“Trades at XX%” Nonsense

I’d like to be very clear that this title is NOT referring to LGS, vendors at shows, etc etc.

I live in a pretty urban area but it’s tough for me to find the time to go to things like trade nights or card shows, so I resort to things like Facebook marketplace to try and engage with this hobby and facilitate trading.

This used to be very smooth sailing most of the time, but in the current market it’s become a nightmare.

Why do the vast majority of people I talk to suddenly think it makes sense to expect people to trade cards to them 80% or lower for other singles?? Am I missing something here?

I have my entire trade binder posted and update it regularly, and when I’m trying to set up trades with people, it is at 100% both ways, because at the end of the day we’re both just people with binders trying to both walk out happier than before the trade.

The best is when people don’t say anything about percentages until you’ve been going back and forth trying to come to an agreement for 30 minutes. I tell people over and over, if my trade binder is worth 80%, why isn’t yours? I’ll do 80% if you do 80%. Don’t think I’ve ever gotten a good answer.

I understand pokemon has become this vehicle for profit, but the idea that this dream of profiting is reaching all the way down to random individuals who aren’t vendors, resellers, or card shops, is just crazy to me. And a big piece of the issue is that other individuals are willing to go along with it, whether it’s trading away their cards at awful percentages to random people, buying cards well above market bc someone says “trust me bro it’s going to go up I’m predicting”, etc etc.

Thanks for coming to my very disorganized rant. I pray for the day that this hobby settles down again and goes back to being about our cool collections and not the short term profit attached to them. If there’s disagreement on this subject, I’m happy to hear it out.

TL;DR: I feel very strongly that if you’re just a person who collects cards and not a vendor/shop, trading person to person should be a straight shot.

EDIT: In this post, I’m not talking about people looking to sell cards that don’t really want to trade. I’m speaking about For Trade listings, where people still feel entitled to a 20% margin from the jump. When I speak about profit or value, I’m taking about trade value and one person expecting to come out with much higher value in the end.