looking for trades
When Trade Cards Online finds other users who have cards that you are looking for, it shows you a list with all of them and the cards they offer. When you select one of them you are presented with an easy form with which you can send him or her a message without revealing your e-mail address. The user will be able to reply to you using a similar form that will send you an e-mail to the address you provided when registering.
In your messages you should mention on which cards you are interested and, if the list tells you that you have cards the other user is interested in, identify which of those cards you are willing to trade. In any case, encourage your partner to take a look at all your cards from your public web page, just in case there is any card he forgot to list in Trade Cards Online but he still wants. And there is always the possibility to give or accept money in order to balance an offer, or to buy and sell cards.
For this reason, it is important to enter on the web as many of your cards as possible, as you never know which ones may be of interest for the user with whom you want to trade. Furthermore, having your cards listed in Trade Cards Online will let you receive messages and offers from other users, sometimes from multiple ones looking for the same card. In this case you will be able to initiate negotiations with all of them and then choose the best offer you get. This way there will be fewer chances that you end up losing in a trade, as you will be able to estimate how attractive a card is for all the users.
Conversely, if there are several people who have the same card you want to get, you will be able to contact all of them in parallel and choose to trade with the one that offers you the best deal.
performing the trade
Once you reach an agreement the only thing left is to make the exchange itself. The ideal situation is when you live near by each other and can meet in some place you both know (preferably in a specialized shop) to carry out the exchange of cards in person.
But this is precisely the advantage of Trade Cards Online, that it allows you to contact people from all over the world so that your chances to get a good deal are much greater, the only problem being that it is more probable that you won't be able to meet in person. In these cases, you will have to make the exchange by postal mail.
The first thing people usually do is exchanging references, which are the names of other people with whom you have already traded before, and who are witnesses to your behaving honestly. You should check the number of references a user has, and also verify that they have been added along a period of weeks and months and not in a short span of time.
You might also want to contact some of the other part's references if you have never traded with him/her before and if you are exchanging valuable cards. If the references they give you are from Trade Cards Online, then it is easy to send them a message without knowing nor revealing email addresses. To do that you just enter the corresponding user name in the section "look for trades", or visit his public page and use the button to send a message. In either case you just fill in the contact form that you'll be shown.
Once you are decided to perform the trade, and you have exchanged your postal addresses, there are two possibilities: either you both send your cards at the same time, or one of you send them first, and the other sends his cards once he gets these. Normally, this last case is used when one of the traders have many more references than the other and is assumed to be trustful; then he may request the other person to send first.
In any case, always remember to send the cards inside special hard sleeves, or protected with a rigid envelope or cardboard, so as to prevent any damage.
references and trust
After a satisfactory trade is over and you get your wanted cards, you can state this fact in Trade Cards Online by adding a reference for the other user with whom you traded. The more references you get, the more reliable you will be for other users who do not know you.
Nevertheless, in the exchanges through the postal mail you encounter the problems derived from trusting a person you don't really know. And though most people behave in good will, there are always those who try to take advantage of these situations, and even those who delay the sending of their cards out of laziness or forgetfulness. In any case, there is never any guarantee that you will receive the cards you requested in exchange for those you are sending.
Being aware of this issue, at Trade Cards Online we have developed the Protected Trade Service, which guarantees that you won't get cheated. You can access it and find more information from here.
We have also created a system for handling reports about bad traders that helps us remove them altogether from the site so that they do not bother other users. If you have any problems with other users when trading with them, please report the case to us from the 'references' section.
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Trade Cards Online