Trade cards for cards, with no fee

Trading

Cards for cards, from any sets, edition for edition within a set. There is no fee: the only cost of a trade is the packing the two of you agree on.

Finding a trade

The easiest way: open a set in My Collection, press Leaderboard, and pick a collector who holds some of the set but not all of it. Their name opens their collection of that set, read against your own, and the page lands on Compare.

Two other doors do the same thing from one card: Trade it, on a card you hold, lists who is missing it; Find, under a card you are missing, lists who holds a spare. Those lists show copies held, trading grade and last seen, most recent first. Collectors who have switched trading off, are private, or whose grade has fallen to D or F do not appear anywhere.

The comparison

Another collector's set page is a comparison of the two collections. Under every card, three tiles: You and how many you hold, the swap sign, Them and how many they hold. A count of 0 is grey, 1 is yellow (nobody likes to give up or ask for a sole copy), 2 or more is green. The half of the card on the side with none is greyed out. Where you can fill a gap of theirs, you see your own art in it, not their ghost.

Compare shows only the green deals: their spares you lack and your spares they lack, plus anything already in motion between you. The other filters still show everything.

To trade a card, click it. Yours opens your copies of that card, theirs opens theirs, and every copy has its own + Trade. That is where you choose which copy, since every copy is different. The copy goes on your trade table and you come back to the comparison, where that card now reads On the table.

The trade table

The table is where the deal is set before anything is sent. Your cards on the left, theirs on the right, up to five a side, each with Take back. It keeps until you propose it or clear it; starting a table with a different collector asks you first. The trading sign in the top bar shows a red dot whenever something needs a look: a card on your table, an offer waiting for you, or a trade answered since you last opened Trades.

Two dials set the terms. How the cards travel: as they are, sleeved, or in top loaders; that is the least every card in the trade must wear when it ships, and a card already wearing as much travels as it is. Who pays for any packing a card still needs: you, them, or each of you for the card you send. Sleeves and loaders come from the payer's supplies, or from their Credits at Market price if they hold none.

Under the table, what this trade costs you, in one line, and the trade balance: a bar from You give more to You get more with a Fair band in the middle. The balance is a simple reading by rarity; an ungraded card counts as its rarity alone, and a graded card at its book value. Nothing on the table shows the condition of an ungraded copy, yours or theirs.

The offer

• Propose sends the table as an offer. Cards from different sets can share a table; within a set they must be the same edition: Beta for Beta, First Edition for First Edition, open for open. That rule never bends.
• The other side sees the same cards, cost and balance from their side, and can accept, decline or counter. A counter puts your offer on their table, swapped round, to change and propose back; it replaces yours. You can withdraw an offer you made while it is open.
• An offer stands 48 hours from the moment the receiver first opens it. An offer nobody has opened does not age.
• A card in an open offer is spoken for: it cannot go into another offer, be donated, sent for grading, merged or listed for sale until the offer is answered or withdrawn. Its card page says which trade it is in. A card listed on the Market is spoken for the same way: no trade, no donation and no sale to the store until you unlist it. Its card page shows the listing and the Unlist button, and the Market marks your own listings Yours.
• A trade is final once accepted. Nobody has to trade back.

The trip

When a trade is accepted, each card rolls once for the journey at whatever it is wearing, the same roll a donation takes. Bare is the risk you know; a sleeve halves the damage; a top loader makes a hit rare and halves it too; a graded card never rolls. The packing stays on the card afterwards.

Fair play

One account per person. Making a second account to farm packs or feed cards to your main one is against the rules, and it is easy to see: every copy carries its serial and every trade is on record, so a pattern of commons going one way and rares coming back stands out. A frozen account first, a ban for repeat or blatant cases.

Trading grade

Your trading grade sits beside your level on your profile. It is a rating of you as a trading partner, the way a credit agency rates a borrower: AAA is the best, F the worst, and everyone starts at AAA. We assume the best in people; the grade only records what you do with that. It says one thing to another collector: if I send this person an offer, will they deal with it?

The scale

AAA · AA · A reliable, green. B · C slipping, amber. D · F unreliable, red. Seven steps in all.

The rules, all three

• Look at an offer and do nothing: down a step. An offer waits 48 hours; if you opened it and let it run out with no accept, counter or decline, that is ignoring it. Offers you never saw, because you were away, do not count.
• Complete a trade: up a step, back toward AAA, whether you accepted it or you offered it and the other side accepted. One for one: six ignored offers take you from AAA to F, six trades bring you back. Declining or countering changes nothing; a quick no is fine.
• At D or F you do not appear on trade screens. Nobody is matched to you and nobody sends you offers until you have traded your way back to C. The way out is to make the offers yourself: your grade is not shown to the person you offer to, and every offer of yours that is accepted is a step back up.

Where it shows

Beside your level on your profile, and beside your name wherever a trade is offered, so the other side knows what to expect. A low grade cannot stop you opening packs, grading cards or collecting; it only affects trading.

Trading is open, and every collector started at AAA.