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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 937
Location: Phiadelphia, PA
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Hey everyone, i figured i would make a thread dedicated to this of what i know is the best ways to save money when your doing alot of trading on here or on WOTC. A friend of mine has this problem & asked me if i had any ideas for the solution so it got me thinking about it & this is what i came up with so far. Now if anyone has any other good ideas people can do, then you should post it on here. It would be really nice to help out our Bloomilk Community & SWM Community in general since we are all like a really big disfunctional family lol.. Remember also, these idea's are at your own expense when doing this, im just here to mearly give some idea's, i suggest doing them with people you've traded with in the past & have a somewhat relationship with someone.Ok heres what i have so far ... (1) When doing alot of trades online for SWM's & your short on money to send out, you can offer to sell some of your Uc's, C's or maybe even some low valued rare's to pay for your shipping. You can put the money up for the shipping & just have it returned to you by doing this when the traders package gets to you. I know people who have done this & were pretty successful in doing so. ------------------------------------(2) Recycle on packages you recieve in previous trades. I know everyone probably does this. I know i do nothing but this. When recieving a trade take caution & care in opening the package you recieved so your able to recycle it once again. ------------------------------------(3) Instead of going out & spending money on materials for trading such as Packing Nuts, Baggies, Sleeves & Top Loaders. You can #1 recycle them or #2 make use of house hold items to get your materials. For packing peanuts to take up the space you have in your box, i would say use Paper towels or Tissue (Of Course Unused lol). This is what i do when i have no packing nuts. Now if your figure is not new & you have no mini figure ziplock baggies, i find using sandwhich bags work, you can wrap them up with it & they stay pretty secure. Now i also first wrap them in tissue before i put them in a sandwhich baggie to get the make protection of the figure. Now sleeves & top loaders there isnt any way i know of to create these lol so try recycling them from previos trades & if not, than taking a piece of blank white CPU paper can do the trick. I've ordered from WWW.coolstuffinc.com & they've done this. Stack all stat cards in a pile & lay them on the paper, next fold the paper around the cards so that the whole deck is covered from corner to corner. Now when you place it in a box it should stay secure. I suggest do this if you are completely out of top loaders & sleeves.------------------------------------(4) Now this one is up to the person you are trading with, at some times if you have traded with someone in the past you dont have money for a delivery confirmation #, then sometimes the person you are trading with will let you not have to put one on the package your sending. Now i suggest doing this with someone you've had a few trades with in the past & i wouldnt come out and ask people for this fore it will be bad communication skills in my book. You have to understand that some people will be waiting for your package to come before they have to A) go somewhere / vacation B) wait for yours to send out another C) just want the security of having a DC# in place. To where they might ask you to put a DC# on your package. Now dont get mad at this, & take it as no sign of disrespect, its just the recipients choice & you need to respect there choice because they are involved in the trade as well.------------------------------------(5 - Trade Master Chuckafett Adds) Another tip for recycling boxes and helping others out; Instead of just taping the box closed (and then taping and having the post office sticker addresses and postage over the outside of the box as well) wrap your box in two pieces of plain white paper. I find that all that sticky stuff on the box ruins it, often times after one use. If you use paper on the outside of the box the next guy can use the box again, saving everyone a little money! (Darth Percocet Adds On To 5)yea, thats more of helping out your fella trade, i just started doing that recently too because i had alot of boxes come in with the priorty mail tape on it & if i would of put it in the PO like that it would of been sent out as priorty, & if you rip it off like you said it ruins the box to where someone might get a one more time use out of it, by wrapping it in white paper it stays new yea that is a good idea chuck.. thanx ------------------------------------(6 - ithai Adds)As far as shipping labels my suggestion is to buy a lot of them in a package at a office supply store or walmart. But once you make a trade you will always have boxes, and packing material. Good suggestions for those who are new at trading.
My best tip is always ship first class don't let the post office dudes upgrade you. I have sent packages to Washington state from Missouri and had them arrive in 3-4 days. (Darth Percocet Adds On To 6)Also if you have a printer what i do is open note pad or word pad & type in the person address your sending to along with your address & print it out, cut it out & tap it on the box.. lol now thats saving some money... ------------------------------------(7 - defender390 Adds)I suppose that this might just be personal preference, but when I started trading I quickly learned to start trying for larger trades to get the most out of the postage
(Darth Percocet Adds On To 7)See i have the problem myself of when confirming a trade with someone, not fully completing it meaning after the packages have been sent. So i would say when trading with someone, go through there collection theroly this way you can work out all figures right from the get go so your not scraping around for a box & some extra money to send a different box------------------------------------Now remember these idea's are at your own expense when doing this, im just here to mearly give some idea's, i suggest doing them with people you've traded with in the past & have a somewhat relationship with someone Now if anyone else has some simple idea's to save with how the echonomy is then share your idea. Thank you everyone for listening to me blab on lol..
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 1/6/2009
Posts: 908
Location: Felucia, near the Ancient Abyss
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Darth Percocet wrote:
(3) Instead of going out & spending money on materials for trading such as Packing Nuts, Baggies, Sleeves & Top Loaders.
My post office does this for free 
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 937
Location: Phiadelphia, PA
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really? do you know if all of them do it? me i didnt even bother asking i just assumed they didnt give stuff away for free.. cuz seems like no stores or places of buisness would do that in this time.. thats cool though they do that.. thanx
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Rank: Rancor
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/24/2008
Posts: 33
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My post office doesn't give anything out free. But I find the first class shipping rates very reasonable even with delivery confirmation. The most I have paid in shipping on a trade is 2.50 and that was to Canada. As far as shipping labels my suggestion is to buy a lot of them in a package at a office supply store or walmart. But once you make a trade you will always have boxes, and packing material. Good suggestions for those who are new at trading.
My best tip is always ship first class don't let the post office dudes upgrade you. I have sent packages to Washington state from Missouri and had them arrive in 3-4 days.
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 937
Location: Phiadelphia, PA
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i agree 100% about shipping first class, i shipped priority once & it was about $5 more than First Class & i even think it took longer to get there. My post office is pretty fair also i just sent to Australia this week & the shipping was about $4.25 which i thought was really cheap..
Also if you have a printer what i do is open note pad or word pad & type in the person address your sending to along with your address & print it out, cut it out & tap it on the box.. lol now thats saving some money...
Thank you " ithai " for puttin some tips on here for people..
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
, Trade Moderator
Joined: 3/28/2008
Posts: 498
Location: Lynden, WA
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Another tip for recycling boxes and helping others out; Instead of just taping the box closed (and then taping and having the post office sticker addresses and postage over the outside of the box as well) wrap your box in two pieces of plain white paper. I find that all that sticky stuff on the box ruins it, often times after one use. If you use paper on the outside of the box the next guy can use the box again, saving everyone a little money!
If your PO doesn't give out packing peanuts for free, try one of the postal stores, UPS, Fedex, or a local shop. My local shop (affiliated with UPS) gives out bags of the stuff. Seems that when people pick up their packages they just leave it there, and the store has no use for it.
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 12/7/2008
Posts: 396
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I suppose that this might just be personal preference, but when I started trading I quickly learned to start trying for larger trades to get the most out of the postage.
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 937
Location: Phiadelphia, PA
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@ChuckaFett yea, thats more of helping out your fella trade, i just started doing that recently too because i had alot of boxes come in with the priorty mail tape on it & if i would of put it in the PO like that it would of been sent out as priorty, & if you rip it off like you said it ruins the box to where someone might get a one more time use out of it, by wrapping it in white paper it stays new yea that is a good idea chuck.. thanx
@defender390 no not at all, not a personal prefence. Well its a personal prefence but i do that too & i agree with you 100%. See i have the problem myself of when confirming a trade with someone, not fully completing it meaning after the packages have been sent, myself or the other trader will pm eachother saying hey i didnt see that you had that figure can we work something out for that & its a waste of money on shipping. So i would say when trading with someone, go through there collection theroly this way you can work out all figures right from the get go so your not scraping around for a box & some extra money to send a different box. LoL Chuck knows i have that problem i had to explain why i had mutiple refrences from certain trades.. but thanx great ideas..
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 12/7/2008
Posts: 396
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Darth Percocet wrote:So i would say when trading with someone, go through there collection theroly this way you can work out all figures right from the get go so your not scraping around for a box & some extra money to send a different box. Maybe we could ask Shinja to make it so that when you do trades by user and search for one character, it also shows all of your other wants on people's trade lists in addition to the minature you are looking for.
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 937
Location: Phiadelphia, PA
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also would be decent to when you go to Trades By Characters when it list the names of the people who are trading the figure you want, or even just in general when you see there name on this site period, next to there name have how many GTL refs they got according to chucafett's list.. thats actually something that wouldnt be bad i'd like seeing too, this way you dont have to go through the list to search how many GTL refs someone has..
but i think if we were gonna see something like that it would be awhile if shinja were to do it because & i understand this why.. because he's always trying to maintain the site to make it better for the main options of why people come on this site in the first place, (example: search character, squad builder, collection trackers) stuff like that, theres only maybe in my opinion %60 if even that of the users on this site that actually trade. Not including the people who just have figures on there trade list but the actually people who come into the threads & have mutiple trades under there belts.. so if we were to see major options to trading i think it would be after everything else is perfected first ya know..
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 937
Location: Phiadelphia, PA
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updated
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Rank: Advanced Bloo Milk Member
Groups: Member
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 937
Location: Phiadelphia, PA
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I just thought i would revive this because i've come acrossed alot of first time traders who could maybe use these tips.. Also maybe some people didnt read this thread who have new tips not on here.. Thanx guys
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