I am sure this has been brought up (as I believe Efour used to allow selling in the buy/trade section), but is there any motion or desire for the community here to have a selling section? I have read that the selling on here was very hard on the moderators and site management to handle everyone and the possible fake sales, so if this has already been said to be out of the question for the future just let me know. But I was curious if it was possible to have like a secondary site for selling or maybe a limit on how often you can create a thread to minimize spam posting? Personally I am just really curious to see what some of the serious collectors have for sale on here haha and it would be efficient to utilize a site like this to cut costs on sales as well, but I am sure some of the veterans here can enlighten me on whether or not the pros outweigh the cons or not. I am definitely not here to be some huge advocate for selling if it is not in the best interest of the community or the site management, just curious! Also if anyone was around when the site used to allow selling maybe you could bring some light to what the problems were that killed it, as I am definitely not a veteran here and did not get to experience that era on the site.
Most E4 members have their items they want to sell listed on ebay, and often have their ebay linked in their signature. you can PM them directly if you want to deal outside of ebay.
The worst/most heavily moderated topics by far on this site are already the buy/trade threads, allowing selling will just attract the wrong type of person and the quality of posts will drop/board will be spammed with sell threads
Thats a good idea about PMing for sales outside of ebay! Yeah I can definitely see the selling causing some issues, just a pipe dream really. I would just love to be able to have an active Market Community outside of ebay that incorporates sales, but just not sure how it would be implemented without all the problems it brings.
imo efour should go the other way and stop the looking to buy threads.
“Sales” threads are just clutter. Most of the time it’s just easiest if we say what we want and put up a reasonable offer.
The main one for me here is I like to buy bundles, so basically people’s swaps. Putting that in a WTB thread is OK, but how do you put a price on something so vague? It’d be easier if someone said, hey I’m selling 1,000 cards from my swaps, from x generations for x price, I’d pretty much buy it.
Yeah, there will never be a sales section here again. It comes up every now and then but sales were a problem here many years ago when we had a fraction of the membership. Any potential mitigating factors such as restricting who can sell, building a secondary site, or really anything you can think of just requires more work and effort from the mods who are not paid in any way, where eBay and instagram and facebook are already the best market platforms we could look to.
I joined in 2014 and sales were banned then. But in general here are the reasons why selling was banned:
- Attracted people to the forum only interested in selling their cards
- Generally decreased the quality of discussions
- Overabundance of sales threads (think what buy threads are like now)
- Created issues in moderation (how do you resolve disputes between members? one says they shipped the card, the other says they never got it, who do you ban and why?)
Why does everyone want to turn E4 into Virbank?
Some many buy threads here too, people are trying to buy for way under eBay pricing or offer up their trash as partial trades for good stuff.
Seems like lately the buy thread is with those new to the forum under 10 posts and 99.9% don’t even follow or read the rules of a buy thread. It must get annoying writing the same thing over and over for moderators/long-time members to tell the one initiating their post, “You need to state a price when creating a buy thread”.
@acebren said it too, which is why they let member’s put their Ebay/Instagram or w/e links in the signature section.
A lot of forums have a minimum post count to even see the “Classifieds” and they don’t announce it’s a feature that way people don’t spam their way up to the count.
Thanks for all the feedback guys! I definitely need to look into facebook/instagram as I have weeded out all my social media to spend my time more efficiently, but may look into opening accounts for pokemon purposes!
I am VERY GLAD that E4 doesn’t allow Sales Posts / Threads! Personally, I spend sooo much time on eBay, Instagram, and Facebook focusing-on the “business-aspect” of Pokémon; it’s nice to have E4 where I can hop-on and forget about the “business-aspect” and just appreciate the hobby for what it is - A HOBBY - something that we’re all passionate about and truly enjoy!
I know it probably won’t ever happen; but I really don’t want E4 to turn into another platform for the “business-aspect” of Pokémon where I’m constantly having to run numbers and consider profit-loss blah, blah, blah… I’d much rather have it remain as-is - it’s a lot more enjoyable just being able to discuss our hobby and view other people’s collections!
I used to lurk prior to joining E4 early in 2014. New threads used to be a mess and I remember reading some of the debates about whether or not sale threads should be allowed. If memory serves me right, a huge margin of regulars voted against the idea which led to the change. The forums have looked better since then. WTB threads are popping up a lot more unfortunately as others have stated.
Since there’s some discussion about this already, would it be possible to make a minimum post count before people start WTB/WTT threads?
I use reddit/r/pkmntcgtrades, and personally it’s been a great experience trading over there. The downside is that most of the members there focus more on modern/playable cards, and less so on higher end / PSA cards.
Everyone did a great job summarizing why there are not sales on E4.
I have kicked around this idea so many times, and the ultimate conclusion is: it’s work. The only way a marketplace would be integrated to E4 would be something like PokemonPrice. A tab on the menu at most. That is something I am not actively perusing or even considering.
The goal of E4 is there really wasn’t one. It is a place where people can hopefully relax, enjoy, and talk about the hobby. An escape from the sales/raffle/waffle spam that exists on all other platforms.
I would like a for sale section. If you set up with the right rules and the right mods, it would have the minimum of problems. Just for the record, I modded PokéBeach Buy/Sell/Trade for years.(So I hope I have a clue I know what I’m talking about)
But a lot of those cards can be obtained off eBay easily. E4 could provide an outlet for foreign, rare and moderately priced cards.
@omahanime, In theory I agree. In reality where I already don’t have time to do all the things that make me money, I can’t add another project. Its simply more work, and I would have to pay/prioritize it somehow to compensate anyone managing the section, as it would be constant.
The buy section is a preview. That section takes up 90% of the mods time. Sales would be 10 times as much activity. And the constant free ad space would degrade the overall forum.
@smpratte , if set up correctly, it would be easy for a volunteer to police. I was having to check about 30 posts a day and having to decided on 1 complaint a month, all of that did not require much time daily.
I just have a fantasy where a collector who is just trying to build their own set would have a good outlet to sell doubles without having to deal with eBay.