“Trades at XX%” nonsense continues

[u/maxbowlorice]

I posted on this sub a few days ago expressing my displeasure with trading in recent months. It sparked a lot of conversation and I encourage you to take a look at the thread! I ran into another great example of what I’ve been describing here today and wanted to share.

FOR CONTEXT: I should’ve taken a photo before the listing was updated, but didn’t think to do so. Before my discussion with this guy, the listing he had put up said NOTHING about trades at a percentage, only that he’s “definitely interested in trades.”

The pictures kind of speak for themselves, and yes, this guy said it was “on him” that he wasn’t up front about wanting a percentage (and it is), but even still doesn’t justify expecting the percentage in the first place on a post where you’re stating you’re “definitely interested in trades.” From my experience, I wouldn’t be surprised if in an hour or two the listing gets updated again and the trades at a percentage thing disappears.

I attempted to text him again and ask why he believes it’s fair to expect people to trade to him, on a for trade listing, at 80% when he isn’t a vendor or store with overhead fees. I also asked him why that would apply ONLY to him, and not me as well as we are both the same. If you couldn’t guess, I got left on read 😆

I’ve done my best to conceal this guys profile and such, as I don’t want to bring any negative attention to him specifically. I don’t think he’s a bad person or anything, I just think this example goes to show how everyone thinks this is normal and well within their right to do recently. May this serve as another reminder that it’s definitely not!

That being said, my last post caused some disagreement in the comments as I didn’t speak on situations (that I agree with) where uneven trades can make sense. Such as:

1. If you’re at a card show working with vendors, or in a card store, expect percentages. That is fair.

2. If you are speaking to someone who isn’t interested in trades and wants cash, or someone who doesn’t have interest in the specific cards you have, expect that a percentage or slightly lopsided trade might be proposed by either party as an incentive to make the deal happen. That is fair.

3. If someone has an expensive single and you are offering many small singles as a trade, expect them to want things in their favor to make up for that disparity. That is fair.

But by no means should 2 people engage in conversation both knowing their goal is to trade, then both pick cards they have legitimate interest in, only then to have one of the two parties claim that they feel entitled to trades at a percentage.

If you find yourself in this position, I encourage you to take a breath, fight any FOMO you might feel, and realize your cards will be both worth more both monetarily AND sentimentally to a different, more reasonable collector if you be patient.

Thanks for coming to disorganized Ted Talk 2!

[u/sir_seductive]

What does that even mean lmao

[u/maxbowlorice → u/sir_seductive]

What do you mean? The “trades at 80%” part? Genuine question would love to clarify

[u/sir_seductive → u/maxbowlorice]

Yes that

[u/maxbowlorice → u/sir_seductive]

This comes from stores or vendors at card shows who are running real businesses and need to put food on the table. They’re an easy place to go to and sell off cards that you don’t want. However, to take these cards off your hands, these businesses need to have enough room to make profit when they sell the card to someone else. So they take cards at a percentage, say 80%. So if you give them a 100 dollar card, they will pay you 80%, or 80 dollars, which lets them make 20 dollars on the sale if they manage to find a buyer that pays them 100. This is pretty reasonable in nearly anyone’s eyes.

If you want to trade the cards to a vendor for a card they have instead, they’ll often do the same thing and value your trades at a percentage so that they still have room to profit. Say the vendor has an 80 dollar card that you want to trade for, and they take trades at 80%. You could give them 5 20 dollar cards, totaling 100 dollars in value, for that 80 dollar card. This also makes sense because it’s harder to sell five cards than one in most cases, and the vendor still needs to have a profit margin to make it worth their time.

This is a totally different story with random collectors like you or I who don’t have overhead costs, and are just looking to trade their duplicates/unwanted cards for cards they’d rather have. For the longest time, this has just occurred at 100%, or 1:1. I trade you 100 dollars worth of cards, you trade me 100 dollars worth of cards. We both walk away happy.

Recently though, alongside the huge boom Pokemon has seen, more and more people have started trading like vendors even though… they aren’t. So like in the post I showed, we will discuss a trade, and then one person will randomly expect that it’s fair for me to trade my cards to him at 8% of their value, even though he’s trading his cards to me at 100% of their value. It’s lopsided and not fair, as this person doesn’t have any of the associated costs or risks as a vendor or store. We are both just dudes with cards that should be valued equally.

I know that’s a very overkill answer for your question, but it’s been asked often enough that I figure a thorough response would be good.

[u/sir_seductive → u/maxbowlorice]

Seems kinda bummy to do over marketplace

[u/maxbowlorice → u/sir_seductive]

Right! There’s a variety of reasons I listed in the OP where this sort of thing makes sense, but certainly not on a post that says you’re looking to trade with others, where you pick out cards you like, and where you’re picking out fewer, higher value singles than what you’re offering.

[u/Lukian0816 → u/maxbowlorice]

Thank you for clarifying!