Trading, past and present

My last post didn't garner very many comments. Zero to be exact, but that's OK. Hopefully, if you read that post, you went back to look at your own site to see if your e-mail address is easy to find.

The reason I made that post is because it effects something near and dear to my heart, trading. I LOVE to trade. In fact, I think it is in my top 3 things I love about this hobby.  I've traded with people all over the country, as well as Great Britain and Hong Kong.

Trading is so easy to do (now). Check some one's web page, check your duplicates, send an e-mail with a proposal and with any luck you'll have a trade in short order.  I've completed some trades in less than 5 minutes.

It wasn't always like this.  One of the reasons I bought my first computer back in 1995 was to contact other collectors and trade my extra cards.  There is a newsgroup "rec.collecting.sport.baseball" which I use to peruse looking for people to trade with.  It still exists, but most of the posts are promoting people's ebay auctions.  I didn't see any posts looking to trade.

But other things now take that newsgroups place.  There are several "bulletin board" based trading groups.  I belong to several, and I'm sure some of you also belong to one or more.  If you're not, you are missing out on great trading opportunities.  The first board I joined was Sportscardfun.  I've been a member there since about 2003.  At first, it was a subscription based board, I think it cost $15. for a year's membership.  They have individual forums for all sports and non-sports cards.  They also have a point system where you leave a point for a good trade.  My current point total is 246.  That means I've traded with 246 individual traders.  You can't leave points for second, third, or beyond trades, it's just the way their system works.  In all likelihood, I've probably done 300 trades.  There are several people there that I have traded with numerous times.

Another fine board is The Bench, I've probably been there about 5 or 6 years.  The Bench's forums are broken out more than SCF.  Instead of one forum for baseball, they have 3.  They also have many other forums, definitely worth your time to check them out.  Their point system is more refined than SCF, in that 4 categories are rated on a scale of 1 to 5.

The last trading site I'm active with it Trading Bases.  This is an invitation only group.  You must have someone recommend you for membership.  Now some people might see that as a pain, but it helps keep the

out.  I'm sure most of you know who this is, but if you don't.  It is "Riff Raff", from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Trading Bases is a message board group, the traders there are great, generous people.

My other way of creating a trade is to look at a blogger's want list, if they are posted, and make offers to them. I've traded with several people whose blogs I read, as well as people who read this blog. (Granted, its not that many right now, but it is improving.)

So, that's trading today.  For you young whippersnappers that don't remember the dark days, before the Internet, I will regale you with how trading use to work.  Back in the day, if you wanted to trade, you took our a classified ad.  No, not in your local newspaper, in a hobby publication, no not Beckett.  The publication of choice was Sports Collector's Digest (SCD).  I remember placing ads in the late 70's and early 80"s.  They usually went something like this: "Want to trade for 1982 Topps, Fleer, Donruss, have many extras, please send your want list," then my address.

I would get a letter or two from "Joe Collector" a few days after SCD was published.  He would state that he needed "X" cards.  I would send him a letter back, stating I had some of his cards, and a list of what I needed.  He would send a letter back stating he had "Y" cards for me, but now didn't need some of the cards that I had for him, because he picked them up at a show, or from opening more packs.  At this point, one of two things happened: based on book value I would send my cards for his or the trade would just implode and  disappear.

Now remember, it could take several days for letters to go back and forth across the country.  Trades like this could take up to a month to complete.  Usually, the amount of cards discussed in the original trade slowly diminished due to purchases or other trades with other collectors.  It also cost you a couple of bucks to run the ad and you always took the chance that you would stiffed out of your cards.  I'll take the Internet over a classified ad any day.

So, now you know I love to trade, check out my want and to trade lists and lets trade.  Because right now, I can't afford to buy any cards.

The Snob