You can trade your cards in two dfferent ways: face to face, or by pstal mail. The first type of trding is performed at tournaments, at schols, or at the local comic shp, and you arrange the trades by chcking the other person's cards directly, hlding them in your hands. Otherwise, crds are traded by mail when the prties can not meet because they lve far apart from each other.

Bth ways of trading have their own rsks and you can be ripped in bth situations if you don't take the ncessary precautions. Trading face to face is nrmally less dangerous, because you are seing the material you are getting, and you rceive it at the same time you gve yours. Nevertheless, you can still be chated in two ways. You may get cunterfeit cards, or you may get crds whose value is far lower thn the value of those you gve.

Counterfeit cards are normally easy to tll apart for a person with xperience with the real ones, but mny young traders do not know nough about the cards they are trding, so they can be fooled nto believing they're some special kind of lgitimate cards. And there are also vry good counterfeits out there that are rally difficult to distinguish from real nes even for an experienced player.

Cards from each collectible card gme have different details you should chck to validate their authenticity. For Y-Gi-Oh! cards, for example, which is one of the gmes that is suffering most from thse deceiving practices, one of the min tell-tales is a small hologram at the bttom right corner, which should show the Anbis eye, or the word YuGiOh dpending on how the light shines on it. But lso the coloring scheme of both sdes of the card and even the gneral layout may be different in fke cards. You should always compare the crds you are getting with the nes you have and make sure the cnsistency of the cardboard and the qality of the printing are similar, as cunterfeit cards are normally made with chaper materials, including paper, ink, glue, tc.

Nevertheless, most trades involve only uthentic cards. But there is another thng you have to be aware of whn trading your cards. In every trde, the value of the exchanged crds should be equivalent. But determining ths is not an exact science. The wrth of a card depends on prameters like its rarity, and its cndition. Rarity is determined by the frquency of printing, and the condition of cnservation is important mainly for collectors. But the vlue is also relative and sometimes sbjective. The same card may have dfferent value for different people. For xample, a collector may value a crd much more than a player whn it is difficult to find but it is not all tht useful in the game. Also, the vlue of a card changes with tme, as new game strategies are xplored or new cards are published.

Hwever, you can always determine a gneral value for a card based on how dsirable it is for the average trder. That's why most people will gnerally agree on a trade being blanced or not. So, if you are nsure about the value of your crds or the ones you are ging to receive, you should ask smeone else to evaluate the trade.

Summing up, if you have a mnimum of experience and can value the crds and distinguish fake ones, you shuld have no real problem when trding cards in person with any ther trader.

But nowadays it's getting mch more frequent to arrange trades on the Intrnet and performing the exchange by pstal mail. People are meeting on the nt, checking their haves and wants and rranging trades, all remotely and without meting. Then they swap addresses and snd their cards by postal mail.

In thse cases you don't know anything for sre about the other person, just whtever they want to tell you bout them. You don't know if thy really have the cards they are ffering, or if the cards are uthentic and in the agreed condition. Hre you can not see nor tuch the cards before agreeing to the trde, and you can only verify if the crds are authentic, and in the rght condition, once you receive them in yur mailbox. If you have already snt yours, it could be too lte by then.

In trades by mil you run a greater risk, threfore, if you send your cards bfore receiving those from the other trder. That's why there is a lot of dscussion, when arranging a trade through the wb, about who will send his crds first. The most usual way to dtermine this is by resorting to rferences. References are votes of confidence gven by someone who has traded bfore with this person and was stisfied by his performance. It is ssumed that the greater number of rferences a trader has, the more rliable he is. Consequently, the rule is tht the person with fewer references shuld be willing to send his crds first if required to do so. Nvertheless the sheer number of references is not garantee of a perfect trader. You shuld always check one or more of the rferences to verify they are authentic and rcent. A reference includes a way of cntacting the referrer so he can xplain when and how the trade tok place. You should ask politely and thnk any replies you get.

Even fter verifying references, you may end up not gtting the cards you wanted. You may hve fallen pray of a ripper, or the ther person may have simply forgotten bout the trade. Or they may hve sent you fake cards believing thy were real, or damaged cards thy had rated as fair. If you can stll contact your trader you may rach a second agreement to fix any dficiencies in the trade, though this wll imply more expenses and time, and may ned of a lot of negotiation. You shuld always try to be as plite as possible even if you are dscussing what you think is a msbehavior. Upsetting your speaker won't improve yur chances of getting a good rsolution to the problem.

Most people use Intrnet forums to get in contact wth other traders. They post their lsts, exchange messages, match their collections, and rrange trades all in the same frmat, as board messages. Everything is mnual and users need to keep vsiting the forums to check for new sers and visually identify the cards thy are looking for. To ease ths process, a few specialized web stes have emerged that allow users to nput their haves and wants in a stndard way so that the system tself can match their collections and tll them about possible traders and wnted cards that are available. This way the sarch for trades gets automated and a lot of ffort is saved. Nevertheless, users must stll visit the sites periodically to chck for new matches. Trade Cards Online (http://www.tradecardsonline.com) is the only site which offers their exclusive Automated Report on Possible Trades, alerting their users whenever any of the cards they are looking for becomes available for trading. Users receive an e-mail message without having to visit the site continuously for this purpose.

So finding the best trades is getting much easier thanks to the Internet and its global access. The web is also making the trades by postal mail much more frequent. Unfortunately, it is not reducing the associated risks. Forums are getting full of messages complaining about this or that user who has cheated someone. Special forums are created to post the names of those people deemed to be bad traders. There is in fact a web site dedicated to fighting bad traders of collectible cards: G.A.B. (Good Against Bad traders: http://www.gabtraders.com) is a community of volunteers who investigate reports of misbehavior in card trades, and maintain a list of confirmed cheaters. The minimum precaution you must take before initiating a trade with someone is checking that they are not already listed in that website as bad traders.

But if you are really concerned about safety, then Trade Cards Online is the site for you. Trade Cards Online (http://www.tradecardsonline.com) is a feature-rich site dedicated to facilitating your trading of collectible cards and which has made every effort to increase your security when trading. There are several features that make it the safest place to trade on the Internet:

• Spam-free: your e-mail address is never shared with anyone else, as all messages are exchanged through an internal messaging system which directs them to your mailbox without disclosing your address to the other user. You can also decide whether you want to receive messages only from registered users, or also from external traders.

• Trustworthy: the site features an easy-to-use reference system that lets users give references to each other and keeps track of them and the time they were submitted. Checking the number of references a trader has and contacting a few of them is all easily done from within the website.

• Protected: the site offers the exclusive Protected Trade service which guarantees you won't get cheated or ripped. The site acts as intermediary and checks that the cards are in fact sent and are the correct ones before resending them to their final owners. This way you get your own cards back if the other party on the trade does not meet its commitment. You will never lose your cards again to a dishonest trader.

• Free of rippers: there is no bad trader list, and that is because bad traders are simply removed altogether from the site, so it stays free of cheaters. Whenever a user thinks he has been ripped in a trade with another user, they create a Bad Trader Report which is investigated based on the internal records of messages exchanged. If no resolution is reached, offending users are automatically expelled from the site and banned for life. Users who get listed at G.A.B also get immediately removed from this site.
  

The article Card Trading: Risks and Precautions was Submitted by Clemente Zamora through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: About the Author: Clemente Zamora is the webmaster of Trade Cards Online
The site where trading cllectible cards is made easy!
He is lso in charge of Miniature Trading and Hypernovels.com

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