Trading guidelines and FAQ

Trade types

When creating a trade, you must choose between 2 types: Local and By Mail.

Local trade type is a simpler type, that you can use when you and a friend are trying to decide on what cards to swap, to easily chat and see the total card values. These trades do not require leaving feedback for the other user. They are also NOT subjected to the rules described below, and they cannot get you banned.

If you will exchange the cards by mail you MUST use the mail trade type.

Rating

The rating is basically your ‘credit score’. Just as in real life, the higher/more recent the rating in general, the better the odds are for a successful transaction - rating represents experience and the ability to conduct online trades professionally. There are of course exceptions, but the vast majority of rip attempts happen with new or inexperienced traders (less than 25 rating) If your counterparty is in this range, be particularly careful.

When starting out, your safest trade partner will be people with rating > 25. You will probably have to send your cards first as a new user, but an experienced trader will be much less likely to try to rip you off.

Evaluating possible trade partners

General rules:

• If he's not from the same country, check if they will send internationally
• Read their bio carefully, people usually use it to specify conditions and expectations for trading
• When choosing a user for trading, make sure to check their profile page for their feedback score, go through their trading history and friends list. Fair people will tend to have fair friends, so pay attention to the feedback scores of a user's friends.
• Keep your profile completed with location info, and clearly specify the conditions for trading in your bio. Pay attention to the same things when looking at another user's profile and friends.

People to be wary of:

• A high-rated user whose account has not been active in a long time suddenly resumes trading.
• A user contacts you for a trade but does not have a large filled in wishlist and tradelist.
• Abnormal shifts in collection contents – i.e. a guy who usually trades T2 jank all of a sudden has P9, etc. for sale.
• Be wary of accepting outside ratings (from eBay, other sites etc)

Finally, here is a list of places where you can find information on persons/emails that are suspected/confirmed bad traders/rippers.

• MTGS Official Ripper & Bad Trader List
• Wizards Rippers / Bad Traders
• MOTL Bad Traders

If you see a name, address, or email on this list, do NOT engage in a transaction with them. Furthermore, please report them to support@deckbox.org

Transactions

• If there is no consensus on who sends the cards first, the person with the lower feedback score should (For equal feeback scores, both send at the same time).
• It is highly recommended to leave a feedback score and description after finishing a trade. This helps the feedback system be more valuable for people looking to trade in the future.
• Use delivery confirmation, tracking and insurance for sending cards. As the rules state, you are responsible for proving you send the cards and for their arrival at the destination. If you are not insured, any problem with the post will have to be covered by youself.
• Use the trade chat. In case of trade disputes, it will be the first thing that moderators will check.
• If it is too good to be true, it probably is.
• Keep your PM’s, emails, receipts and tracking information. All of these may help the staff investigate potential rippers, so if you can keep them with conveniently it is advised.
• !! Regarding tracking – this is the de facto method of ‘protection’ in online trading but it is worth noting that USPS is not responsible for lost packages even if you have tracking on it. To be perfectly clear, if you hand it to a mailman and they lose it on accident, you will not be reimbursed. If they deliver to the destination and a neighborhood kid steals the mail, you will not be reimbursed. These are actual, not hypothetical occurrences. As such, if you are engaged in a high-value transaction, it may behoove you to utilize registered mail (which includes some insurance) or adding insurance to the package so that you are fully covered.
• International transactions - International transactions not utilizing registered mail are risky. Even the ones that do utilize it may be questionable because there is simply no guarantee how the their local mail system will handle the mail. It is advised that newer traders avoid international transactions simply because there is so little protection... there is no reasonable way to track them down if anything goes wrong.