Selling Cards on Efour?

What about no sales, just raffles? :wink:

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So glad just to see you commenting on my thread! It’s amazing to have this outlet to get the views of all these veteran collectors as well as yourself (as I am a newer collector, about 4-5 months in). I absolutely see the validity of why a sales aspect to this site would not be in the best interest of the site management as well as the users, and I’m glad I got so much feedback to help become more efficient in where/how to find good sales! Also loved your most recent vid on the vintage video games, made me have an itch to look at prices of sealed pokemon gold/blue, Oh the nastalgia!!

Just make it so you have to have at least 13,000 posts to qualify for the Selling Thread. That would narrow down the field :+1::+1::+1::+1::+1::+1:

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The amount of people who are now seriously collecting Pokemon cards seems to be a lot higher nowadays, and the last thing people want is the forum being spammed with people buying very easy to find things.

On the other hand, maybe people could be a approved to sell something by first submitting their post to a dedicated mod/mods. A lot of people who weren’t serious wouldn’t waste the time, or make the requirements.

That is work though, and there would def need to be enough volunteers that can both be trusted and do it well. That isn’t so easy

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I would hope people would not spend the effort to sell $1 English cards. I hope I would see foreign, old, $25+ cards.

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ā€œNice.ā€

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In order for this to work, you’d need a self-moderating community, such as StackOverflow (or any other StackExchange site), you get ā€œreputationā€ for upvotes and when you hit 10k reputation you have the ability to review posts, something similar could be adopted here.

To prevent the flooding of easily obtainable stuff, it could be restricted in that sense also. I think the main worry by the sounds of it is the moderation burden, of which it will be a big one I am sure. If enough people with enough posts could self-moderate it though, that would be perfect.

I personally wouldn’t want to see a WTS section on Efour. I can understand why people would want it, and I can definitely see the benefits, but it would create too much spam and reduce the quality of the forum in general imho. I personally see Efour (perhaps also Bulbapedia) as the best PokĆ©mon source for all kind of information. In addition, you can get great help from all the knowledgeable people in the community. I’m ok with buy/trade threads (if the rules are followed!), but with sell threads there would be too many people posting sale-threads, and the spam and moderation required would be too large.

I’m also fairly active on some of the PokĆ©mon subreddits, like /r/pkmntcgcollections, /r/pokemoncardcollectors, and /r/PokemonTCG.

  • /r/PokemonTCG is by far the largest community (33.0k members). Here you’re not allowed to ask for value of cards; nor post eBay/Amazon/etc. links; nor self-promote. Most of the posts are one of the following categories: questions about the actual TCG; memes (in moderation); nice pulls or collection additions; general questions. I don’t look at the posts very often here, but in general there is a nice variety of posts, and well moderated.
  • On /r/pkmntcgcollections (12.9k members) it’s disallowed to ask the value of cards; buy/sell/trade; posts pack openings; or posts videos without explanation. This subreddit is exactly as the title says: focused on people showcasing their collections or collection-additions. This is my personal favorite of the three subreddit, where I’m active the most on outside of Efour.
  • And then you have /r/pokemoncardcollectors (1.9k members). It was created by someone who was also active on /r/pkmntcgcollections, but wanted to still have posts about the values of cards or WTS-posts. I joined this subreddit when there were only a couple of hundred members, and it was a small but kind community at the time. Nowadays however, I primarily see three type of posts: what is/are this/these cards worth (usually worthless played Base Set cards which are worth a couple of cents…); is this card fake (95% of the time it indeed is, and I tend to add a comment with comparison to the real version and explain what’s fake about it, so those same users will know what to look for themselves - here some recent examples: one; two; three; etc.); sell posts. There are some collection posts here and there, but these days 17 out of 20 posts are one of those three categories (mostly the first two, though)… This is a prime example why the other subreddits mentioned disallowed those kind of posts. I still tend to answer people there, since we all had to start off somewhere, and most of these new/returning collectors simply don’t know any better. But in general the quality of posts is deteriorating by the day.

Efour is a more mature community, and ā€œWTSā€ or ā€œis my card fake?ā€ posts would only decrease the quality of the forum in general. On the last subreddit mentioned, the ā€œwhat is my card worth?ā€ also decreases the quality quite a lot, but luckily people Efour people are a bit more knowledgeable (and smarter in general due to experience/age). They research themselves before posting, and therefore we primarily see posts about obscure cards we almost never see for sale, or sealed products, and stuff like that. I haven’t seen that many posts asking what a Base Set Nidoran is worth here on Efour.

Greetz,
Quuador

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@mattytommo, All that is needed is one or more for modding. And the seller would need to create a feedback thread.

@quuador, Spam? What spam are you thinking you would see?

Mostly new users whom would only join to sell. You see those kind of people on all PokƩmon-related social media where selling is allowed.

And if we would reintroduce it now after years of not allowing it, all long term members like you and me would probably make a WTS-thread as well in roughly the same time period. :wink:

In general however, I personally see forums like Efour as a place to discuss things, share knowledge, and ask questions.
Selling stuff can be done on eBay, CardMarket, Facebook groups, and alike.
Just my 2c, though.

And the buy/trade sections actually doesn’t really belong on a forum like this either, although I personally have no problem with them. Mainly because if you’re looking for hard to find items, there are less way to advertise WTB than WTS posts. Also not sure how successful WTB threads are here on the forum. I have the feeling pretty successful in general from what I’ve seen, but I’ve personally been able to buy less than five cards from members here on the forum through my WTB thread in all the years I’ve been active, so I guess it also depends on what you’re buying regarding the success-rate. (I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that almost no one has the Pikachu cards I’ve already been searching for for years on end without luck. Although, I do know a certain member who owns two German and two Spanish WotC promo Pikachus I’m still looking for, rofl. But I won’t state any names, @omahanime . :stuck_out_tongue: )

Greetz,
Quuador

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I can see both the positives and the negatives.

A place where people can sell their cards without worrying about eBay fees or unscrupulous buyers? It sounds awesome.

As far as policing it in terms of someone saying the package didn’t arrive and the other claiming they shipped it, isn’t that technically also a possibility with the WTB section? And I don’t think there have been any problems there.

Also, I don’t think there would be an overabundance of threads if it were limited to its own section like the buy/trade forum. They are an isolated part of the forum as a whole. If you don’t want to visit it, you don’t have to.

Personally, I LOVE the WTB section of this forum. I have bought from a bunch of members here and have always had a great experience. As a matter of fact, Nick (@oldskoolpokemon ) was the first friend I made in this hobby largely because of the deals we have made with one another on here, and I would not have experienced the type of growth I have in the hobby without his help. There are numerous other people on E4 that I have pleasantly dealt with multiple times, as well.

So for people who are suggesting going the OTHER way and eliminating buy threads altogether, you need to keep that in mind. You can form and build relationships with other people in the hobby from buying and trading.

BUT, on the other side of the coin, as Nick said, you do run the risk of turning this into a business forum, which was not its original intent. We DO have eBay and other avenues for that, after all, and you also are increasing the chances of shady people entering the forum.

Most importantly, this would certainly make things harder on Scott and the mods, as it would just give them more work. So, ultimately, the decision should be theirs, and if they think it would be too much extra work, then that’s it. Case closed.

In a perfect world, something like a selling section could be incredibly beneficial, but people are people, and someone would almost certainly find a way to ruin it.

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@quuador, I don’t think you would see many new users whom would only join to sell. And if that were an issue, just implement a rule where you must be a member of site for 6 months.

WTB is bad enough here.

Theoretically it could be a good thing in a perfect world. This is an imperfect world and a forum full of imperfect people. Let’s leave it be. There are so many other avenues to sell with such a low barrier to entry.

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Imposing conditions is good in theory but breaks down once you try to actually apply them.

Let’s say we were to impose the 6 month condition. That does nothing to stop people from joining, posting nothing, and waiting it out. What is a very established and reputable seller wants to join the forum? Do we stop them from selling for 6 months? Maybe we do a hybrid time plus post count, like 200 posts plus six months. How would you stop people from posting ā€œniceā€ on every thread, or PMing back and forth with a burner account (PMs count as posts for those wondering)? Maybe 200 quality posts. But who judges quality? And how is the sales section organized? Is it restricted so you can’t even post there without the requirements? Are those requirements automatic or do mods have to manually approve people? If they aren’t automatic, mods will have to manually patrol the section as we do WTB threads for prices.

I’m sure there is some way to build a great selling section and minimize the problems. But its an inevitability there will be problems and more work for the mods/site designers.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

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I personally would love to do more trading. I used to do so much trading in a Finnish Pokemon forum back in the day. It was fun and I really enjoyed it, and I kept my collection up to date in a way by doing that as I had lots of cards listed for trade. After I stopped using the Finnish forum (which is half dead these days anyways as far as I know) I’ve kinda lost track of my bulk. It’s kinda shame because trading was fun, but I did it with people who were more of player based rather than collector based so the cards I got weren’t in the greatest condition always.

What I’m trying to say trading would be fun and of course it’s allowed on the buy area, but I feel like most of E4 isn’t interested on trading and especially for the cards that I own lol :slightly_frowning_face: Unfortunately. (LCC problems)

And the trades I’ve actually done with E4 members have been in big amounts of bulk that takes me long time to go trough because I don’t keep track of it anymore… It’s my own fault, I know, but the lack of trading has made me lazy.

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Newbie but I second the idea of a trading section. I’ve opened a few of the newer Japanese sets and I’d love to swap some of my doubles of secret rares with someone to get the last few cards and complete the set. Or even finish the master set by trading reverse holos.

I’d much rather trade than buy a single card on eBay and still have doubles bulk. It’d be cool to have a section to list what cards you have up for trade and what you’re looking for but have something easier to parse than threads mixed into the Buy threads section. And ideally the trades could be segmented into sets so people can easily navigate to a set they’re actively collecting. Would definitely take some work to get set up as I invision it as it’d mean working with a site page that has a different UI/UX than the others. But I’m sure there’s an alternative to accomplish this in the current forum format.

I think E4 would be a great site to have this trading section because it has the best community of collectors and would be the ideal host compared to other forums like Reddit or general mixed card collection sites websites.

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@pokemegphd, Welcome to the site! We have a Trade & Buy section: efour.proboards.com/board/13/buy-trade

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Thanks for the continuing feedback everyone! Glad my thread has been able to continue the conversation about the benefits of the trading area while highlighting the reasons why it will not be altered into a selling section. I have already benefited from the buying section, and now would have to agree with the majority of people here that a selling section at the present time would most likely not be beneficial to the site or the community at large. I love this site though and it is definitely the hub of pokemon knowledge and hobby enjoyment which I believe is the main focus of the site beyond card exchange. Thanks @smpratte !

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Y’all just want to avoid fees. The forum is already flooded with ā€œPSAā€ threads let’s not flood it with ā€œWTSā€ threads…Keep your personal collection organized and updated with pictures, maybe some fish will bite there.

If selling does become allowed it should be one single user thread. For instance whenever any user wants to sell a card he/she can update the title on that thread with something like ā€œFor Sale List: Updatedā€ or ā€œNEW cards for saleā€. Of course capitalism cannot be avoided so fees would be applied which I will demand my (2% for the idea). The moment one user or ā€œsellerā€ swerved out the fee they would get banned. That person will go on Instagram and give Pratte all sorts of names and build a cult of E4 hating chumps etc etc…

Now think about it, isn’t that an ugly world to live in?
Let’s stick to discussions, yeah.

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Ive done a few trades here and there on E4 with great success. I think I was going to try and trade with you at one point but I believe you were outside the U.S. :X