One of the reasons I started this site was to try to get more involved with what I’ve seen people doing online. There’s plenty of folks out there collecting and helping each other in collecting by trading or sharing cards. Wait a minute…, what is sharing cards? In a trade, you make a deal and you expect to get something back. But when you are sharing your cards, you don’t have to expect something back. To me that can be even better than trading.
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Sharing Your Card Collection
When you build your collection to a certain point your bound to have doubles. Sharing your doubles is a great way to lessen your load and make someone else’s day. There are plenty of folks online who’ve become friends and will share cards with each other. Many times this is through making lists of “Wants and Needs.” It’s easy to know what someone needs or wants when they blog, so I would encourage you to do the same. Engage people with a blog and maybe they will engage you back.
Perhaps the best example of sharing I’ve had over the last few years is to help some friends of mine with kids. Their kids were getting into baseball and collecting cards so I took a look through all my doubles and focused on the items that I had triples or quadruples of. None of it was that special, maybe a few were, but they were what I focused my collection on. In the end I made the day of three kids. We still talk about our cards together to this day. We even done some autograph hunting along the way.
Trading Cards
A more formal way to share your cards is through trading. As long as you trust the person you are trading with, especially if online, you won’t have any problems. I don’t suggest trading online unless you know the person. The experience of trading is best done in person though. There’s nothing like digging through another collection to see what looks good to you. I happen to be in a good position for this. Having not grown up where I currently live, I’m not a fan of the local team. That means I don’t mind getting rid of their cards, and usually the person I am trading with doesn’t mind getting rid of the cards I want.
I think as long as both parties are willing, trading can be very fun. Remember you goals as a collector and you’ll get what you need out of a deal.
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