How I Learned How to Trade Properly

 One of the things I've learned about myself is that if something scares me, or if it's something new that I don't really know how to do yet, then I'll put off doing it for as long as I can. It's just one aspect of my anxiety, where if I can't see the solution or if I fear doing something wrong the first time, the easiest way to circumvent that is to not do anything. And of course that's never the most effective solution, but in anxious states I can justify it.

I've had the blog for 15, nearly 16, years. I've stayed in my comfort zone a lot, kept making contact, writing about cards. I always knew I could be engaging more with the community, as people did trades all the time, but that scared me. The blind nature of it always worried me, like I had no idea if I'd be sending too much, or not enough, or if there'd be too much the person didn't need. And I did a couple here and there but I always worried I'd do something wrong or I'd get something wrong in shipping. So I didn't really trade much, despite constantly knowing that I needed to go outside my comfort zone. 

I had a similar approach to TDCB for a while as well. I knew it was good for logging cards, and I knew lots of people made trades through there, but it intimidated me. There was just so much, and my collection being as large as it is, I knew I'd need to spend a lot of time curating things there. And so I'd log a ton of stuff, stay away, log some more, stay away. Like I didn't want to engage too much, because I'd get the fledgling trade request and I didn't know what to do. 

About a month ago I finally decided to hear someone out about a trade. Compared to how it was in the old days, it was easy- my collection's there for these people to look at, they can see what I don't have, it can be fair right from the jump. And so it was somewhat comforting. I knew I wasn't gonna get anything I didn't need, I knew I wasn't gonna be doing anything a trade partner wouldn't want. My inexperience still worried me, and my first trade or so I did wait for the package to arrive so I could see how the sender packaged it, and I could replicate it. And when I explained that to my trade partner, he was understanding. Better than somebody half-assing it and not thinking at all. 

I've now sent a couple of dozens of these trades out. I've been spending the last week logging trade bait specifically to keep attracting trades. I'm no longer intimidated by it. And I'm actually getting some cards I can do something with, in exchange for ones I really have no use for. I say this like it's mind-blowing and not commonplace, but it is for me. 

Here are some of my recent findings after a couple months trading on TCDB:

-Set-Building Is Much More Attainable. About 10 years ago I began a quest to complete all the 90s Stadium Club sets. I later revised that to 91-96, as those were easier to come by. 92 and 91 were relatively easy, but building the mid-90s ones took a bit more work. I'd find commons on CardBarrel and such, but a ton remained nebulous. I think within a couple trades on TCDB I finished the 1995 set, and a few days ago I finished the 1994 set. The 1993 set is also within reach now, and I'm getting the last couple 1988 Donruss cards I need to knock out THAT set. It's remarkably simple when you actually get over that hump.

-I guess I am kind of a player collector. I always had people I collected and kept binder pages of, but I didn't really see myself as a specific player collector. But then on TCDB you can track your collection of a player against everyone else on the site, and...apparently I have the 26th-most Curtis Grandson cards of anybody there? And my 71 Juan Pierre card make me the 18th biggest Pierre collector there. I'm just 10 removed from Night Owl. That's wild. But it also can tell me that I have more Randy Johnson cards than Derek Jeter cards. I may be a dedicated Jeter collector, but Johnson's cards are way cheaper. 

-White whales are easy to come by. A week or so ago, just to test things out, I made a deal for a 2000 Stadium Club Harold Baines card, one of only 2 where Baines is pictured as a member of the Cleveland Indians. A day or so ago it arrived. I've also landed contemporary cards of Harmon Killebrew as a Royal, Eddie Matthews as an Astro and Dave Parker as a Blue Jay. I can just do this now.

-There's a whole market for early 2010s Topps base parallels. I spent the better part of the week finding a whole bunch of 2010s Topps colored parallels, throwback parallels, rainbow parallels and the like. Not only do people have a lot of interest in these, but there's not a lot of images of them up on the site. That's another thing, thanks to my scanner I've been filling in all sorts of blanks in the image inventory, and that includes a TON of 2010 Topps vintage stock cards, which there doesn't seem to be any of on there. People also have a lot of interest in 90s Collector's Choice silver sigs and 2000s Topps Total border parallels. I'm glad some people have a use for 'em, cause I don't.

I might start posting trade results on here eventually, I just need to remember to and not race to thread the new cards into sets I'm building. All in all I'm glad I finally bit the bullet and did it, because this is the most invested I've been in collecting in a while.