Topic: How do trading recommendations work?

Hello everyone.  I'm relatively new to the site, and have a few very basic questions that I hope someone can answer.  smile

Once I get my entire collection entered and start populating my trade and wish lists (and flag myself as willing to trade within the country instead of local only), where will I find the list of potential people to trade with based on what I have and what I need? 

Does the site automatically compile the potential trader list for me, or do I need to manually hunt and peck through the "People" list looking for potential traders?  Will the site show me a list in real time as I modify my trade/wish lists, or does it only process this information at a certain interval (once per day, etc)?

Also, when looking at other people's profiles, when I look at their previous Trades, I'm not sure what I am seeing.  If cards are listed under their name/column, are they the cards they traded away, or the cards they received from the other person?

Thanks in advance for the help!  I'm sorry if these are very simple questions, but I'd like to have answers before taking the next step.

Re: How do trading recommendations work?

So the site compiles a list of traders included in the groups that you're a member of who have cards listed in your wantlist (and it also identifies overlap in terms of how many cards in your tradelist that are in their wantlist).  Once you have things filled into your lists, you should apply to join the Reddit mtg traders group as it's probably the largest and most directed toward trading on the site - that will give you the best chances of finding quality trade partners.

With regard to the questions you asked:  When you look at a trade, the cards listed below the trader's name are the cards that they're giving in return for the cards listed under the other person.  You can also see the conversations between the traders in many instances and the feedback scores that have been posted after the trade is completed.

Before you begin trading I would recommend spending a few minutes to review the site's trading policies as they've recently changed.  Then, you're welcome to find traders and off you go.

As a forewarning, since you won't have any trade feedback yet, be prepared to ship your side of any trade first.  I would recommend looking to trade with people with at least 5-10 positive feedback to ensure you're not going to get scammed.  Eventually, you'll build up a decent trade rep and can find most cards you could ever want on here.

I hope all of this helps.  It's really a pretty friendly, good system here.  As long as you send what is agreed in a timely fashion and have decent communication with your trading partners and you shouldn't have any problem.

Re: How do trading recommendations work?

As TyWooOneTime already stated, the Reddit trade group is often the most active of the trading groups and where your most likely to find what your looking for. Clicking on a card name will also take you to a page that will list potential people who have that card in their tradelist but often it will give you people who are not active traders or only use the site for its Deckbuilding or collection sorting.

You can also go here (http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG) and click on the Trading thread thats created each week on the right hand side. There is a new one each week and alot of people on there use deckbox as a means to trade so you can find potiental partners there and then come to deckbox to hammer out the details.

The site automatically updates your lists as you change them so you can log on to 1 computer, add or remove something and log on another PC and it will be as you changed it. However cards that are involved in a trade are not removed from your tradelist/wishlist/inventory right away. they are only removed once you click that you have actually sent the cards out or received them. This is important to remember when trading because people don't look at your active trades will not know that card they could be interested is actually already "traded" and for you to know so you dont accept a trade that has a card that you technically no longer have.

That being said, Welcome!

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Re: How do trading recommendations work?

Thanks TyWooOneTime and Helios52 for the tips and advice.  All very helpful!!

I'm still a tiny bit foggy on the site's matchmaking trade capability.  So, until I join a "Community", I will not see any sort of recommended trading partners via Deckbox, regardless of my wish/trade lists and local setting (local, worldwide, etc)?  I have not joined any "Communities" yet via the "People" menu.  Currently, I don't see any recommended trade partners in any of my submenus in my user profile page, no matter what cards I add to my trade and wish lists.

I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the site would match me up with people who only had local user accounts on Deckbox.org that needed cards that I am willing to trade, or cards that I need from them.  So far, the only way I see to interact with other Deckbox users looking to trade is to inspect their profiles, one by one, via the "People" menu, then select their "Profile" page, and look at the bottom where it says "Trading Opportunities" (using Tradelist or Inventory).  While this works, I know this must not be the proper way to do it because it would take forever inspecting user by user.

Which one of my Profile submenus will I see potential trading opportunities, once I have everything configured correctly and am a member of a community, etc?

Thanks so much again for the assistance!

Last edited by Morseth (2013-01-03 19:32:31)

Re: How do trading recommendations work?

So for what it's worth, until you join one of the groups you likely won't see any trade pairings automatically.  Once you join the Reddit group, your trade and want lists will be cross referenced with potential trade partners automatically.  The results are listed at the bottom of your main profile page - you'll likely have to scroll your browser window down to be able to see any of them.

As Helios52 suggested, an alternative is to look up a particular card you're interested in via the card database and then you can scroll down to see who has that card listed in their tradelist.  You can then go to that person's profile and it will give you a more in-depth look at the overlap between both your want and trade lists.

To my knowledge the current trade interface will sort by distance when attempting to identify potential trade partners; however, at current there is no way to discern between local, mail (in country) and mail (international) traders.  Sadly it makes things a bit inefficient, but it's still a good start.

As one last option, you can post a particular trade want in the "Trading Post" portion of the site forums.  Typically you will get more responses if you're part of a group (with reddit being the best).

So again, to recap, once you're part of a group your trade pairings will be listed at the bottom of your profile page, but you can also go find your own by looking up the card(s) you're looking for and then looking at each potential trader's profile, or, as an alternative, you can post your trade wants in the forums.

Happy trading!

Re: How do trading recommendations work?

Morseth wrote:

Thanks TyWooOneTime and Helios52 for the tips and advice.  All very helpful!!

I'm still a tiny bit foggy on the site's matchmaking trade capability.  So, until I join a "Community", I will not see any sort of recommended trading partners via Deckbox, regardless of my wish/trade lists and local setting (local, worldwide, etc)?  I have not joined any "Communities" yet via the "People" menu.  Currently, I don't see any recommended trade partners in any of my submenus in my user profile page, no matter what cards I add to my trade and wish lists.

I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the site would match me up with people who only had local user accounts on Deckbox.org that needed cards that I am willing to trade, or cards that I need from them.  So far, the only way I see to interact with other Deckbox users looking to trade is to inspect their profiles, one by one, via the "People" menu, then select their "Profile" page, and look at the bottom where it says "Trading Opportunities" (using Tradelist or Inventory).  While this works, I know this must not be the proper way to do it because it would take forever inspecting user by user.

Which one of my Profile submenus will I see potential trading opportunities, once I have everything configured correctly and am a member of a community, etc?

Thanks so much again for the assistance!

As far as I know, once you join a group (ie the Reddit traders) it should populate a list on the bottom of your Profile that that will show the number of cards you can offer to someone in your tradelist and what they can offer you from your wishlist. Its been while since Ive joined so I dont really remember if there was something else I did to get that list.

Unfortunately that process you described is pretty accurate in being able to fine a active user with the cards you need. More often than not you can post a thread in either the Trading Post Forum or the Reddit Traders Forum about a cards your looking for and have people come to you if they have the card your asking about. You will still need to look at a person's profile to see what cards they have that might interest you but I think you will agree that having that list right on a person's profile to see the cards you each have to offer one another is either than on some other sites where you have to scroll through an entire list of cards someone posts to see if you can find something. Plus looking through a person's tradelist is half the fun of trading because you never know what you might find that interests you that you werent looking for.

If you are looking for a specific card say, "Fog" for example, if you click on anywhere where you have "Fog" listed (tradelist/inventory/wishlist) it will take you to the database with a detailed page of what "Fog" card does, its printed edition etc, and as you scroll down, you will see what users have "Fog" in their tradelist for trade and where they are located.  This is probably the best way to find the exact card your looking for with someone who has it listed. I should note that some people don't populate their tradelist completely and are ok with trading from their inventory so there are more people who might have it but not have it in the tradelist.

Once your a member of a community, a link will appear on your profile (under My Profile) that will take you to the Community homepage in deckbox that will show its current members and its own forum that will show when a new thread is unread.

In all honestly this will be your best chance to find things your looking for from people because it is the most active and you will get a response the fastest.


EDIT: TyWooOneTime beat me to the reply before I finished mine lol.

Last edited by Helios52 (2013-01-03 20:26:04)

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Re: How do trading recommendations work?

OK, now it makes way more sense.  Thanks so much for the detailed explanation!

Sorry if I seemed a bit dense with my initial questioning.  Everything else on the site was very intuitive except for this one piece.  Now that I know how it all works, I'll be able to leverage it when I'm ready.

Now to enter my remaining 25,000 cards... wink

Re: How do trading recommendations work?

Morseth wrote:

Now to enter my remaining 25,000 cards... wink

lol have fun with that. But it will be worth it once its done.

Alittle more advice since it will only help you, is to sign-up with Paypal (if you dont have an account already) and use Paypal Shipping to send trades of higher value. Alot of traders will ask for DC (Delivery Confirmation) and tracking and/or Insurance. I suggest using Paypal Shipping instead of going to the Post office personally or USPS.com because it will cost you around $5 per label opposed to using Paypal shipping at 1.50.  You can ship around 25 cards in a bubble mailer for far less through Paypal because you can adjust weight for the package instead of paying a flat rate.

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