"Thoughtseize for trade?"

"Yep."

"What are you trading it at?"

"$x.xx."

"I can't trade for it at that."

"But it's worth $x.xx on XYZGenericCardSite.com!"

Fill in the blanks and insert the name of your favorite online card store and you've got the start to almost every trade I've ever done. This is something I hear all the time, and it's one of the worst mistakes a trader can make when trying to swing a deal. The pricing of cards in a trade is one of the deepest topics to cover when writing about bartering cards, but there are some basic guiding principles that everyone needs to know.

Dealer Prices

A lot of people reference a specific store's price when trading, as in the above example. When someone does this, they are using one business's metric as a market-wide price. The inherent issue there is that a dealer's price on a card is not some ephemeral concept of an "invisible hand" acting on the market. It's a very specific combination of demand, industry-wide and dealer-specific supply, that seller's opinion on the card's future value, and localized factors, like casual demand. In other words, it represents one party's specific offer to the market.

When I am selling or just trading on my personal account, I have my own numbers in mind when I am pricing cards. It is not relevant to me that Dealer A is charging $x.xx, other than to use that as a baseline for how the other guy is pricing his cards. There's a fine line between being better-informed here and ripping people off. It's a line I try not to cross. Remember, no one price is ever gospel. Remember when Time Reversal was listed on various stores at $30? No one would have faulted you for trying to trade it at $30, but it'd have been a very good idea. Just remember that a specific dealer's price is sculpted to reflect the needs of that dealer, not the market, and you'll have a much better grasp on trading than most people do.

Cash vs Trade

People often transact money instead of other cards, and if you're not taking advantage of the relative scarcity of available cash, you're losing value. This is where it is important to know buy list prices, ebay prices, and other methods of turning cards into liquidity. Negotiate your price down in trade value, then apply a fixed cash discount. In my store, I offer 20% higher store credit than cash when someone is trading in cards. Thus, I try to get a 20% discount on trade value when i'm buying cards for my own personal account. People value cash, now, in their hands much higher than they do a piece of cardboard.

Personal Value

I will probably get a lot of guff for this, especially from the newer players or the more casual traders, but I really don't care what you think your cards are worth if they don't synch up with my values. There's a reason I'm asking you what you're trading a given card at. It's not because I want to haggle over every card; I'm just looking to understand how you set your values. If I want $12 for Misty Rainforests, I'm allowed to ask for it. I'm not saying that it's worth $12 to anyone but me. Why? Because I've seen them anywhere between 8 and 12, and they fly out of my binders like mad. I can always move them for less without trouble, so if you're one of the many people that want my Misty Rainforest enough, you'll pay a slight premium to get it. I consider that a fair trade-off for taking a potential trade-down, and for carrying the high amount of inventory I try to maintain.

Also remember that you're not under any obligation to agree with my pricing. I'm making an offer to the market, just like everyone else, so you are only required to hear it, not accept it. I have no issue with people who say "I can't trade for that at $x.xx" because they're honest. I'm picking up Ravnica duals right now, because they are as cheap as they'll ever be in my opinion. Dealers haven't lowered the prices much as compared to their historical mediums, but players are much less opposed to trading them away. While dealer prices are still almost double digits, players will trade them around half that. The players who want to keep them will price them higher, and those that do not will trade them at a rate I find acceptable. I'm asking you what you trade something at to find out if we're even in the ballpark of negotiation so I don't waste my time.

Trading for Value vs Trading for Cards

People love to disqualify their cards. "The binder sucks" or "there's nothing good in there". While it's nice to hear that and then open up a binder full of duals, sometimes there is just no way around the fact that they have a binder full of almost bulk rares. This is where being a value trader comes in. I encourage anyone who trades to always be value trading. The difference is, when you're trying to build a deck or a collection, you're trading for cards. When you're value trading, you couldn't care less what you get in return, as long as it fits your model for gaining equity.

A great case-study was my binder at Gen Con. I wanted a break from hauling 40 lbs of cards around all day, so I just scavanged an empty binder and bought a bunch of bulk rares and foils out of dealer boxes. I ended the day with multiple Wastelands, fetch lands, a playset of Watery Graves, some Fauna Shamans, and infinite other good and relevant cards. I was able to do this because I extracted maximum value out of each card in the book. I didn't particularly care which cards came or went beyond the numbers on the page. Was a card trading particularly well? Were the cards I was getting being undervalued? Am I consolidating or diluting value? I only cared about the numbers, not the actual cards for game play reasons.

Trading Up and Down

There's a common myth in trading that trading down is bad. A trade-down is when I give up a Primeval Titan and you give me $50 in smaller cards. The myth is that you always want to consolidate value, but sometimes you really want to diversify your book. When? When you don't already have a lot. All weekend, I was struggling to get a good balance in my binder. When I only had one centerpiece card, like Fauna Shaman or Wasteland, I was not interested in trading it down. The best trades I made were ones in which I either acquired a centerpiece card and some value, or where I had an abundance of big cards and I kind of doubled down while gaining value. There are some traders, many of whom are floor dealer types, who have buy lists memorized, and as such will give you a pretty aggressive price on some semi-bulk stuff that you can get as a throw-in on a normal trade. Multiple times I gave other big traders a slight premium to trade me up. My binder was small, and I wanted to be sure I seeded it with good stuff so it wasn't just a binder of crap.

Whatever your end goal, it is never bad to gain value while trading. Don't listen to the myths about trading up or down, and don't just accept someone else's pricing schema because they say so. Make your own decisions on the values of your cards based on all the factors that a store would. How'd your trading go at Gen Con? Let me know in a comment below.