Comments on: Insider: The Devil’s in the Details, Part 1 of Who Knows

By: pipdickenz

pipdickenz — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:44:05 +0000

In reply to Jonathan Bennett. can you give me some examples of those apps you mentioned ?

By: Giancarlo Franzini

Giancarlo Franzini — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:35:56 +0000

I find the use of smartphones to be terriblely annoying. The biggest thing for me is how long it takes to look up cards, especially in a deal with 10+ cards. Maybe someone here at QS should develop a WIFI dampener we can fit in our trade binders 😛

By: Daniel Yang

Daniel Yang — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 17:07:24 +0000

At my LGS we all do smartphone trades. Some of the people there are good enough that they have the prices memorized, but the rest of us use smartphones or the store, which uses TCG mid. It helps establish a baseline so that no one get completely ripped off which results in a happy environment. The big thing though, is that we don’t care if the trades are a dollar or two or sometimes five dollars off. It doesn’t matter since we’re going to be trading again someday. Or if not, oh well, since we’ve all made money on trades before.

ie I can’t find something in their binder I want for my Sublime… I’ll just give it to them and tell them that if they open up a Ajani, I need one. Other guy’s happy. He doens’t need the Ajani anytime soon and he gets an Sublime in the process. We’re both happy since the Sublime was just sitting in my binder and now I’m guaranteed a card that I can use. He gets a card he needs, right at that moment, and a few bucks difference in the process. Next time, he’ll remember and do something like give me the two Frost Titans I’m looking for trolling with for free.

By: Jonathan Bennett

Jonathan Bennett — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:20:30 +0000

Personally I don’t understand the hate on smart phoning. I remember the days of being the fresh, young magic player, and being sharked out of a birds of paradise and a set of howling mines because someone strongly pushed a handful of common/uncommon beasts from odyssey/onslaught on me.

Anything that keeps people from taking sick advantage of another is just fine in my book. There are also plenty of apps that speed up the process and allow you to create 2 different lists to compare in a trade. If I can show someone that my playset of is actually worth around $ on multiple sites, they’re more inclined to believe me and go along with the trade as long as I use the same pricing structure for their cards.

Then again, I do everything in my power not to have the label of someone who goes by the motto “My cards are amazing, everyone elses are crap. Therefore everyone should be taking huge losses in trades”. Because I’ve seen way too many people do that and it’s one of the things that leaves a sour taste in the new blood at shops.

By: pi

pi — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:13:43 +0000

In my regular group little smartphoning is done. They only tend to be used when I indicate I’m not sure of a price or the price I name amazes them (in which case I’ve turned out to be right often enough that they are starting to believe any price I name). I don’t have internet on my phone myself (I don’t see the benefit) and I also make sure to actively ask them their thoughts on prices (even when they’re not involved in the trade) to build the believe that you should get prices from memory. Usually if anything is checked it’s the high end stuff, on which I tend to have made a good estimate anyway, the profit is generally in the low end stuff they frequently ignore.

I’ve also found that the more old school traders tend to be comfortable trading without looking up prices (as a matter of pride even) while many newer traders want to check everything out of fear/inexperience.