Antiquity is up for trade again @Whistle_Pig
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Sadly, I don’t have anything that I want to trade away at the moment!
Since this is the third GMT I participate in, I recognize a lot of the games on the geeklist (and their respective sellers) from previous trades. Maybe it’s not even about trading all of those games away. I guess when it comes to these math trades a big ‘for trade’ list resembles a significant amount of buying power. If you want game X, adding it to the want list of 50 of your games will drastically improve the chances of you getting the game.
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I’m curious how the algorithm works in that regard. If someone puts LOADS of stuff on there to increase the chances of getting what they want or in some way increase their influence in the trade, then doesn’t that mean the algorithm will be biased towards these ‘mammoth collection churners’ getting the prime pick of the bunch, while all newcomers adding a few games here or there see the same rotating stock that were uploaded the last umpteen trades because no one really wants them?
I understand the algorithm must be somewhat random in its assignments, but these biases would likely sneak in unless they were actively guarded against.
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As I understand it the goal-seeking aims to maximise the number of trades that take place.
Of course if nobody wants all your stuff, or the people who do want your stuff don’t have anything else that people want, etc., then it doesn’t necessarily help much.
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It can be maximised in two ways
- The number of trades
- The number of people trading
Why anyone would pick the second, I don’t know. I guess it’s an option to guard against people putting mammoth lists in and trading lots.
My experience is these lists are usually lots of fodder and rarely trade. In the UK it’s usually whatever game that has been in The Works (discount bookshop) recently. These games are usually rated in the low 6s on BGG, so don’t attract much attention.
Chances are, the people with massive collections on offer, over time will see the overall quality of said collection decrease as the best they have on offer will be taken and they’ll be left with piles and piles of mediocrity to use as trade-fodder.
That’s the beauty of a math trade: it looks like wholesale exchanges of games, but in actuality, for the bulk of participants, titles are not fungible and a “$25 game” (say, one highly regarded) isn’t necessarily a fair trade for a “$25 game” (say, a poorly developed, unpopular game); it’s not wholesale… it’s just high volume, (personally significant) equitable trades.
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From what I can tell, having more games listed doesn’t increase your chances of getting a trade. My experience has been getting 10-50% of my trades at any number of total offers.
In math trades I’ve participated in, between 20-40% of games listed get traded. Typically, more games are traded when more people are willing to trade down some. Most of the time, someone with a highly valued game will only trade for something else equally highly valued. If you don’t have anything listed in that range — or there’s no viable loop that will include both your game and the one you want that is better than a different loop — you’re SOL.
You can always check the results at the end to see how many people picked your games for trades and what they offered up. In my experience, most of the time, the large majority of “offers” are in the direction of overvaluing their own games and undervaluing mine. Usually, only a small number will actually offer something comparable. I’ve listed some games that got zero offers; that tells me a lot about what everyone thinks of the value of that game, period.
You can also look up the games you wanted and find out what those traders wanted in exchange. Sometimes, they will only have checked one or two other games, drastically reducing any chance of that game being traded at all.
That said, I’ve also seen the strategy of checking upward valued trades work to some people’s advantage when there are a lot of relative newbies to the math trades who haven’t yet figured out the proper way to check the boxes. Yes, it’s definitely a UI and UX problem with the site. I’ve seen some very unbalanced trades in favour of some lucky traders who check everything, no matter the value disparity. OTOH, sometimes those people also check a lot of games downward, too, so if they end up with a lot of trades in both directions, it sort of washes out.
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Yes; if that happens twice I generally don’t bother to list the item again.
As someone who only participates in one out of every three or four (or six) trades, I’d hate to think people were just not bothering on a title that I would have interest in.
I think, perhaps then, the user experience should be better adapted to allow for “this game is a goner… offer it on trades for ¤x until it’s gone”
For me there’s a breakpoint somewhere between “I want back something like half retail value” and “I just want the thing gone”.
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If all stays as it is, for my first ever math trade I will get to trade 1 of 3 games which I already count as a success. I do think I overvalued 2 of my games. Interestingly, the one traded is the one I most wanted to get rid of so I guess the other two I wasn’t quite ready to let go. But now I understand why some people put up so many games.
And for me I am trading away Elder Sign for Five Tribes so that’s lucky 
My other items were on a few wish lists but didn’t make it. Probably my own fault for looking too high to trade. But this was my first trade
A lot of the most interesting items on the list (like the top 5 of those most wanted) had empty wishlists. So my guess is people were maybe gauging how much demand there is for those games without committing.
How does the next step go? Do I exchange addresses with people on BGG manually?
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I’m glad your first trade worked out for you!
For now you will have to wait until 8pm tonight when the trade will be finalized. Until then participants have the opportunity to object if they feel something in the trade went wrong. Worst case the whole MT gets rerun which means some trades might be lost, new ones will happen and others will remain the same. In my experience this mostly happens Sunday evening, so by now I’m pretty hopeful that there won’t be any reruns.
After that you are free to make the trades happen. The GMT (same as most MT afaik) uses the BGG trade system. Either one of the trading partners can suggest a trade as determined by the MT. So if you want you can suggest a trade both to the person that gets your Elder Sign as well as to the person you get Five Tribes from. Importantly, in most cases one of the trade sides will be empty given the nature of the math trade.
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Oh man, I just noticed that it wasn’t Five Tribes I trade for but just the promos 
Well, I guess I messed that up. I was sure I had seen Five Tribes with the promos on the list so when going through it and it appeared in my “want” list… meh. the thing is the same trader has the full game in his list but apparently I misclicked…
It was too good a trade anyway… at least I really don’t want Elder Sign anymore.
edit: I see a lot of promos on the list of games that wanted mine.
The ‘trading up’ thing discussed above in action
Yeah and I didn’t pull a backup of my lists because I was sure I was aware that there were promos only and I didn’t want to put those…
I don’t even want the promo. I am obviously sending out my Elder Sign because anything else would be bad form but what do I do about the other end of the trade? Do I tell the guy I made a mistake and keep the card?
I don’t know what the etiquette is in the German trade. In the UK one, the usual thing is to tell the organiser and they’ll decide whether to re-run the trade; I think having done this may bar you from the next trade, but they happen every two months anyway.
It’s kind of a little too late for that. I should have complained Sunday night. I only noticed today when I clicked to make the offer and noticed that it said “Five Tribes: Filwit” that I realized I fell for one of those promo things.
Ah well, beginner’s learning mistakes.
As I said, I am not mad to let Elder Sign go, I just don’t know what to do with the other end. I’ve given away games for free and it’s not a huge hassle to mail it and it shouldn’t cost me more than a few euros to mail it.
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Presumably the sender is happy to get rid of their promo. You can always put it in a future MT…
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I think people put those games on to tempt other high value/high interest games to be listed. Before the math trade results, you’d have no idea how many people actually check your game or what they’ll offer (though you can gauge interest by looking at the stats for “want in trade”). I’ve seen many people locally put up high value games simply to lure more of same in the hopes of being able to trade like for like.
Empty wishlists usually means nothing else was offered that was worth trading for for those people.
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