Has anyone noticed a huge drop off in quality in the pokemon trade reddit recently? First you have mods lowballing people on their sell threads, then you have other idiot mods constantly demanding timestamps for literally every individual card over $50(which again… doesn’t even prove that you own the card.) Not to mention, if you essentially repost your thread in a week, the mods force you to do the timestamp process all over again even though you’re just posting the same exact cards you had last week in which the timestamp “proved” that they were in your possession I’ve just strictly moved to ebay but it sucks because reddit used to actually be pretty chill for making deals on lower/medium value cards
I’d love to trade my 1st edition light and moderate played cards as well as my mint X and y full arts but I’m looking for PSA 9 1st edition holo’s in return… not many people want to do that type of trade. So easiest way is generally to sell cards to buy others vs trading
I don’t think I’d ever have the confidence to trade with a stranger. I’ve done some trades with sellers I’ve developed a relationship with but don’t think I could arrange something with some rando. Where’s the assurance they’ll actually send what they’re meant to?
PKMNTCGTrades fell off hard after the price jumps. Use to be my favorite place to sell as it was easy to offload a collection at fair prices & get some solid deals. Now you mostly get lowballs or no interest at all, it’s starting to feel like Virbank 2.0 especially with the mandatory timestamps. They also made a rule where you can’t negotiate in DMs which is beyond silly.
I’ve done a several Pokemon trades over Reddit without issue. But more importantly, I’ve done somewhere in the vicinity of 1000 separate MTG trades without issue. Scammers generally want money, not random cards. And trading involves negotiation and interaction, all of which can be a hassle. I just don’t think that many people trading with people online are scammers…I think scammers are much more common in instant transactions involving actual money (like on eBay).
Also, on a separate note: I’m not sure what’s that bad about what Arcashine did lol. I mean, I get that it’s a bit weird to make an offer after the seller indicates that the price is firm at $250. But it isn’t that egregious and it’s not a super lowball offer…just politely decline and move on.
Would you say this is still true with high value cards? For example one of my bigger trades was a PSA 10 of on card for a PSA 10 of another. They were roughly equal value, but more importantly they were fairly low populations. It always just struck me as an easy way to trick someone in to sending you a rare $800 card for free.
In my experience, the more you have to interact directly with a person, the less likely the deal will actually go through. I’m probably missing out on deals but I just value my sanity too much to use these types of platforms that require direct communication to work something out.
Timestamps are standard, it was a rule implemented to reduce scamming. It worked. It really isn’t that difficult or tedious to create a timestamp. I was the moderator who created this rule back when I ran the sub, it is 100% necessary for that community.
I left the team about 6 months ago. Since leaving, I have noticed the community there has changed. It feels more like Virbank now. Not as personal between traders and way too many trade post. The goal for a long time was to build the sub, in hindsight I wish I would have let it be more organic instead of creating and allowing anyone in the Discord. Pkmntcgtrades used to be a close knit community of traders. I originally created the discord to be an extension of the sub, now I’m afraid the Discord has taken off in such a way that the subreddit is secondary. Also, eBay is always going to be better for selling slabs, the majority of users there have absolutely no idea what graded cards are actually worth.
If you don’t like the subreddit, don’t use it. I’ve transitioned to eBay and private deals I find through other means.
The largest trade I ever did was a ~$6k trade with another reputable Deckbox user several years back (it’s funny, that $6k is now probably more like $30k with the way prices have gone lol). And we simultaneously sent our sides of the trade. Could either of us had gotten away with stealing the other’s cards? Absolutely. But if you size up your trade partner, it becomes pretty clear if they’re legitimate. Do they have a track record of successful trades? How extensive is their Magic knowledge (i.e., are they actually a collector)? How articulate are they – do they chat using complete, grammatical sentences? If not, are they at least friendly and courteous?
The guy was friendly and an extremely dedicated, knowledgeable collector with an extensive trading history. As was I. A genuine, passionate collector (or player) isn’t going to scam you. Through chatting and negotiating with someone, it becomes clear quickly if the person is legitimate or not.
There’s been times where I literally have spent hours communicating with a redditor over multiple days, thinking that a trade was finally set. Then I send my cards out and the guy goes, “oh did you ship the cards out? I’m sorry but I don’t think I want to do the deal anymore. Sorry!”
Yep. The more back and forth always seems to lead to asking for a discount or they really just seem like they are ready to buy. They are almost there, but just aren’t going to pull the trigger. Similar to people on ebay that ask for a bunch of pictures and questions, then you never hear back.
@madden12ut, personally I found that as soon as a hobby becomes more mainstream and popular, the influx of new collectors, newbies, scammers, etc. would lower the quality of the hobby interaction in all areas, and the biggest thing that keeps any forum/board/facebook group/subreddit from dipping in quality is the moderators and admins that have to keep a constant eye out on posts . There was a period of time where I personally found efour dropped a lot in quality posts (because 50%+ of posts were just about investing in a particular card and the newbie being in denial), but I’m almost certain that the mods and admins are now working harder than before in cleaning up low quality posts and threads to keep the same consistency as before. Personally I find that if the mods and admins are bad to begin with, then the problem with bad apples are significantly compounded when something becomes more popular. Seems to be your case with the subreddit you’re on. I remember I was in a yugioh fb group where the admin/founder shill bids his own ebay listings…man that auction group was terrible! I think there’s also a subreddit where the admin hypes modern so that he can lure members to join his exclusive discord for $20 a month so that they have a place to buy cheaper boxes.
@zorloth, I agree with doing your statement! I just wanted to add though, there’s a really popular exit scam particularly in yugioh where a person would spend maybe 1-2 years acting exactly like the model partner (courteous, very well spoken, done 100+ successful trades, etc.) and then pull an exit scam before leaving the community for good by scamming a bunch of people at once with expensive trades. This is not to discredit your statements at all, just felt like mentioning it to anyone who plans to do trades that this is always a possibility, and even reputable people can turn out to be scammers.
Im fairly active on reddit, Ive also done a small amount of low value deals on reddit through the trade sub over the past several years and agree that it used to be a much more interesting place where people mostly wanted to complete collections and find what they were looking for. Cards were generally valued off light play condition unless it was literally mint and everyone pretty much understood that since you were getting around fees and had the money quickly through paypal, a 5-10% break in the value was acceptable.
Now I see many people selling cards at market price values, trades always lose out since nobody wants to do a straight value for value trade, and everyone thinks its ok that they cleared a shelf at a store and are flipping it on there as if its rare “sealed” product. Personal rant: Ive offered the exact value someone was asking for in trade (they were specifically interested in trades or best offer through paypal) and they told me they would only do it in trade at 20% over their own stated value which was already higher than market because the product “was hard to find” (Why not just say thats the value then?!). It does seem like they do a lot of the annoying rules to prevent scammers (which Im sure are a big issue with the popularity) but it definitely feels less community and more just normal marketplace now except with more risk since there is nothing except a ban that can be done.
I take issue with the mods gaining anything financial from it and not disclosing it. They are currently “partnering” with other subreddits, although I think that just means they share their discord channel and tags, as well as they partnered with an auction app for many graded cards being sold this month and did not disclose what they gain from that partnership. They partnered with the deals sub (which has historically had moderation that had financial interest getting deals first), the misprint sub, the once defunct generic pokemoncards sub, and several new investment subs. Despite partnering with these subs, nothing on the subs clearly shows any specific partnership (it must be more a discord thing) but may be worth noting that co11ector and arcashine have become mods to about a dozen pokemon/tcg related subs, many that were long empty or are brand new.
@nuttun , The “investing” subreddit was started by someone who knew very little about pokemon and definitely just echo chambered the hype in order to monetize a discord channel, a youtube channel, and “charity” raffles. To his credit, he spammed out many posts about what could be a good buy or not, its just sad that he actually had no information to back any of it up nor did he know how to find any of the information until he asked for help.
Trade forums USED to be great in practice. My days trading on the PokéGym are among my most cherished memories in the hobby. Hundreds of successful mutually beneficial deals, never got scammed, made a ton of friends, and built my collection into what it is today. Had a ton of fun along the way.
I don’t think I can ever come around to the idea of online trades unless using a trusted middleman, way too much risk and I hear stories of people getting scammed way too often these days unfortunately.
Even though it’s called the pkmntcgtrades subreddit, you can also just buy/sale cards there… I bump my WTB thread there every 1.5 month or so. Not too successful overall to be completely honest, but the same applies to my Efour WTB thread. Most of my cards I just buy from eBay and CardMarket.
Having said that, I have bought a few Pikachu cards through the subreddit, although usually nothing too exciting overall. Over the past five years I’ve bought less than ten cards through that subreddit.
Anyway, although I did buy two cards in the past three months through it, I didn’t really notice a difference with halve a year prior tbh. They do change the rules every few times, and added that bot compared to a few years back.
Personally I’ve been very successful on the Reddit lately. If someone messages asking for a ton of stuff, I tend to start with general prices that I have in my head. That gives them an idea of what they’re looking at. I will also ask what they’re budget is. If it is gonna be a high end deal, and I give them a rough 600$ price tag, they will often say sorry, and back out early. Also, before even doing price researched I will take video of the cards because that gives a better idea than pics. It has proven very useful for people to judge if they want the cards for real or not.
If they say they’re still interested, then I continue to do the research. If they don’t like my prices, they can do what they will. But for rare cards, often people will accept my prices. I’ve sold stuff over market value fairly often. I will photograph/video the most expensive stuff prior to the trade post and list prices because it’s much easier than having people ask me every four seconds for price and condition. But I tend to average around 150+ comments on my posts these days. Which tends to be well above most other posters from what I’ve seen. As long as I list at the right time, I can average about 3000-4000 in sales per month for binder condition cards. Nothing gradeable.
I think a large part of it is how you market yourself. I think, as far as I’ve seen, I have the largest and most diverse Japanese listing on the sub. At least for regular posters, so I may have set myself in the position to be anticipated by others. It also helps that I’ve got many repeat customers, some even message me asking when I will get my next post up.
It’s gone way down hill. It’s pretty frusting. The mods are inconsistent as well. They seek to pick and choose how they do things for who you are. I’ve bought/sold on there for years. I’ve got 500+ transactions, about 250 documented. For example, I posted up some PSA returns. Forgot the timestamp. They took it down. Understandable, I put a timestamp in the thread, and it took them forever to reapprove it. So now my thread is buried. I was frustrated that they chose to just remove it, unlike the many times in the few weeks prior I’ve seen them leave posts up and remind people to get it on there within the hour.
Go to repost 5 days later. Update everything, including the timestamp. Taken down immediately, this time no reason at all. I message the mods, and they never got back to me. So I guessed what was wrong, redid the timestamp, messaged them again, and then they put it back up. One again its buried though.
Finally, the upvoting is a problem now. It keeps some threads up, some down depending on who you are. I reached out to and all I got was they can’t disable the buttons. They seem to choose which rules they like haha.
I’ve just strictly moved to ebay but it sucks because reddit used to actually be pretty chill for making deals on lower/medium value cards
