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Common sense trading

Discussion in 'SteamRep Guides' started by Jmcmλtrix, Mar 17, 2012.

  1. Jmcmλtrix

    Jmcmλtrix New User

    Messages:
    186
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:5412928
    THREAD UPDATED: 27/04/2012 - Jmcmatrix
    More infomation will be added at a later date.​
    Let's trade!
    The easiest way to explain this is with an example so I'll do that. If I bought Mirrors edge when it was on sale, and sat on it for one to two weeks it would be worth $7.50 - $8.50 (normally $20). Now, that's the best case scenario. The reality though isn't going to be like that, because a ton of people bought it. Thus, supply and demand is going to be quite low and you'll have a hard time trading it for a $5 game. Why might that be? Simple.

    Competition. You're forced to sell the game for next to no profit because if you don't, someone will. How do you get around this? Easy. Let it sit for a month or two, and in that time the value of the game will rise depending on if it goes on sale again, and depending on how many other people waited. While the price will rise, it will never be the exact amount it is in the store.

    "BUT WHY CAN'T I SELL IT FOR $20?!"
    Are you stupid? Why the hell would anyone buy a $20 game just so they can trade for a $20 game. There has to be some sort of incentive to actually trade with you, and if you ask for the price of the game you're NOT going to sell it at all. The best you can hope for is another game that was also on sale in the past and is priced at the same amount.

    "BUT HE BOUGHT THE 4 PACK! I SHOULD GET IT CHEAPER!!!"
    Do you even listen to yourself sometimes? If you're that cheap please leave. We don't need, nor want more people like you.

    Summary: If a game was just on sale, chances are it's going to be worth very little more than it was on sale for, for few weeks. It's best to wait a month or two before trading to ensure maximum profit. Don't you even think about asking for a 1:1 trade, and if you ask for special pricing because the trader bought a four pack; You're an idiot.

    Lets talk about buying for resale
    What you should do before buying, and what you shouldn't buy full stop.

    There are five things you should do before deciding to purchase a game for resale.

    1. Indie or triple A title?
    Lets face the facts. People want to trade for triple A titles. Not only that, but people also know more about them(they have a certain thing called marketing, not sure if many of you have heard of that). If the indie game has poorly representative screenshots(that make the game look like crap, or like another genre), or A crappy sounding name, they're going to be harder to sell. This is subjective as certain indie titles will sell regardless of those two. Games like Magicka, and Terraria. (which is because of word of mouth)

    2. How well reviewed is it?
    Almost every smart trader will research. If they see that the game has a metacritic score of 40(which I highly recommend everyone not use that site) they will presume the game is terrible. This will make the game much harder to trade. I would aim for around a 65+.

    3. What genre is it?
    You have two choices in this area. You can buy a game that falls under a popular genre, or you can buy one that falls under a rarely used one. Hardcore simulation games will be harder to sell than your average fps, BUT you should be able to sell the simulation game for MORE because there will be less of a supply for them. In other words, are you willing to search for an extended period or time, or do you want a nice and quick trade?

    4. How old is it? How are the graphics? How much is it?
    If the game is ten years old it will be harder to sell unless it's very well known. If the graphics looks terrible it'll be harder to sell(very few kids these days care about anything but fancy graphics). If it's expensive($25+ - in the real world that isn't expensive, but on Steam in contrast to entire library, very few games are over the $25 mark) it'll be harder to trade(don't really need to explain this).

    5. If it's single player only, how long is it? If it's multiplayer only, how active is it?
    People don't like short games(use your own definition of a short game - it's subjective anyway so there isn't a point in me listing one.), unless of course the game has an extremely active mp. If the multiplayer is dead, people are likely to find out and thus won't trade for it. (it's pretty much dead weight). Example being: Section 8 Prejudice. At the time of writing only 45 people were playing on servers that were tracked by gametracker.com. It's pretty clear there are more than that(not many, but still more), but Game tracker is public and thus people are very likely to see that over another site listing every server.

    6. Regional pricing
    This is almost the most important factor to consider before deciding what game to buy. I'll use an example to help explain it. The Whispered World is currently on sale for $5. You live in the UK, and thus have to pay in GBP and in turn you're forced to pay more than Americans, or Australians(again - both get it for $5). Almost a dollar more(95 cents to be exact). A dollar isn't much, but it can be the difference between a profitable trade, and a complete waste of time and money. An excellent site for checking regional pricing is steamprices.com. I also highly recommend you exploit regional pricing as much as you can. (the latter is covered in greater detail below)

    Summary: Triple A titles tend to be less risky. Try and only get well reviewed games. Be sure to pick a decent genre. Age, graphics and cost are important factors. Short single player games aren't very popular. Inactive multiplayer games are EXTREMELY risky. Regional pricing can be extremely annoying, or profitable.

    What games you shouldn't buy / trade for resell regardless of the above.

    Every Valve game expect Portal 2, and any newly released games by them.
    Every man and his dog has already has them, and they also already have trade able copies of them. They've been given out to people for free a million times, and it's just not worth it. Although, newer titles such as Portal 2 are worth your time as they are far more rare in comparison(I say rare because when compared to say, Left 4 dead or Half life 2 it isn't even a worthy comparison in terms of numbers).

    Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
    The multiplayer component of this game is available for free and as such you are most likely trading for a key. The key will unlock the multiplayer but not the single player. See this thread.

    Humble Indie bundle 1, 2, 3, 4 and Any other Indie Bundle
    Everyone has them, and if you're trading them you paid a cent for it and you're a jerk because of that. Also, trading the games that are found within the bundles themselves is just silly. The rest of the bundles are $1 Minimum for Steam Keys.

    DiRT 3(AMD promo key), and Batman Arkham City (Nvidia promo key)
    Nine times out of ten people will offer an AMD promo key rather than an actual steam tradeable version. This is risky as you can easily get scammed. I would suggest that you ask for a photo of the receipt, the users profile and the user himself(a licence should be more than enough) all in one photo, just to be on the safe side.

    Any of the following games but only while the market is flooded with them
    Borderlands GOTY (including standard version)​
    section 8 prejudice​
    Far Cry complete​
    Lead and gold​
    (the above is meant as a warning in the case that they go on sale again - feel free to trade for them, just don't buy them for resale until the market stops being so flooded with them)

    Good trading practices
    Always, and I mean always, be patient and level headed. Don't just trade an item for the sake of trading it, and don't jump on the first offer. If you're not going to make a profit from it, or at least cover your original expenses.

    If you can, exploit regional pricing. This will be very hard for US, and England residents as those countries have a ton of active steam forum users. As for Australian residents, it's much easier but also much harder to find prices favored to them. I may as well bring up a reference to what I did a little while ago. I was taking advantage of the Need for Speed hot pursuit price for Australian's. $10.20, in the US and $6.80($3.40 difference). I made three trades, each were for bills. I "sold" the bills for $9.50. In other words, I spent a total of $20.40, and made $28.5($8.1 profit). I did this to cover the cost of buying the game. I could of kept going but I didn't because I'm honestly not greedy but hell, it's up to you if you want to keep going until you hit 7 billion dollars.

    (continue) Some people may think I scammed people. Not at all. I was exploiting regional pricing, and lack of knowledge of the people who traded with me(it would of taken me five seconds to find out that it wasn't worth a bills).

    For the sake of consistency, I recommend you think of games as priced in USD, and disregard what ever currency steam has your country set to.

    There are three simple, and easy ways NEVER to get scammed;
    1. Never trade for CD keys, gift cards, money, real items, etc. Always use Steam trade.
    2. Research. Find out if the trader is a known scammer. A useful tool for doing that is steamrep.com. Important things to focus on are: How many games they have. How many hours they play a week. How many friends they have. How old their account is. How many vac bans they have.
    3. Never trade for promises.

    Be active in communication. If someone makes a post with an offer, or a comment on what your offering; reply! It's a free bump regardless of if it's a positive, or a negative post. You should also respond to PMs regarding your what your offer as they may choice to amen their offer with something better.

    Try and be polite. (Yes, I know.. I may sound like a bit of a hypocrite but that's alright as I'm only an jerk when responding to crappy trades) If word gets around that you're an jerk it'll be much harder for you to make trades. If people know your a good guy thy're likely to bump your threads and so on. Be sure to give rep to everyone you trade with. (you can do so by clicking this icon below the users username)

    Be sure to read everything carefully. If the OP writes "no tf2 items", don't offer any. Also, don't make extremely stupid offers. Borderlands GOTY is not worth a $50 game no matter how much you think it does.

    Be careful. There are games that are censored in other regions. I would recommend doing a quick Google search to check. Main offenders is Russia, Germany, and Australia(;'().

    Begging will not help you in anyway. I'm sure I'm not the only one but I've canceled a trade because the person I was trading to was begging. It's annoying... stop it.

    Steamworks games(as in the ones that require Steam regardless of where you buy the game) should be sold much cheaper than the normal Steam prices. Why? Easy, because I'm not going to buy Shogun 2 for a $30 game when I can pick it up at GMG for $26. Although, this isn't always the case as some people will buy it from you with the purpose of trading it later(something that will be harder to do with a cd key). List of games that require steam.

    Good trading practices
    Always, and I mean always, be patient and level headed. Don't just trade an item for the sake of trading it, and don't jump on the first offer. If you're not going to make a profit from it, or at least cover your original expenses.

    If you can, exploit regional pricing. This will be very hard for US, and England residents as those countries have a ton of active steam forum users. As for Australian residents, it's much easier but also much harder to find prices favored to them. I may as well bring up a reference to what I did a little while ago. I was taking advantage of the Need for Speed hot pursuit price for Australian's. $10.20, in the US and $6.80($3.40 difference). I made three trades, each were for bills. I "sold" the bills for $9.50. In other words, I spent a total of $20.40, and made $28.5($8.1 profit). I did this to cover the cost of buying the game. I could of kept going but I didn't because I'm honestly not greedy but hell, it's up to you if you want to keep going until you hit 7 billion dollars.

    (continue) Some people may think I scammed people. Not at all. I was exploiting regional pricing, and lack of knowledge of the people who traded with me(it would of taken me five seconds to find out that it wasn't worth a bills).

    For the sake of consistency, I recommend you think of games as priced in USD, and disregard what ever currency steam has your country set to.

    There are three simple, and easy ways NEVER to get scammed;
    1. Never trade for CD keys, gift cards, money, real items, etc. Always use Steam trade.
    2. Research. Find out if the trader is a known scammer. A useful tool for doing that is steamrep.com. Important things to focus on are: How many games they have. How many hours they play a week. How many friends they have. How old their account is. How many vac bans they have.
    3. Never trade for promises.

    Be active in communication. If someone makes a post with an offer, or a comment on what your offering; reply! It's a free bump regardless of if it's a positive, or a negative post. You should also respond to PMs regarding your what your offer as they may choice to amen their offer with something better.

    Try and be polite. (Yes, I know.. I may sound like a bit of a hypocrite but that's alright as I'm only an jerk when responding to crappy trades) If word gets around that you're an jerk it'll be much harder for you to make trades. If people know your a good guy thy're likely to bump your threads and so on. Be sure to give rep to everyone you trade with. (you can do so by clicking this icon below the users username)

    Be sure to read everything carefully. If the OP writes "no tf2 items", don't offer any. Also, don't make extremely stupid offers. Borderlands GOTY is not worth a $50 game no matter how much you think it does.

    Be careful. There are games that are censored in other regions. I would recommend doing a quick Google search to check. Main offenders is Russia, Germany, and Australia(;'().

    Begging will not help you in anyway. I'm sure I'm not the only one but I've canceled a trade because the person I was trading to was begging. It's annoying... stop it.

    Steamworks games(as in the ones that require Steam regardless of where you buy the game) should be sold much cheaper than the normal Steam prices. Why? Easy, because I'm not going to buy Shogun 2 for a $30 game when I can pick it up at GMG for $26. Although, this isn't always the case as some people will buy it from you with the purpose of trading it later(something that will be harder to do with a cd key). List of games that require steam.

    Notes
    * List of games that require steam, isn't complete nor has it got every game listed, please use the Steam forums to find a full List *
    * If any links become dead, please pm me on here or message me on steam *
    * Credit : Here *
    Erasmus Bollins and Suttles like this.
  2. Jmcmλtrix

    Jmcmλtrix New User

    Messages:
    186
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:5412928
    Suttles likes this.
  3. Suttles

    Suttles New User

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    95
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    STEAM_0:0:10543958
    Nice little guide, should help newer traders. :)
    Jmcmλtrix likes this.
  4. Neko

    Neko New User

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    98
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:0:37711236
    What suttles said, Indeedly Nice job =)
    Jmcmλtrix likes this.
  5. Pintend

    Pintend New User

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    26
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    STEAM_0:0:18565370
    The more you know, good job on the guide.
    Jmcmλtrix likes this.
  6. Jmcmλtrix

    Jmcmλtrix New User

    Messages:
    186
    Steam:
    STEAM_0:1:5412928
    Update on this guide: I will be reformating and posting this soon, in a FEW weeks or so.