With the reintroduction of trades on E4, here are some tips to ensure you are trading safely with your fellow forum members! Remember that it is the responsibility of each trade participant to ensure they are dealing with trustworthy people.
Make sure your trade thread complies with the rules.
With the reintroduction of trades, we’ve introduced a few simple, trading-specific rules. First, your trade thread must include specific wants and specific haves. For example, “PSA 10 Unlimited Jungle Flareon” or “PSA 9-10 English ex era holo cards” are examples of specific wants/haves. “High end cards” or “looking to trade up” are not specific.
Second, you cannot list prices on cards you have in your trade thread. We still do not allow sales, and one of the problems we had in the past with trades was people using trade threads as sales threads by putting “trade values” on their cards. Putting prices on cards you are looking to trade for is fine, and you can do a combined buy/trade thread if you like.
Check the reputation of your trading partner.
Take a look at their E4 account, is it brand new or have they been an active participant for a long time? Exercise caution with newly registered accounts.
Are they active on other social media sites under the same name? What is their reputation there?
Ensure your trading partner has the card(s) they’re offering.
Ask for timestamped photos or other proof of ownership before agreeing to a deal.
Protect yourself at all times.
Always use tracked shipping, with signature confirmation if it is a higher value trade.
Cards can occasionally get lost in transit. Consider discussing beforehand with your trading partner what would happen if a card gets lost in shipping, as verified by tracking information.
If you aren’t comfortable shipping directly to each other, use a middleman who you both trust.
Is the deal too good to be true? Then it probably is.
HAVE A QUESTION? MESSAGE THE MODS!
Unsure about a trading partner? Unsure if your wants or haves are specific enough? Let us know and we’ll be happy to help!
Is there ever going to be a list of ‘approved’ or ‘verified’ middlemen? I for one would feel much better about trading on E4 if there were trusted middlemen - not sure what the process would be to verify or certify someone as such, but it would go a long way into getting me to trade through here.
Unfortunately no, that would be the responsibility of the trading partners to agree on a trustworthy person who would also agree to middleman the trade. Speaking personally, most people on here I’m very comfortable trading with without a middleman, and I can probably think of 50 active E4 members off the top of my head I’d trust to middleman a trade. As the rules mention, E4 isn’t responsible for any problems that arise because of trades, we are just here to facilitate. As always, if you want input on someone’s reputation or trustworthiness, you can reach out to the staff and we can help.
In terms of us endorsing people, or having a list of ‘approved’ middlepersons it is not really necessary and actually a difficult thing to manage. This is the same for a reputation style system that I brought up when we discussed this.
If E4 Staff officially throw their support behind an individual(with a list, tick, rep+ or whatever), and then that person has an issue with someone during a trade/middle (regardless of whether they have done something wrong), it puts E4 in the middle of an issue that has nothing to do with us but we are then obliged to step in and mediate.
The ways to protect yourself outline by @fourthstartcg are more than enough for an individual to protect themselves and conduct safe and honest trading.
Having said that there is nothing wrong with asking for help/advice/counsel from not only from E4 staff but other members of E4 as well, for when you are having issues on a deal.
Do trades have to be entirely card for card? Like for example, if I wanted a $2000 card, but could only offer $1400 worth of cards, could I include $600 to even values up, or would that be considered selling?
I enjoy trading and yes it is risk but you weigh stuff up and being on here doing it has to be way safer, still with some risk but can’t think of a safer way.
I mean yea I don’t doubt that it’ safe. I’ve done quite a bit of transactions with people on e4 and all went great in buying/selling, but just not trading. I may look into it eventually though!
I am receiving chat messages from new accounts who attach images of cards taken from ebay. Despite the low possibility that it is indeed the ebay seller, I’d always be cautious who’s messaging you.
