I now give you two stories from Shadowtrooper!
Shadowtrooper
OSM Responds - Until .org, except for one case I bought all the singles I needed from online. I regret it. I missed plenty of opportunities as you describe where friendships can be forged. That said, I was never really scared about trading - I figured I was well enough known in the community that no one would want to steal from me, or if they did then having to hide from the community would hurt their vs experiences. I didn't trade because I figured it was just easier to buy the cards. I'm glad I've had the opportunity to do the trades I've done with you, unclechawie, hanzo, vader. It certainly builds trust within the community when trades are done successfully.
Online Experiences - Trading and Friends Acquired Along the Way
I remember the day I decided to start trading online. I was scared and worried I would get ripped off. Heck when I started reading the Reference Rules, only to then take a quick look the the number of trades most online members had I thought I was going to be mailing first forever. Still I decided to go for it because quite simply I couldn't keep buying the singles I needed for certain decks and the card pool in my play group was becoming more and more limited.
I remember my first trade was with StaticCat over at TCGPlayer. During the trade we quickly became good friends and managed to do quite a few other trades after the initial one. It was actually the first real friendship that I can say I made online thru Vs. We even ended up doing 7 episodes of Group Therapy Battles, which a lot of people seemed to enjoy.
Trades continued to be done until I decided to do my first purchase. This time KardKrazy was on the other side of the screen. I remember it was for 4 EA copies of Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius. I had interacted with KK for quite sometime but never had I dealt with him before. This time I was mortified because it had been several weeks (5 if I recall correctly) after the purchase had began and still no cards. By now it wasn't that I was scared of being ripped off, but more about being put off and disappointed enough never to trade or buy again. Something amazing happened KK offered to send me the money back. I couldn't believe it. Just to keep his online trading/buying/selling reputation intact KK was about to to take a hit by losing the 4 cards. It was truly a testament of the quality of community we have. Even after thinking for those 5 weeks that KK had just ripped me off his actions were enough for me to take action and tell him that it wasn't fair for him to take the hit alone so I told him to only send me half the cash that way we would both lose a little. Even more I decided to give the cards another week just in case.
To my surprise the cards got here. They came in a plastic bag with a letter from the Post Master apologizing to me because apparently the cards got stuck on the conveyor belt and they had some trouble deciphering the addy.
Let me tell you boys and girls sending cards in top loaders is not just to avoid bending, without them the cards would of have been mutilated beyond recognition.
I felt good and bad at the same time. I felt bad that the thought of KK ripping me of ever crossed my mind. Yet at the same time I felt good in knowing that the community I was a part off was more than just flaming and bashing.
KK and I quickly became great friends after that, and we even ended up being members of the Illuminati over at TCG., and we have worked on several projects including: the AoA Raid set, and the up and coming MDC set.
The online trading community at TCG was small so once MUN came out I decided to try my luck at VsRealms. This time I wasn't so worried about people ripping me off, if my experiences on TCGPlayer showed me anything was that I could trust my community. So starting from 0 trades yet again I plunged in.
Fast Forward a couple of months.
I met a lot of good people in Realms and while some trades were harder to complete than others I never got ripped off. Sadly I must accept that I gave 3 negative feedbacks during my time trading in Realms, one of which I really wish I could take back, I'm looking at you CaptainCuba. It was during the time that left Realms sacred forever. PMs like much everything else got screwed up and after an addy exchange. I tried contacting Cuba but alas it was a failed attempt. Since at this time my references were higher than his I proceeded to leave negative feedback since he had to send first. Wouldn't you know it. if I would of waited a couple of extra days I wouldn't of had to leave negative feedback. CaptainCuba managed to contact me and he wasn't upset at all, or at least he didn't show it. We started talking and we completed the same deal we had with a slight variation on cards that I already had managed to trade. Boy did I feel bad when the cards got home. Cuba sorry again for the negative.
Can't go on without naming a few online buddies I have managed to acquire thanks in part to trading with them over at Realms and some of them then continued to trade with me in VsSystem.org: Bliven731, unclechawie, Roswell, InsanityFTW!, Doomstat, and most importantly jaddict1. Thanks for everything guys.
Now if I have to end this long trip down memory lane then I must end it with jaddict1. I posted this story some time ago over in the trade section of VsRealms and I think it is quite fitting that I end my story showing everyone that there is hope for our community even if at some level of which you don't even participate.
I made a deal for a trade with jaddict1. Nothing unusual since he and I had traded a couple of times over at Realms. Thing was that he got my end of the deal and I didn't get mine, which kind of worried me because we had traded like 4 or 5 times before that. I sent a PM to him regarding the deal and apparently the envelope containing single card we had traded for was misplaced and never made it to the Post Office. He was kind enough to take the blame and decided to send me a little something extra just because of the delay. I thought cool some crappy rare or overabundant EAs as is the case when most people send apology extras. Boy was I wrong.
The very next day the mailman came and left a pick up slip because I wasn't home at the time. I proceeded to leave positive feedback since I knew it was from him because of the name in the slip (not even Batman has these kind of detective skills). I picked up the cards and much to my disbelieve not only was the card we traded for in the envelope but the bonus card was a My Name Is Peter Parker... a card that I don't believe was crappy rare, heck at the time the card was worth like 10 bucks. But it didn't stop there. This guy sent the cards to me via Express Mail paying a postage of $16.90. Needless to say I was amazed that he would pay more that the actual value of the card we traded for. We would of actually saved not only cash but an extra rare if he would of had bought the card online.
To say I was perplexed is an understatement. I was instantly inspired, and strived from that moment on to become a better trader myself.
I knew I had some cards that he wanted but I wasn't to keen on trading, but I said to hell with it. The cards I didn't want to trade instantly became a gift and i sent him a bunch of army characters, and a few Shadowpact rares that he wanted from my personal collection. It was hard to break my play sets, but as far as I was concerned he had earned them.
I then proceeded to start a thread telling everyone in the trade section of what he had done. I felt like everyone should know the quality of trader that he was, in hopes that people would get inspired as I was inspired to become a better trader.
I know some people like OSM who started to do online trades recently and I was lucky enough to have traded with him felt or feel reluctant to trust someone who they don't even know by their real names. Trust me if you keep to the ref rules you will have no problems. I'll be honest, this community has a few bad apples, but my trading experiences (over 100 trades so far) have taught me that even when they are complete jerks in the forums they will do whatever they have to do to make sure the deal is done to a satisfaction.
I will never regret having traded online. Even if I would of been ripped off I'm sure that the things I have learned and gained from the experiences would of have been worth it.
End Entry 1 on Trading.
OSM will save his response until the end of the next story from Shadowtrooper.
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It was around the time that MTU had just been released. A friend of mine started working on a brand new gaming store that was opened not 15 minutes away from my house walking distance. He basically ran the store, as the owner didn’t know much about gaming. I wanted to see if I could find some new people to play Vs since I had been out of the scene for a while thanks to my 2 existent playing partners getting hooked on drugs and trying to steal my cards, but [at the gaming shop] my hopes were shattered when all I saw was MtG fanatics. The store I played had a real prick as an owner and he wouldn’t support the game cause we were only 5 players left.
Anyway I helped my friend out whenever he needed someone to be the 8th man in a MTG draft and while I did get to draft for free I was not happy playing. I wanted, no I needed to play Vs.
About 4 weeks later an old friend of mine moved back to town and he had some of his old Vs. decks around. When I say old I mean a straight MOR Doom deck. Anyway we decided to meet every Tuesday to play a few games and I was in heaven again if only for those brief hours.
On one of those Tuesdays a new guy walked in and he played Wow, Crappy-Oh, HeroClix, and God knows what else. He managed to get to the table I was playing and he jumped for joy when he saw people playing Vs. Needless to say we began playing and talking and next week we met yet again. It just so happens that he had 3 other friends that also played Vs. and I’m happy to say we hit it off.
It’s been almost two years and while our playgroup grew 3 more players it also went down 5 players. We lost both local stores and the nearest one doesn’t support the game. I get sad like you wouldn’t imagine when a player of our group leaves it’s hard not just because they quit the game but because they also grow more and more distant, as if the glue that held us together is no longer there.
My playgroup is down to 4 players and we don’t care that UDE left us in the dark we will play until our sleeves break apart. After that we will play until the cards can’t be read anymore, and the pictures are faded. Once that happens we will write the text of the cards, draw the damn pictures and buy new sleeves. Yeah buying new sleeves would have solved us a bunch of trouble but who cares? Long Live Vs.
On the piece of your local scene - Drafting Magic isn't that bad, is it? Well, if the players aren't cool people, then yeah I can see that not being too enjoyable. I'd rather draft VS than Magic any day, just saying. On the VS players, having a group of people that you can regularly play cards with is amazing. I wish I had that luxury - well, now that I'm home for the summer I can meet up with my neighbor [Ryan]. I'm glad to see that you're still playing strong; it seems to be harder to get in games these days. Once the Council churns out a set or two hopefully we'll see a rebound.
Trooper, your efforts to help me with this event are noted. When it seemed like coverage would be a problem, you stepped up and submitted another entry. For that, I am sending you a custom playmat!
'Till tomorrow gang [and at a much more reasonable time],
- OSM
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