Trading is when two players exchange cards for cards, rather than using money or another form of currency. It happens all the time at local card shops and at various collector events.
Many card shops exchange cards for store credit, which is similar to trading, but this guide focuses on interpersonal trades between individuals. It should be noted that card shops often give you more store credit than straight cash for any trading card you may sell them.
Most of the time, you'll be trading from a binder full of the cards you're looking to swap. You have complete control over what you put in the trade binder and what you want to keep for your collection; do not let anyone convince you that you need to trade your cards or nonsense like that.
Most trading happens during events at your local card shop. You might meet with players at other locations to play cards—a local playgroup, a nearby café, maybe a pub. Any place where two or more players meet can be a place to trade cards. Or at the dedicated trading zones within the Card Market Events.
Anybody and anyone willing to trade!
If somebody seems extra sketchy or like they are trying to pull a fast one, then you might want to hold off. Otherwise, go for it.
Pricing your cards ensures everybody gets a fair trade since monetary value is almost—and should be—the core factor that makes players decide whether a trade is worthwhile. There are various apps available that value card, also Ebay sold listing are a good way to find the fair market value (FMV).
In general, I wouldn’t include cards worth less than £1 in your trade binder simply because most collectors won’t have a particular use for them. £1 cards are often only used to even out a trade.
If you are new, even if you are not, I recommend manually checking card prices to determine what’s worth adding to your trade binder. It can be hard to tell what’s worth what at a glance without familiarity of various card genres, and even then, a few cards can slip past you.
Just like cards can decrease in price, they can also go up.
If you are a TCG player the simplest way to decide what cards are worth trading is whether or not you will use them. That’s most players entire criteria; trade to offload cards you do not want in favour of cards you will play with.
I would focus on this as a newer collector as you learn about the staples of trading, which can help decide what you value in trades and which cards are worth trading.
Fair trades should be calculated off prices. The fairest trade possible would be an even exchange, like £5 worth of cards for £5 worth of cards, even if that means one player trades a single £5 card for two cards that cost £2.50 each. Trades rarely line up perfectly even, but I’ve never met a collector who gets stuck up over a pence in either direction.
You should also consider how you value the cards. Some collectors do not mind trading down a bit if it means exchanging cards they do not need for ones they do. Sometimes “losing money,” is outweighed by offloading something a collector considers a waste of space.
But always default to price!
Why? Well, checking prices keeps things fair. Some collectors think nothing of scamming new collectors out of cards because pulling one over on people helps compensate for their inferiority complex!
There are lots of ways to organize a trade binder. How you want to go about it can vary on a couple of things.
The most critical is the size of your collection. I maintain a relatively small collection. All my tradeables, plus a few cards that aren’t worth much but look cool, are in one binder.
Some collectors have large enough collections to have multiple binders organized by price—this binder has cards valued between £5-£25, this one £25-£50, that one only exceeds £50, this one is all foils, and so on. You probably don’t need to worry about multiple binders if you are just starting, though this could be useful if you have a large collection and haven’t traded before.
Finding some organizational system does help. Throwing in your cards willy-nilly doesn’t hurt anything, but collectors engaged in a trade will find things easier if you have some sorting method.
Having some organization makes it easier to browse the binder, both for anybody looking through and for yourself if somebody asks for a specific card. Either way, it also makes it easier to tell if something’s missing because somebody had sticky fingers!
Singles and bulk are two different worlds. Everything referred to above counts as trading singles, one or two of my cards for one or two of your cards. A bulk collection is a collection composed of many, many cards worth relatively little, all those commons and uncommons that might see niche play but cost well less than a pound.
People don’t often trade bulk, but that doesn’t mean it’s destined to gather dust in your cupboard.