one of the games that is sufferingmost from these deceiving practices, one of the main tell-talesis a small hologram at the bottom right corner, which shouldshow the Anubis eye, or the word YuGiOh depending on how thelight shines on it. But also the coloring scheme of both sidesof the card and even the general layout may be different in fakecards. You should always compare the cards you are getting withthe ones you have and make sure the consistency of the cardboardand the quality of the printing are similar, as counterfeitcards are normally made with cheaper materials, including paper,ink, glue, etc. Nevertheless, most trades involve only authentic cards. Butthere is another thing you have to be aware of when trading yourcards. In every trade, the value of the exchanged cards shouldbe equivalent. But determining this is not an exact science. Theworth of a card depends on parameters like its rarity, and itscondition. Rarity is determined by the frequency of printing,and the condition of conservation is important mainly forcollectors. But the value is also relative and sometimessubjective. The same card may have different value for differentpeople. For example, a collector may value a card much more thana player when it is difficult to find but it is not all thatuseful 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 cardbased on how desirable it is for the average trader. That's whymost people will generally agree on a trade being balanced ornot. So, if you are unsure about the value of your cards or theones you are going to receive, you should ask someone else toevaluate the trade. Summing up, if you have a minimum of experience and can valuethe cards and distinguish fake ones, you should have no realproblem when trading cards in person with any other trader. But nowadays it's getting much more frequent to arrange tradeson the Internet and performing the exchange by postal mail.People are meeting on the net, checking their haves and wantsand arranging trades, all remotely and without meeting. Thenthey swap addresses and send their cards by postal mail. In these cases you don't know anything for sure about the otherperson, just whatever they want to tell you about them. Youdon't know if they really have the cards they are offering, orif the cards are authentic and in the agreed condition. Here youcan not see nor touch the cards before agreeing to the trade,and you can only verify if the cards are authentic, and in theright condition, once you receive them in your mailbox. If youhave already sent yours, it could be too late by then. In trades by mail you run a greater risk, therefore, if you sendyour cards before receiving those from the other trader. That'swhy there is a lot of discussion, when arranging a trade throughthe web, about who will send his cards first. The most usual wayto determine this is by resorting to references. References arevotes of confidence given by someone who has traded before withthis person and was satisfied by his performance. It is assumedthat the greater number of references a trader has, the morereliable he is. Consequently, the rule is that the person withfewer references should be willing to send his cards first ifrequired to do so. Nevertheless the sheer number of referencesis not guarantee of a perfect trader. You should always checkone or more of the references to
verify they are authentic andrecent. A reference includes a way of contacting the referrer sohe can explain when and how the trade took place. You should askpolitely and thank any replies you get. Even after verifying references, you may end up not getting thecards you wanted. You may have fallen pray of a ripper, or theother person may have simply forgotten about the trade. Or theymay have sent you fake cards believing they were real, ordamaged cards they had rated as fair. If you can still contactyour trader you may reach a second agreement to fix anydeficiencies in the trade, though this will imply more expensesand time, and may need of a lot of negotiation. You shouldalways try to be as polite as possible even if you arediscussing what you think is a misbehavior. Upsetting yourspeaker won't improve your chances of getting a good resolutionto the problem. Most people use Internet forums to get in contact with othertraders. They post their lists, exchange messages, match theircollections, and arrange trades all in the same format, as boardmessages. Everything is manual and users need to keep visitingthe forums to check for new users and visually identify thecards they are looking for. To ease this process, a fewspecialized web sites have emerged that allow users to inputtheir haves and wants in a standard way so that the systemitself can match their collections and tell them about possibletraders and wanted cards that are available. This way the searchfor trades gets automated and a lot of effort is saved.Nevertheless, users must still visit the sites periodically tocheck for new matches. Trade Cards Online(http://www.tradecardsonline.com) is the only site which offerstheir exclusive Automated Report on Possible Trades, alertingtheir users whenever any of the cards they are looking forbecomes available for trading. Users receive an e-mail messagewithout having to visit the site continuously for this purpose. So finding the best trades is getting much easier thanks to theInternet and its global access. The web is also making thetrades by postal mail much more frequent. Unfortunately, it isnot reducing the associated risks. Forums are getting full ofmessages complaining about this or that user who has cheatedsomeone. Special forums are created to post the names of thosepeople deemed to be bad traders. There is in fact a web sitededicated to fighting bad traders of collectible cards: G.A.B.(Good Against Bad traders: http://www.gabtraders.com) is acommunity of volunteers who investigate reports of misbehaviorin card trades, and maintain a list of confirmed cheaters. Theminimum precaution you must take before initiating a trade withsomeone is checking that they are not already listed in thatwebsite as bad traders. But if you are really concerned about safety, then Trade CardsOnline is the site for you. Trade Cards Online(http://www.tradecardsonline.com) is a feature-rich sitededicated to facilitating your trading of collectible cards andwhich has made every effort to increase your security whentrading. There are several features that make it the safestplace 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 messagingsystem which directs them to your mailbox without disclosingyour address to the other user. You can also decide whether youwant to receive messages only from registered users, or alsofrom external traders. Trustworthy: the site features an easy-to-use reference systemthat lets users give references to each other and keeps track ofthem and the time they were submitted. Checking the number ofreferences a trader has and contacting a few of them is alleasily done from within the website. Protected: the site offers the exclusive Protected Trade servicewhich guarantees you won't get cheated or ripped. The site actsas intermediary and checks that the cards are in fact sent andare the correct ones before resending them to their finalowners. This way you get your own cards back if the other partyon the trade does not meet its commitment. You will never loseyour cards again to a dishonest trader. Free of rippers: there is no bad trader list, and that isbecause bad traders are simply removed altogether from the site,so it stays free of cheaters. Whenever a user thinks he has beenripped in a trade with another user, they create a Bad TraderReport which is investigated based on the internal records ofmessages exchanged. If no resolution is reached, offending usersare automatically expelled from the site and banned for life.Users who get listed at G.A.B also get immediately removed fromthis site. Trading online is full of advantages that make trading cardsmuch easier and more convenient, but you need to be cautious anduse all the available services that reduce your risks of beingripped of your precious cards.
About the author:Clemente Zamora is the webmaster of Trade Cards Online(http://www.tradecardsonline.com/im/article1) The site wheretrading collectible cards is made easy! He is also in charge ofMiniature Trading (http://www.miniaturetrading.com) andHypernovels.com (http://www.hypernovels.com)
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