Trading with Dealers at Card Shows?

[jchcollins]

As a collector / buyer, I approach the subject of trades on whether or not it makes sense for what I desire and what I want to get rid of sometimes over and above comps and values. Dealers are not going to be likely to make trades that are not financially advantageous to them, so I agree with what's already been said in terms of hot cards / liquidity vs. probably giving a much lesser percentage (if they are even willing to do the deal) on stuff that is just going to collect dust in their showcase for awhile. Because of these variables, sometimes trying to do straight trades working towards set dollar amounts can be an exercise in frustration.

A few examples on trades I have done in the past year or so:

At a show late last summer, I traded a '65 Mantle in a PSA 2 plus some cash for a '58 Mantle in a PSA 3. This was a no-brainer to me because my '65 Mantle was not a good looking 2; the card was a bit faded. Value wise to comps it worked, and I was much happier with my new card.

A few hours later I brought the same dealer a bunch of cards trying to trade for a '63 Rose he had in a PSA 7. This deal was a long shot from the word go. Because I would have been trading many for one on a high end card, he wasn't able to give me much more than 50% comp trade value on the cards I was offering. So I would have wound up having to give up a significant number of things - maybe like 15 to one - to get the Rose. In the end we gave up because it became obvious to me that the stuff I would have had to give up was not worth it to me in the long run to trade for just one card.

Fast forward to a different show last month. I traded a different, lower grade Rose RC in an PSA 1 to a dealer for a nicer, raw Gibson RC that later graded an SGC 4. I had to throw in some cash as well to make it worth it for the dealer. Most people looking at the total value of what I did with the cash included wouldn't have thought it was a fair deal, but it made sense to me because I wanted the card I was trading for much more than the sunk cost I had in my lower grade card, and the cash was much less than it would have cost to buy the card outright. Deals like this don't always make sense, but can sometimes work as a collector if you know what you are giving up and don't mind if you can get something with a trade that you wouldn't be able to otherwise.