Have you ever seen a binder or a collection that just makes you stare in awe? “How in the world does he have such good stuff!?” Sure, they might have spent a lot of money to build up their collection, however behind the collection lies many hidden stories. When you see a person with a jaw-dropping collection, this usually means one of two things, they bought every single card in their collection, or they are an expert trader. While there is nothing note-worthy of just flinging money away on cards, there is a lot to be said about being an expert trader.

The concept of trading cards might appear to be a simple idea to most people. However, there is much more to trading than just meets the eye. To me, trading is a skill and an art in itself. Yes, everyone can trade, but not everyone can be good at it. Well, now you might be asking me, “how can you tell whether or not you are good at it?” This can be subjective, as everyone’s standards will be different. But for me, the success of a trader is not just measured in the number of trades he or she makes. Anyone can make lots of trade, but how are they actually fairing in each deal? I can make a hundred deals a day if it meant giving up more than what is really necessary. Yes, adding more cards to the deal can convince your trading partner to trade with you, but losing out on deals in order to make a trade is not a practice that creates a successful trader. From my perception, trading success is measured by both trade volume and trade profit margin.

Profit in trading-terms does not refer strictly to monetary value. The way profit is defined when trading is by card value, play value, scarcity and condition. A card’s monetary value is easiest to determine out of the aforementioned. Every card is only worth as much as the price people are willing to pay to it, and the most convenient way to determine this value is with an E-Bay search on completed items. Take an average or so of the last ten or fifteen listings and that will be the monetary value you should assign to the card. Now, depending on whether you are a player or a collector, a card will be valued differently. Some of the rarest cards out there are unplayable, so while they are priceless to collectors, they turn out to be worthless for players. On the other hand, players will value playable cards higher than its monetary value sometimes. The point of profit is to ensure that you come out on top every trade. It does not matter how small that margin is, when you total up your trades, the small margin ultimately adds up in due time.

Scarcity is one of those intangible factors that should really be considered when doing a trade. There will be times when you are given an offer that is in your favour at initial glance. The monetary value might be in your favour, but what about the card’s rarity, how scarce is it in the second market? You could be offered ten smaller cards in return for one that is harder to come by. In that scenario, you must make a decision, if you trade away your rare card, and you wanted to own it again, will the hassle be worth it? In other words, will your future efforts in attaining it be worth the monetary value you are making today?

One factor I have yet to mention is card demand. Some cards have a higher demand than others, but are worth significantly less. This also needs to be taken into consideration when you conduct a trade. How much difficulty will you have in trading off the cards you are getting? For active traders and non-collectors, it is not really a good idea to stock up on cards of higher-value, but low demand. Sure it might be worth something, but the issue at hand is that there are not many people out there who are actually willing to trade you for it at full value. Trading cards that are worth a slightly bit more for ones that are in high demand is a trade-off that is actually beneficial. In the long-run, you will make more profit by continuously trading for liquid cards.