Or maybe even email me about it? It's something I've really wanted to do for a long time, as theres no dedicated card shop where I live anymore.

<cite>“Don’t worry about always gaining value, this could possibly be the thing holding most starting traders back.”</cite>

<cite>If you’re not gaining value, you’re losing value.</cite>

I think of trading as a long-distance sport. Think running marathons, not sprinting. I don't think you can just jump into it and reach the highest levels. You need to practice. Do drills of specific skills. Hone your skills. Build up endurance.

Endurance in running could be:

* Taking the time to get started
* Pacing yourself and slowly building skills
* Setting goals and working to slowly achieve them
* Practice. Practicing with repetition. Doing drills.
* Researching and building domain expertise

So, what does endurance mean in trading?

* Setting goals for the collection
* Trading for breadth of collection in addition to value
* Researching and discussing negotiation, pricing, trading, marketing, and sales theory
* Developing relationships with other players
* Developing relationships with shops

In most of these cases, you're developing the skill of trading. You're practicing. You're getting better at parts of trading, but you might not be getting more value out of the trades.

James points out that you might want to trade in order to build a relationship with a player. Think of everyone you see in your card shop during an FNM. Have you approached every single one of them and done a trade with them?

No?

"Their collection sucks – they don't have anything of value!"

But that's exactly why you'd want to trade with them. Hook them up. Lose $3 on the trade, but build a relationship with them. As James points out, when they do get something valuable, you'll have an in and you'll have gotten incrementally better at opening a relationship, negotiating, and trading than you were before.

I've seen a lot of card pools go bust and I'm glad that you two are still friends through it. Being able to sit back and see what went wrong and honestly learn from it is hands down the best value you can ever extract from sharing a collection.

<cite>I’m just not sure I want to be in business with them</cite>

That's the heart of it, TempleGuard. If you aren't sure you want to be in business with them, you shouldn't be in business with them.

It's risky to open a business with friends. It's foolish to start a business with people you aren't sure you want to own a business with.

I think that there are a lot of questions surrounding the decision to open a card store or start any business that are beyond the scope of this site. In summary,

* What experience do you and your friends have with small businesses?
* Have you made a business plan yet?
* How many other card stores are in the area? What benefit are you offering that they aren't? (And don't say "Cheaper Prices". That's a bad road to go down.

Don't get me wrong – it's a great (and frequent) question and one that deserves asking. My background in this is co-founding a card store with two friends, managing three other card stores, and starting an online business centered around Magic. I had no idea what I was getting myself into each time. I learned a lot, but it's not an easy decision to make, especially if you're thinking of getting into it with people that you aren't exactly sure you want to be in it with.

The big thing to take away from that statement is to know that it is ok to lose a little value in a trade. Yes the big picture is to always grow the collection but if people see that you are hard to deal with and are only looking at people as a way to level up your binder then doors tend to close on you. The choice to lose value on a trade could be for several reasons, whether it is an in between step to a larger trade or just being a nice guy and letting a kid get some cards that he's been trying to obtain for awhile. The next time that kid cracks a titan or similar card he's more then likely going to go back to that person who helped in out in the first place. I got a Bayou in a trade not to long ago for this very reason.

I don't really understand this statement. It would seem the entire point of the article is about increasing the value of your collection through trades. If you're not gaining value, you're losing value. Unless you're speculating on a specific card's value going up, or you're trading down because it leads to a bigger trade (in which case it doesn't really count cause it's just an intermediate step).

If you want to grow your collection of Standard staples shouldn't you always be trading for value?

Also congrats on the Article… it is a fine read sir and i commend you

As a beginning trader (I actually just created a trade binder last night, and I plan on doing some trades at FNM tonight), this is a great and timely article! I really appreciate it. I do alot of buying and selling on ebay through various accounts, and I've done several bulk sales, bought collections, and so on, but I've never really tried trading before. I'm extremely nervous about it, so once again, thanks for the article!

Perhaps, and this goes for anyone, it just came to mind reading your article, someone could write a piece about the pluses and minuses of actually going into business with one (or several) of your friends. I've been wrestling with the idea of saving up to open a shop with a couple of my buddies, but I'm just not sure I want to be in business with them, and seeing the point of view of someone who's done card pools, or opened a shop with a buddy, or even just owns a shop without a buddy, would be great. I'm sure I'm not the only one interested.

Anyway, this was my first comment here. Love the site, I've enjoyed reading the articles here, and plan on continuing to do so in the future. Great work, everyone!

In the end the card pool became just his cards and I no longer contribute anything to that pool. I sold certain cards that I knew were mine and left him with the bulk of the pool. It wasn't really about who came away with more in the end as I see myself as coming out on top because I now have my own collection and don't have to cripple my decks with mediocre cards because someone else in the pool is using the more powerful options. As far as if I still talk to him, yes I do. He is actually a pretty good friend of mine and it's just better that we keep our collections separate.

I've actually been asked by our local players about how card pools should work and what to try and avoid because there's been 3 or so big card pools that have crashed and burned in our shop. If you would like I could see about writing an article on how to start a card pool, things to avoid, and what the financial benefits are of that.